Pre-Writing assignment #2

For our third writing project we were assigned a sculpture that is displayed at the Sheldon art museum. My sculpture was created by Tony Smith in 1962 and is composed of welded steel. “Willy” is an abstract piece of art that was placed in the back of the museum with other sculptures of the museum. However unlike many of the sculptures located in the same area, it was in a more open section of landscape.

“Willy” is a seemingly simplistic shape of art. It contains three points at which it is held above the ground. Like many of his other works of art, these portions of smooth metal are sculpted with sharp edges and defined points. Its black steel shows more of a geometrical shape that lacks curves of any kind. If you look from different angles, what you thought was the basic shape or structure changes into a whole different perspective. In a way, Tony Smith caused what initially thought was rather simplistic into a work of art that makes you think about the purpose. The title of this sculpture “Willy” gave me a bit of confusion. At first, I felt the name “Willy” had no purpose or relation to the sculpture itself. I looked up possible definitions of the word to try and bring more sense of it. Most of these definitions related the word back to willow trees and some related to the name William. Most of these definitions referenced back to willow trees. One talked about willow trees that are characterized by their tough and pliable twigs or branches. I felt that this had some relation to Tony Smith’s sculpture in some way. “Willy” is made out of welded steel. Steel is a strong modified metal. It has traits of elasticity, hardness and strength based on its heat treatment. It made me think of willow branches and their pliable and tough nature.

Tony Smith has created other sculptures that are quite similar to “Willy”. The concept of the rhetorical element, logos, is presented through visual unity, visual hierarchy, and how many visual elements are presented in the sculptures themselves. Unlike some of the sculptures around “Willy”, Tony Smith decided to use a limited amount of elements in this work of art and in each of his sculptures. “Willy” contains welded steel formed into the desired shape, and colored black. This keeps the audience from wondering which part of the art is the one to be focused on. There is also a sense of visual hierarchy in this piece of art. When you get passed the big picture of the sculpture with sharp edges and bent pieces, you can start to divide up each portion into smaller pieces. As I was walking around “Willy” to get a better sense of the sculpture, I noticed that I could identify different geometrical shapes within the art piece. There were triangles, a hexagon, rectangles, squares, and parallelograms. All these pieces work together to make this sculpture. This visual unity of each piece makes the sculpture the way Tony Smith intended.