Ibram Lassaw on Titles

circa 1956

In recent years most of the titles of my sculpture have been based on the names of stars and other celestial phenomena. At first, this system of titling seemed a convenient way of disposing of the problem of giving titles to totally abstract space compositions, certainly better to my liking than that of using numbers or dates. Soon there came the realization, that there was an underlying reason for my looking to the stars for names. I had long felt an analogy in the groupings of stars in three-dimensional space and the relationship of forms in my polymorphous compositions. In my imagination the atomic world shows a similar space structure. This view led to still further identification of that which I know with that which I feel.

The idea that the body is, in ways an island universe of atoms in an infinite continuum, stirs my imagination and my emotions. In all this, there is the basic assumption of a universal ecology, in which I, and in which life, plays an integral part. There is a growing conviction in me that I belong to the family of the stars and the atoms, and an increasing sense of security in this knowledge of participation in an unknown but wonderful process. There is no longer to me a distinction between spirit and matter. They are merely aspects of a reality which can not be bounded by verbal concepts.

The artist contributes to the growth of awareness of reality, somewhat like a ductless gland secretes hormones for the body. Truly to love art, means first of all to love God’s world, for God is incarnate in the world. In each of my works, I want to rejoice in the incarnation.

“All who sing here to the harp, sing Him.” Vedanta Sutras

Ibram Lassaw