Learning Specialist, Carolina Malagamba: With this piece, if I say, “I spy with my little eye a circle,” I wonder if you would be able to find my circle. There might actually be around 50 wooden black circles in this piece. So the odds of you finding my little circle are actually very low.
But let’s hear from the artist who made this work, Louise Nevelson.
Artist, Louise Nevelson: New York for me is just totally unlimited. When you encompass the whole city, it becomes a great work of art.
Narrator: Nevelson called herself the original recycler. She built these very large, abstract sculptures from discarded objects that she would gather from the streets of New York City, where she lived.
Louise Nevelson: I was searching and, I began to see forms and possibilities in the ready-made object. Most of the pieces of wood came from the street. They left marvelous things, and of course, I’d take them home.
Narrator: Once she brought them home, Nevelson would paint the objects a single color. Then she’d play around with the objects, finding new ways to place them together.
Louise Nevelson: And I just nailed them together, and I knew this was art. It’s like a marriage. You are not the total actor. You play with another actor, and I play with my materials.
Narrator: This piece is called Sky Cathedral. People say, “Oh, it's very tall, and it seems to have a lot of windows, like a big church or like a cathedral.” A really interesting thing too is that in a church and in a cathedral, oftentimes there are stories told in the windows and the window paintings, and here it seems like every box is a window and every box is telling a story or a legend or a myth. What do you think this piece represents?