Figuring Color

Color is a daily experience, from the colors we wear, to the cars we drive, to the food we eat, to the flags we fly. We use colors to describe our emotions: we feel green with envy, red with anger, or on a sad day, blue. This publication examines the work of four artists who employ color and form to represent a metaphorical body: In Roy McMakin’s wood sculpture a chair is at once a body and an implication of an absent body. Kathy Butterly’s evocative use of glaze transforms her ceramic sculptures into miniature bodies. In Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s sculptures, piles of wrapped candy and plastic-bead curtains are experienced through a literal touch, privileging a sensory experience. Sue Williams’ riotously colorful paintings explore an abstracted body represented entirely through color. The publication combines images by the four artists with poems by twenty-two contemporary poets who further explore color through rhythm, meter and rhyme.