Tribute to Sol LeWitt - Wavy Lines on Grey

I became aware of the work of Sol LeWitt in the 1970’s, while residing in the United States to earn a MSc in Transportation Engineering. Since then I work in the planning of roads and transportation systems by laying out lines and curves on topographic maps in classes for Urban and Environmental Planning.

In my life as a sculptor, I recently find myself working on pieces inspired by the engineering design of roads, intersections, and interchanges, expressed in three dimensional stone sculptures, creating a new language for the expression of urban and landscape design.

The transition from two to three dimensional defines this work and challenged me to struggle with the transformation of maps into a new kind of art form. This project is a continuation of my ongoing investigation in the last decade of the joining of different media and materials, among them some taken from nature and joined to artificial and industrial materials from everyday life. In stone I see an eternal material connected to nature and human culture.  These attributes are addressed in sculptures and other works that have been presented in sculpture gardens, museums, and galleries in Israel and the world. I continue to try using the language of art to connect differing worlds, and to suggest to the public at large to examine and ponder these connections.

The work of the American artist Sol LeWitt entitled “Wavy Lines on Grey” was the inspiration for a three dimensional sculpture in stone that I called by the same name. The interplay of lines in LeWitt’s work create a feeling of shapes of variable scale and appearance in the landscape. The sculpture expresses this using lines in grey stone, in actual three dimension. Thus, the wavy lines of LeWitt find meaning in realistic expression.  They are not a “conceptual description” as is the usual modus operandi of LeWitt, rather an expression of planning reality.

Avi Sperber