Sydney Blum: ‘Like Riding the Back of a Bird’

Sydney Blum’s artistic practice is inspired by phenomena such as colour vibrations,  the oscillation of light, seismology, and ways that energy is experienced and measured.

Composed of hundreds of hand-painted cardboard squares, woven with metal wire across mobile frameworks, these sculptures combine the precision of engineered systems with the intimacy of meticulous handcraft.

The images are from Galerie Robertson Arès in Montreal which held Blum’s solo exhibition Above and Beyond, Up and Away, earlier this month. (See this link for more detail on these works)

Like the edge of the wind and the colour of light. A wave of motion. Emotion. A fragment of space time. Like riding the back of a bird. Or, bending the breath. Like a sky trip. These new Icarus-Colour-Space sculptures are a sampler of the work from the last few years. They reach upward. Expanding light, toward goodness.- Sydney Blum

Blum’s sculptures translate flows of colour and light into fragmented forms that evoke the sensation of flight through space and time: a wave, a breath, the trace of wind made visible through rhythm and structure, the gallery says.

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This video is from a previous exhibition at the Montreal gallery, illustrating clearly the multi-dimensional facets of Blum’s unique work.

Sydney Blum’s gallery artist page, here.

Her Instagram, here.

Blum has a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a Master of Social Work from New York University. She has taught in the Fine Art department at The New School/Parsons for 16 years and practiced as a psychotherapist for more than 30 years. She moved to Nova Scotia in 2010.

Her work has been widely exhibited has been widely reviewed in art publications such as Art Forum, Art News, Art in America, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Contemporanea, Arts Magazine, Village Voice and many others.