Sound in Sculpture
Landmarks, Texas Performing Arts, and The Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music present
Sound in Sculpture
Tue, Apr 22, 2025
6:00 PM
Sound in Sculpture returns for a tenth year to showcase original music composed and performed by UT students, inspired by works in the Landmarks public art collection. This year, Tony Smith’s Amaryllis serves as the source of inspiration for the composers.
Cover photo by Ben Aqua
Tony Smith
American, 1912–1980
AMARYLLIS, 1965
Painted Steel
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1986. Photo by Ben Aqua
A polymath with interests as diverse as mathematical biology and modernist architecture, Tony Smith worked as a mechanical draftsman for his family’s municipal waterworks company while studying at the Art Students League in New York City. He trained as an architect in the 1930s and worked for Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), whose use of mass-produced, modular homes inspired Smith to open his own architecture firm a few years later.
After moving to New York City, Smith became close friends with Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) and the Abstract Expressionist painters, subsequently designing a home for painter Theodoros Stamos (1922–1997) and exhibition spaces for a number of New York art galleries. During a two-year sojourn to Europe in the mid-1950s, Smith
embarked on an ambitious series of abstract paintings, bringing his skills as a draftsman to the linear geometry of his compositions.
Ten years later, at age fifty, Smith began working in the medium for which he is best known: large-scale steel sculpture. The monumental scale and immersive quality of Smith’s sculpture was undoubtedly influenced by his architectural background. Indeed, Amaryllis began as an attempt to realize his vision of a “cave of light”—an open
Tony Smith, Amaryllis
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sculptural volume that would immerse and envelop the viewer. He worked with large sheets of plywood, combining multifaceted geometric elements like the cube and rhomboid arranged in linear configurations, which were later executed in steel by industrial fabricators. As curator Robert Storr observed, the sculpture “is based on compound articulations of two triangulated modules, the tetrahedron and the octahedron.”
BLOOM
By Tim Rogers
Clinton Washington, Percussion
Erica Lin, Percussion
Ashley Hsu, Percussion
Kevin Lou, Percussion
About Tim Rogers
Tim Rogers is a composer, pianist, percussionist, and higher education administrator based in Austin, Texas. He has master’s degrees in Education Policy Studies (MA-2012) from the University of Maryland – College Park, and Music Composition (MM-2008) from The University of Texas at Austin. He also holds bachelor’s degrees in Music Composition and Music Theory from the University of Missouri –Columbia (BM-2006). Rogers has composed for solo piano, small chamber ensembles, orchestra, chorus, and symphonic wind ensemble. He has premiered pieces by the United States Air Force Band of Mid-America, the Columbia (Missouri) Civic Orchestra, the O’Fallon (Illinois) Township High School Chamber Choir, the University of Texas New Music Ensemble, and the trombone and percussion ensembles at the University of Missouri – Columbia.
Currently, Rogers is the Director of Education and Engagement for Texas Performing Arts at The University
Though the reductive form and monochrome black surface of Amaryllis call to mind the aesthetic of Minimalist art, Smith’s use of complex geometry contrasts with the simple mathematical progressions and elementary forms of Minimalist artists Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris. The twisting angles of Amaryllis create a complicated, multivalent mass that changes dramatically as one moves around the work—shifting from flattened to dimensional, or from balanced to asymmetrical.
of Texas. In this role, he oversees K-16 and community connections to the arts, particularly those surrounding TPA’s programming. Rogers lives in Central Texas with his wife and their cats, where he enjoys reading, gardening, playing video games, obsessing over The Muppets, and planning trips to Disney World.
From Tim Rogers
Writing a piece of music related to Amaryllis has been stuck in the back of my mind for years. Because of its location, this is the one work of art I walk by almost every day. Instead of fading into the landscape, it has become my favorite piece in Landmarks’ collection. I have been drawn to minimalism, both in music and visual art, for years, and my piece Bloom tries to connect those two worlds, at least in part. My interpretation of Tony Smith’s work draws on both the use and repetition of simple shapes, noting how our perceptions can shift as we move around the sculpture. Once I began writing, it became evident that my style has been influenced by playing piano music by Philip Glass. Since my personal affinity for pieces in the Landmarks collection has been heavily influenced by Sound in Sculpture over the years, I thought this would be a fitting tribute.
Tony Smith, Amaryllis
Jim Dine
American, Born 1935
HISTORY OF BLACK BRONZE I, 1983
Bronze
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Industrial Petro-Chemicals, Inc., 1987.
Photo by Mark Menjivar
Born and raised in Ohio, Jim Dine moved to New York in 1958 and established himself in the art world with theatrical Happenings performed in chaotic, artist-built environments. In the early 1960s, he joined a growing number of young artists working with commercial imagery and everyday objects. In contrast to the prevailing trend toward abstraction, Dine and other Pop artists sought to bridge the gap between fine art and life. Pop artists chose ordinary objects as their subjects, presenting them with detachment and irony. For example, Dine painted images of bathrobes, neckties, hearts, and tools, sometimes incorporating actual objects into his compositions — a practice that marked the beginning of his interest in sculpture.
By the late 1960s, Dine turned his attention from ordinary objects to those with personal significance. His composition of objects on a table may pay homage to Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966), whose Surrealist Table (1933) features objects referencing the artist’s other sculptures. In History of Black Bronze I, Dine updated this concept to the 1980s taste for arthistorical appropriation. He produced truncated versions of famous monuments from antiquity, like the
Jim Dine, History of Black Bronze
Greek sculpture Venus de Milo and the face of the Great Sphinx of Giza. These are placed alongside casts of household tools that became symbolic subjects for the artist, an association that stems from Dine’s time working in his family’s hardware store.
The near uniform size and surface quality of the objects on the table
MWANA WESHUMBA
By Joel Laviolette
Mike Hardin, Hosho
Karen Green, Mbira
Natalie Rochen, Harp
Hannah Beeler, Harp
Joel Laviolette, Mbira
About Joel Laviolette
Joel Laviolette (b. 1975) is a composer, educator, instrument builder, and performer based in Austin, Texas. His compositions focus on the underlying philosophy that his 30+ years of dedication to Zimbabwean trance music has cultivated. Joel is the director of the Rattletree School of Marimba and leads the groups Rattletree, Kupira, and Mafaro Marimba. His groups have performed and taught at countless festivals, clubs, and universities around the world. As an internationally recognized expert on Zimbabwean mbira music, Joel has been featured on NPR and he has been published in Percussive Notes, Mbira Music: Structures and Processes, and other journals. Joel has lived many years in Zimbabwe and studied with his primary teacher Matemai for 28 years until his death in 2021.
Joel has a B.A. in Composition from UT Austin and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in composition at The University of Texas at Austin.
elevate the mundane hammer to the level of appreciation warranted by the classical Venus de Milo. Dine described his approach in works like History of Black Bronze I as “metaphorical realism,” where meaning is not rooted in words but in objects. Seen through this lens, the array of items can be understood as a portrait of the artist, his influences, and his techniques.
From Joel Laviolette
Mwana WeShumba is an mbira piece that came to me from the spirit of my brother, Liko, one late night while I was in Changara, Mozambique. It means “Human child of the lion” and it is a song that is played in Liko’s memory. The intention of the piece being played on harp is to give players the experience of playing cyclical music with multiple melodies that have individual starting points, contrasting time signatures, and offset barlines as is experienced in mbira music.
This music is based on traditional Zimbabwean mbira music. Metal tines from the mbira instrument have been found in the Great Zimbabwe ruins dating back at least 1,000 years. This sculpture shows the forging of tools and other devices through history, connecting well with the origins of the mbira.
David Hare
American, 1917–1992
SWAN’S DREAM OF LEDA, 1962
Bronze with stone base
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the artist, 1963.
Photo by Ben Aqua
After earning degrees in chemistry and biology, David Hare began experimenting with photography, using his education to explore techniques that manipulate and distort images. As a young artist, Hare entered the circle of European émigré artists who arrived in the United States throughout the 1930s, a period of significant cultural exchange. The European Surrealist artists who settled in New York City and the younger American abstractionists shared an interest in the theories of Sigmund Freud, a pioneer in the field of psychoanalysis. Freud’s writing on topics such as trauma, sexuality, and dream states helped pave the way for artists to understand the unconscious mind, both as a subject and as a method for artmaking.
As the Surrealist movement faded in the 1950s, Hare adapted his style to a
more abstract mode, gravitating toward fragile, slender forms with spindly accents that were supported structurally in bronze. Through abstraction, he extended the Surrealist principle of implying a subject, inviting viewers to draw meaning from the work through their own free associations.
The Swan’s Dream of Leda refers to the classical Greek myth in which Zeus desired a beautiful human woman named Leda. In order to seduce her, he tricked her by appearing in the
David Hare, Swan’s Dream of Leda
of Leda
guise of a swan. To an artist steeped in Surrealism and Freudian analysis, the subject offered rich possibilities for sexual innuendo. Yet rather than the
LEDA’S LOVE By Bike Öner
Fixed Media
About Bike Öner
Born in Istanbul, Turkey and based in Austin, Texas, Bike is a composer and cellist. Her work encompasses acoustic, electronic, and electroacoustic compositions; score-based and improvised performances; and artistic research. Bike delves into themes of proximity, memory, and (re/de)-construction, while her body of work also explores the concept of co-presence and mixed realities in states of transition and transformation.
Bike holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cello performance. In 2022, she earned her Master of Music Composition degree from MIAMCenter for Advanced Studies in Music. Her works have been showcased on various stages internationally. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music.
From Bike Öner
The mythological theme of divine or mystical conception, in which a god takes an animal or supernatural form to impregnate a mortal woman, appears across various cultures. In Sumerian myths, Enki is known for transforming into different forms, including animals, to pursue goddesses and mortal women. Loki, the trickster god from Norse mythology, transforms into a mare to seduce the giant stallion Svaðilfari, later giving birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse. Similarly, in some versions of Celtic mythology, Macha, a goddess associated with horses,
literal motifs frequently portrayed by many male Surrealists, Hare’s forms, such as the flapping of the swan’s wings, are more metaphorically suggestive.
conceives magical offspring linked to divine animals. In certain Native American myths, the Thunderbird, a powerful spirit, takes on human or animal form to seduce women, resulting in the birth of great heroes or demigods.
The myth of Leda and Zeus, in which Zeus transforms into a swan to seduce Leda, has two dominant versions. In one interpretation, Zeus’ actions are viewed as an act of divine coercion, rather than love, emphasizing power imbalance and deception. However, another version presents a more consensual encounter, where Leda is enchanted by the swan and falls in love with it. The question is not which interpretation I believe, but rather what the myth and the sculpture inspired me to explore—the bond established. Its irreversibility transforms it into a reality. In my work Leda’s Love, I delve into themes of deception and reality through sound.
Eduardo Paolozzi
British, 1924–2005
FIGURE, circa 1957
Bronze
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Margaret H. Cook, 1996.
Photos by Ben Aqua and Mark Menjivar
Like Bernard Meadows (1915–2005), Eduardo Paolozzi was deeply affected by the politics and circumstances of World War II. Before the war, he studied at London’s Slade School of Art, where he absorbed the ideas of Surrealist artists and writers. Advances in technology and the mechanization of cultural production preoccupied Paolozzi. He began to express these issues through collage, a technique favored by Dada and Surrealist artists for its ability to provoke both intellectual and psychological responses. Shortly after the war, Paolozzi made a series of collages combining pictures of classical sculptures with images of modern machines. The works are an expression of the turmoil caused by the old European order colliding with the new technological world.
One of Paolozzi’s significant innovations was translating the aesthetic of collage into sculpture. In Figure and related works from the 1950s, he gathered discarded machine parts and technological components, pressing them into slabs of wax. After casting these in bronze, he stacked the pieces atop one another and welded them together into semiabstract, robot-like figures. With their uncanny, futuristic appearances, Paolozzi’s figures seem at once recognizable and unfamiliar.
Eduardo Paolozzi, Figure
Paolozzi’s sculptures relate to the emergence of cybernetics in the arts, literature, philosophy, and science. The idea of automata (humanlike machines) had appeared in science fiction in tandem with the increasing use of machines during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. In stories, robots were usually viewed as ominous: anthropomorphic yet
THE ABANDONED COLOSSUS
By Noah Hudson-Camack
Zachary Gray, flute
Samuel Shin, bass clarinet/clarinet
Yusong Zhao, violin
Tony Sanfilippo, double bass
Clinton Washington, percussion
About Noah Hudson-Camack
Believing firmly in diversity as strength within art, composer Noah HudsonCamack seeks to blend elements from disparate eras of Western art music, jazz, and popular music in his work. He sews together different genres while developing strong motivic content, rich harmonies, and complex rhythms. Hudson-Camack explores these connections in his solo, chamber, jazz, and wind symphony works.
inhuman, intelligent yet soulless—an uncontrollable threat to human supremacy. After World War II, scientists began publishing accounts of efforts to merge electronics with human capabilities, making the robots of science fiction seem feasible. Merging humanoid appendages and machined parts, Paolozzi’s bionic Figure appears like a prototype for a future cyborg.
From Noah Hudson-Camack Paolozzi’s Figure conjured in my mind an automaton either incomplete or in ruin: a patchwork creation abandoned by its creators. The poor, hobbled Figure becomes a tragic character then, despite its monstrous and unnerving appearance. The Abandoned Colossus audiates an observer’s experience of the featured sculpture, augmented in size to match the mighty Talos of Greek myth, lumbering alone towards the observer. The eponymous colossus elicits first a cautious curiosity, then a panic as it grows closer, but ultimately the tragedy of its current existence only elicits sympathy. There is no resolution for the forgotten automaton, for it continues trundling along its aimless path out of sight of the viewer. In the end, only the creaking footsteps of the colossus that once heralded its arrival can be heard.
