by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Like all good art, the works of Bruce Jacobson of Sartell have to be seen up close and personal to be fully appreciated. Photos, reproductions of the works just don’t cut it.
That is why people should take in Light Reconstructed, an exhibit of Jacobson’s works in the Veranda Lounge of Pioneer Place, 22 Fifth Ave. S. in downtown St. Cloud. The exhibit, which opened Aug. 11, will remain open for viewing through October. Its hours are 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily except for Sunday, when the lounge closes at midnight.
Light Reconstructed consists of 15 of Jacobson’s works, which are a hybrid of painting and sculpture. The smallest is 9-by-12 inches, the largest 4-by-4 feet. Jacobson uses solid maple wood to carve into thin, elongated shapes – rather like the shapes of long, sinuous, bleached rib bones. He then affixes the maple-wood pieces to plywood that has been painted with black enamel.
The arrangement of the wood pieces on the plywood strongly suggests the human form. The beauty of the oak pieces glow in a silvery shimmer against the black background as if bathed by moonlight. Each art work changes subtly as the viewer sees it from different angles.
The thin, elongated lines and squiggles of the maple wood have fluid sensuous shapes much like the delicate undulating traceries on beach sand made by lapping waves. While the shapes are abstract, together they evoke human forms.
Jacobson described his works this way:
“Light reveals, but the revelation is neither absolute nor precise. Similar to poetry, a complex interaction between word and reader, visual perception is observation projected onto memory. My pieces celebrate this relationship between sculpture and observer.”
The world of art was a long time coming to Jacobson. He’d been a lifelong woodworker but never seemed to find the “right” medium to fit his skills. Then, two years ago, he happened to see a black-and-white photo of a female model as seen through Venetian blinds, giving a striped effect of the light and shade across the body, almost zebra-like.
It was that startling sight that inspired him.
First, Jacobson works out his design on a computer. Then he makes print-outs and attaches them to the wood, like patterns. Next, he begins to cut the maple pieces with a band saw. He sands them carefully with a drum sander and uses a dremel tool for the finishing touches. He sands them again and polishes them. And then he positions them oh-so carefully on the plywood before gluing them to stay.
Because his art was a long voyage of discovery, it took him a year to do his first work, a piece he called Unforgettable.
“The response to my art has been very, very positive,” he said.
Jacobson is a biochemistry professor at St. Cloud State University and is on a sabbatical this year. He is currently working on earning a master’s degree in systematic theology from Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Jacobson’s wife, Anita, is also an artist who works with fibers.
To Jacobson, biochemistry, theology and art are eminently compatible because they are all different ways of seeing and interacting with the world.
“Art doesn’t exist on its own,” he said. “It’s an interaction by the person who creates it and who experiences it, and viewers then bring their own memories and experience to the art work.”
Bruce Jacobson stands by one of his art works in the Veranda Lounge at Pioneer Place.
Two kneeling figures seeming to merge are the evocation of one of Bruce Jacobson’s art works made from maple wood and black-enameled plywood.
One of Bruce Jacobson’s smaller works clearly shows the intricate pattern created by the sensuous, elongated shapes of carved maple wood.
