Ann Ledy: Rotation I and Rotation II, 1995

These drawings relate to a sculpture by Ledy that has not yet been executed.¹ The artist made the drawing after constructing a twelve-inch-high maquette for a work that is intended to be twelve feet high. Although the Rotation drawings can be viewed on their own terms, they also translate central aspects of the three-dimensional steel sculpture into two-dimensional graphite on paper.

The maquette consists of four rectangular steel planes standing upright, like walls. Their bottom edges are bent at an angle of ninety degrees to form small bases. The planes can be arranged in different ways—for example, in parallel pairs or perpendicular pairs. In either case, they are situated in relation to an imaginary circle. If the pairs are parallel, the circumference of the circle passes between them. If perpendicular, the circumference intersects them at their meeting point. The pairs can be rotated around the imaginary circle or, conversely, in the projected full-scale version, the viewer will be able to walk along its circumference on a concentric path.

The drawings are the ground plans for two possible arrangements of the sculpture. An almost invisible, light-gray line on a rectangular sheet of graph paper is the circumference of the imaginary circle. Superimposed on that sheet is a square sheet of graph paper with lines indicating the positions of the planes. Those lines are dark and firmly applied, suggesting the weight and solidity of the steel.

In the drawings, our peripatetic viewing of the sculpture is suggested by the circle in two ways. First, our eyes constantly move along the circumference, back and forth between the lines representing the pairs of planes. Second, the circle implies that the upper sheet can be rotated, which would change the formation but keep it locked onto the grid. As our eyes move, or as our imagination turns the paper, our perception of the lines (planes) shifts.

The Rotation drawings render in two dimensions some of the perceptual changes that would take place in three, each collapsing into an overview what we would experience only sequentially with the sculpture. The bird’s-eye view of the steel planes allows us to see the formations as at once identical (in their essential shape) and different (in their orientation). Furthermore, the drawings posit space both as divided (on either side of each line) and closed off (the niche formed where the lines meet). Changes in scale and light that we would perceive in walking around the sculpture seem less pertinent to the drawing.

Notes:

1. Many of the following facts and ideas about the Rotation drawings and sculpture are based on a conversation with the artist and Roger Shepherd on 6 November 1996.

Citation:
Text by Christine Mehring, from "Drawing is another kind of language": Recent American Drawings from a New York Private Collection (Harvard University Art Museums, in association with Daco-Verlag Gunter Bläse, 1997; reprinted 1998). ©1997 President and Fellows of Harvard College.