Elan Muse - by Marcia Wood, 1933-2000

Painted Steel - 1990, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Marcia Wood earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. During her career as an artist, Wood taught within the Kalamazoo Public School System; at the National Music Camp; Hope College; the Philadelphia College of Art and Kalamazoo College.

Wood's ten-foot sculpture, Élan Muse, is intended to serve as a symbol which celebrates the creative spirit. The larger element is a single figure, in the tradition of the Greek muse, representing the spirit or power which inspires imaginative insight basic to any creative endeavor. She explained, The form of this figure and its immediate environment, however, is strongly contemporary: the simplification of the intangible figure which emerges from the spaces within the sculpture, and the dynamic movement of the planes, which frame the figure. It is the classical past seen from a contemporary viewpoint .

The smaller element, according to Wood, frames a series of figure-fragments which rise and fall. The focus of this element says Wood, is on process. The form of the sculpture is fractured and fragmented, multi-perspective, resistant to being shaped into a single visual image. This conception reflects the contemporary experience.

Wood stated that her work seemed to always be based on two sources of ideas: nature - meaning both landscape and the human figure- and architecture. Finding a sculptural metaphor which brings these interests together is probably the basic theme which will continue to run through my work as an artist.