Specifications: Die Sociale Frage (The Social Question), billboard with acrylic paints, 14 x 10',

Description: This work for the First Word festival was exhibited in Cologne, Germany, in 1985

I try to find sculptureÕs approximations for physical, social, geopolitical, and architectural ideals. Long ago I decided that the sanctity of the individual art object depended on its place in the world. My work is creative, life-giving, affirmative, however critical or intellectual in its conceptual roots. This work has certainty, body, diversity. It speaks about artistic reproduction, the ineffable pull of music, the female body; it works to define three-dimensional space through the language of architectonics, ethics, even reason: an architecture of sky, love, war, mathematics and healing. Recalling ointment-jars, water containers, musical instruments, in the perfection (and compulsion) of architectonics, I confront the flaw, the slight asymmetry that makes these works not science nor industry but art, modes of reflection, realms for discussion, sites of pure beauty and pleasure. Each harbors a song, a breathing spiracle, a drain valve to let off steam. My art is an alliance, the product of a narrow path--a planned structure, a formal positioning in space that "sees" a harmony, an overall scheme, and errs, with flaws, in the final realized artifact--that leads both into and out again from our living-rooms.

Barbara Westermann July 2000