In the early 80s, my motivic concerns became geometric. Like some teetering-on-middle-age artists, I was trying to figure out how I could put myself in the world, now that I had a child and was rolling through life, raising my boy, in a big house in the country.

Life was, to put it simply, not easy. Stumbling blocks constantly interrupted my true path. It would take years before I knew how I wanted to live and I was very happy with that feeling until my husband decided he “wanted a change” and he left in 2000.

The Ten Large Constructions answered the call of my obsession for building and designing things. Ultimately the most fulfilling reason was figuring out the sequencing behind doing that. The initial steps in the process for building each one was laid out in the study drawings. I gave myself directions as I built and amended them as I carried on. I also felt no bounds in writing descriptions of how I felt or how I thought about the art in art historical terms. It is unfortunate that the slide documentation of the drawings is poor and the resolution of the words is lacking.

The drawings for the constructions are actually more interesting than the constructions themselves (each drawing, if it exists, follows the photo of the respective construction). The photographs of the constructions as manufactured are laid out in chronological order, as best as I can remember.

The conceptual basis for the works was to reconcile many life components, both metaphorical and physical. I was trying desperately to balance my relationships with the world, my work, and within my family. Creating six foot tall physical entities, in a way, allowed me to move the pieces around as if on a life size game board of sorts to see what was the best arrangement.

I analogized my physical body with the distinct parts that constituted the constructions; that analogy was specified in the drawing at the entrance of the installation of the exhibit which occurred in the spring of 1989. I not only made drawings on paper to correspond to the specific parts I was going to use in the constructions but I also made “mock-ups” of the parts.

The first two constructions, shown at the beginning of this story, were made of paper glued to fomecor. They were fragile, floating in their largeness, yet easy to assemble. They came together gently and kindly.

But later, the parts within the works were fighting with each other in harsh, brash colors within the consistent group of shapes. I was on my way to pounding out the best possible amalgamated surface world for any of the individual parts within each piece. The parts of the larger whole were painted wood, and Lexan. I cut the shapes with a jigsaw and circular saw. I bent the Lexan with a heat-gun. The wood frames on which the parts were mounted were too good and costly for the art work; the frames were built out of dovetailed mahogany strips by a furniture builder.

My commitment to these every-week-day tasks for months was palpable. In fact, looking back on the process, I only remember how I felt in the long arc of the execution of the entire series.

The relationships I am talking about in recounting this tale center in my connections with my husband and child and other men. The life of an artist was then, for me, how to negotiate my best way forward as a female. In order to survive, I had to transcend the maleness of the local art world and the bigger art world in New York City. I had ties in both…And I chose to focus on the local. Which in the long run has not meant nothing. But I was making money in the wrong way. My reputation was not being boosted as I was promised. The lifestyle caused more pain than joy. And the whole ball game I was associated with eventually was proclaimed illegal.

By the time I understood how to put these works of art together, I was unstoppable. The sawdust in the work shop next to my studio in my house was a fire hazard and I had to constantly clean up after myself. There was always a pause between the dust-making and the painting and gluing and clamping. The hardware store in the next town loved to have me visit. I frequented it as if it were a grocery store.

Within the series, I can recognize the peaks of emotional energy where I calmed down for a bit but then, in the lull, was crushed, and the art surged up like a tsunami finally to come to rest in the way it was intended and already was meant to be.

The Better Half is the last of the large constructions. The title of this piece is both obvious and not. I did mean to refer to myself as the ‘better half’ to my husband because I had come to the conclusion that it was too difficult to fight outside of my family for the the right to be a female artist. I had to rest with knowing that my husband and child accepted it and I could, too. In the drawing for The Better Half, shown above, are my handwritten words:

I have come a long way to find the limit of expression which is the most satisfying. And that is never beyond human scale.

I chose to destroy nearly all the constructions before I moved from my large farmhouse in the country to a small condominium in a small city. The existence of a few years worth of work in the 80s is only proven in the photographs of it.

copyright 1984-2025 Lyn Horton