June Leaf, a view during the fabrication of ‘The Head,’ 1980
via Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s by Jonathan Lippincott
June Leaf, 1979 model for ‘The Head’
via Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s by Jonathan Lippincott
June Leaf using a grinding tool to clean up the interior of The Head (1980)
via Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s by Jonathan Lippincott
These incredible photos come from Large Scale, published this month by Princeton Architectural Press. Arthur C. Danto says it all in his blurb: “What is priceless about this book are its photographs, in which workers are diminished in scale by the gigantesque sculptures they are busy fabricating in the dusky light of the Lippincott atelier. They dramatize an aspect of artistic production rarely discussed as such, which gives the book its art historical value.” I hope to do a couple more features on the book.
About the artist (via Steidl):
June Leaf was born in 1929 in Chicago, where she studied at the New Bauhaus Institute of Design. She concluded her art education at Roosevelt University in 1954. Leaf held her first solo exhibition at Sam Bordelon Gallery in Chicago in 1948 and has since exhibited internationally. Today Leaf spends the majority of her time in Mabou Coal Mines, although she and her husband are often drawn back to the metropolis: to Bleecker Street on New York’s Lower East Side.
Some links for June Leaf:
—Record 1974-75 by June Leaf (available as a facsimile)
—John Yau in Brooklyn Rail
—1975 photo by Richard Avedon
–Another view of the model
