Listening to Art

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Listening to Art, by William Denton.

Volume twelve, number one: Sticky Wicket by Mark di Suvero.

Hello, and welcome to Listening to Art. I’m William Denton.

I’m delighted that Listening to Art has reached volume twelve. Twice a month for five-and-a-half years I have published a field recording of visual art. Because I have no tracking or logging on the web site, I have no idea how many people listen. If you’re hearing this, or reading it, do let me know.

In volume twelve I will pick some of my favourites of the past 132 issues. They could be works I especially love, or by artists I particularly admire, or recordings that have some special meaning to me—in most cases, all three.

This recording of Mark di Suvero’s sculpture Sticky Wicket was first heard in volume seven number five, published 15 July 2020 (in which I gave an incorrect recording date). In mid-June 2020 the Covid-19 lockdown in Toronto had been going for three months. The city was extraordinarily quiet. The campus of York University, where I work, was closed. All classes were online and no employees went into buildings except for necessary maintenance and specially permitted lab work. One warm Sunday I went up to have a look. It was a strange and unsettling experience: on a normal day when classes are running there are hundreds and hundreds of other people walking around, and thousands on the campus, but that day I was almost entirely alone. I saw another person perhaps once every ten minutes, and we made sure to stay far away from each other. I sat beside and walked around Sticky Wicket for some time, then began to climb on it and hit it with my hands: yet another way to listen to art.

This is a sculpture, made of cables and welded and painted steel, fitting in a volume 427 cm wide, 670 cm high and 1371 cm deep.

Now let’s listen to Sticky Wicket by Mark di Suvero, recorded at York University, in Toronto, on 21 June 2020.

That was Sticky Wicket by Mark di Suvero. I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I did.

For more information and links to things I’ve mentioned, please visit listeningtoart.org.

Listening to Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Bibliography

All web sites accessed as of date of publication.