Universe Series -- 1981. Portuguese Variant. Vinyl ink on vinyl. 20'x5'x5" approx. Provenance

"Artists live in the body of Ohio. Some, like these three, are nurtured by it, grow within it, and receive support".

… "What she most admires - and so do I in a way - is absolute dedication to a problem. This she feels is the cardinal virtue of the authentic artist, a trait not necessarily projected by the art object or work. This dedication animates very few artists but it is surely absent from mindless exercises in sensibility, even the best of them if such exercises can ever be said to have a "best". Robert Pincus-Witten, in Betty Collings: Drawing on Sculpture, 1979.

Unfortunately, I do not understand Pincus-Witten's "mindless exercises in sensibility" (something on the order of just making art?), but like him, I do admire dedications. And for anyone who knows Betty Collings, they will also know of her dedication to the field of contemporary art. That dedication is aggressive, intense, at times troublesome and often controversial. Thus, it is with some irony that we find, at first glance anyway, that the art she produces is so "easy". It is elegant and ethereal, literally deflatable, fragile and easily damaged. It could be accommodated almost anywhere (though this may not necessarily be true), as it snakes along floors and up over rafters. It is color-charged and at the same time, transparent; it is simultaneously sculpture and drawing. Though based on a rigorous geometry, it is as enjoyable as pure color forms suspended in mid-air, as if someone had suddenly raised bands of color aloft. This has always been one of the great ironies as far as I am concerned about so-called systemic art; it is among the most purely elegant visual art produced. I think of John Pearson's "golden section" paintings; Mel Bochner's recent drawings and wallworks; Athena Tacha's "step" sculptures. But perhaps this ultimately makes sense: all that rational thinking leads to incredibly clear and precise forms and structures which, in the context of the natural/urban environment, read not as systems (or not mediated by culture) but as pure presences. When looking at a Collings sculpture or a Pearson painting, I unavoidably think of Matisse. But what can late twentieth century systems possible have to do with work best known for its joie de vivre?

Collings' sculpture shown at Antioch continues concerns that have occupied the artist for several years. (Too) simply put: it is the visualization of thought processes through the investigation of a single form, the spiral, which results when two flat circular shapes are pieced together. This is realized in both the actual object which is produced and the colored pattern which is superimposed on that object, the two functioning as an inseparable whole, relating to each other and to their origin in a conjugated pattern of thought. The thought pattern can be grasped by reading each work in relation to the others and locating the points of contact between them. As is apparent from the preceding, it is difficult to verbalize the cognitive element of Collings" work; obviously, one must experience it in order to "read" it, but this too is part of its presence. So too is it a major part of Collings' dedication, of her will to actualize the very experience of knowledge: to understand how we come to know is at the base of Collings' investigations. They are that rare combination of perceptual and conceptual, of simultaneously feeling and thinking…

William Olander is Curator of Modern Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College.