Kenneth Duane Snelson (June 29, 1927 – December 22, 2016) was an American contemporary sculptor and photographer. His sculptural works, exemplified by Needle Tower, are composed of flexible and rigid components arranged according to the idea of 'tensegrity'. Snelson preferred the descriptive term floating compression.
Kenneth Snelson
Needle Tower II by Kenneth Snelson (1969) at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Netherlands
Snelson said his former professor Buckminster Fuller took credit for Snelson's discovery of the concept that Fuller named tensegrity.[1] Fuller gave the idea its name, combining 'tension' and 'structural integrity.' Kārlis Johansons had exhibited tensegrity sculptures several years before Snelson was even born. The height and strength of Snelson's sculptures, which are often delicate in appearance, depend on the tension between rigid pipes and flexible cables.
Biographyedit
Snelson was born in Pendleton, Oregon, in 1927. He studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene, at the Black Mountain College,[2] and with Fernand Léger in Paris. His sculpture and photography have been exhibited at over 25 one-man shows in galleries around the world including the structurally seminal Park Place Gallery in New York in the 1960s. Snelson also did research on the shape of the atom. Snelson continued to work in his SoHo studio, occasionally collaborating with animator Jonathan Monaghan.[3] He lived in New York City with his wife, Katherine.
He held five United States patents: #3,169,611: Discontinuous Compression Structures, February 1965; #3,276,148: Model for Atomic Forms, October 1966; #4,099,339: Model for Atomic Forms, July 1978; and #6,017,220: Magnetic Geometric Building System; and most recently, #6,739,937: Space Frame Structure Made by 3-D Weaving of Rod Members, May 25, 2004.
Snelson was a founding member of ConStruct, the artist-owned gallery that promoted and organized large-scale sculpture exhibitions throughout the United States. Other founding members include Mark di Suvero, John Raymond Henry, Lyman Kipp and Charles Ginnever. Snelson was also a pioneer of digital art, using a Silicon Graphics machine to produce artistic images in the 1980s.[4]
After suffering from prostate cancer, Snelson died on December 22, 2016, at the age of 89.[5]
Indexer II, 2001, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
B-Tree II, 2005, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids
Missouriedit
Triple Crown, 1991, Hallmark, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri, just north of 27th Street between Main Street and Grand Blvd, at the South end of the Crown Center complex. The sculpture consists of 30–40 aluminum tubes held together and apart by steel cables. The entire assembly is roughly 23 meters on each of three sides and roughly that tall, with the low point being roughly 5 meters above the ground.[12]
^"Kenneth Snelson Untitled Maquette, 1975". Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved September 22, 2011.[permanent dead link]
^"Wellesley College Receives Permanent Gift of Snelson Sculpture | Wellesley College". Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved June 12, 2013.
^This description was judged by eye from the image in Google Earth. It could be improved by closer inspection. Freedom of panorama in the United States does not extend to art work. Thus, including photos of this in Wikimedia Commons would require the permission of the owner, Crown Center. Triple Crown sculpture, Wikidata Q66839784
Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1
Further readingedit
Heartney, Eleanor, Kenneth Snelson: forces made visible/essay by Eleanor Heartney; additional text by Kenneth Snelson, Lenox, Massachusetts: Hard Press Editions, 2009.
Sande-Friedman, Amy, "Kenneth Snelson & the Science of Sculpture in 1960s America", Doctoral Dissertation, New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2012.
External linksedit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kenneth Snelson.
Kenneth Snelson's official webpage
Letter from Snelson to R. Motro regarding Fuller's role in 'discovering' Tensegrity