Vivian Schwab

Roots/Routes

An adaptable structure of tension, balance, distortion and mimicry.

Wood and steel, 2011
Senior thesis installation, Wesleyan University, Zilkha Gallery
Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Schiff

Bare branches joined to bent steel tubes, looping across the floor and up the stone walls of a gallery corner

Bare branches are joined to lengths of steel tube, so each line starts as wood and carries on as steel. Where the steel reaches the floor it bends into loops and hairpins, and those bends hold the branches up, leaning against each other and the walls.

In the gallery

Looking up into the installation: branches rising toward a skylight from steel loops on a cork floor
Two steel tubes crossing in a tight loop at the floor, branches rising from their ends
The installation in a stone-walled niche, branches spreading across the wall above steel loops on the floor
A steel loop on the cork floor in the foreground, branches climbing the wall behind
Close-up of a branch fitted into the end of a steel tube

At each joint the branch is fitted into the end of the tube, so the steel reads as the branch continuing.

In the studio

A single branch standing on a figure-eight of steel tube in the sculpture studio
A row of steel hairpin loops on the studio floor, holding up a spreading canopy of branches
Branches on steel loops standing among hanging glass panels in the studio
Black-and-white photo of bare branches against a white sky