Review / Lynda Grimm: Solomon Projects Sculpture Magazine October 1999, p. 71 by Cathy Byrd

Spare gestures of wood and pigment express an Asian sensibility in new sculptures by New York artist Lynda Grimm. In her exhibition at Solomon Projects, Grimm's aesthetic is rather understated; there are only six pieces in the show. But the four wall sculptures and two large suspended works offer a look into the intuitive nature of her creative process. As in her earlier sculptures, exploration and precision combine in a time-intensive approach to materials. Grimm choose wood-- walnut, poplar, cedar, maple, pine, mahogany, birch and cherry -- as the medium to examine figurative, architectural, and spatial relationships. She often cuts the wood from tress herself, chiseling and carving or soaking and bending it to her will. Later in the process, she stains and layers compositions in oil paint, waxes, and dry pigment. Monk is a simple three-part harmony. Hung from the high ceiling by a steel cable, its dark, dense figure occupies silent space in the gallery window front. Two roughly-formed balls balance above a smooth split-husk shape, forming an abstract head, torso and elliptical lower body. Its blue-black organic presence finds an echo across the room in Carillon. Named after a mechanized chime, Carillon's bells number seven. Shaped cedar beads, each six inches in diameter, hang together in a vertical row against the wall. Grimm layered their uneven roundness in thick waxy hues of eggplant, deep gray, blue, and black, then flecked them with light traces of orange. The most architectonic and least visually compelling works take Japanese titles. Shingetsu is a cool, compact construction of walnut and poplar. Implying a louvered window or door, the blue-slatted sculpture is topped with an egg-shaped fragment of Parian marble, making it shrine like. Both Shingetsu and Shoin speak of concealment and enclosure. At its best, Grimm's minimalist sculpture opens up and takes flight. Less measured, more intuitive, Riff and Raga represent a higher level of risktaking that leads to more ethereal works. Riff, referring to a short repeated phrase in jazz, is a rippling embrace of air. Slim curves of whitened maple circle out from a narrow rectangle of glowing cherry wood that lies close against the wall. The arcs widen as they spiral from right to left. The view from the smaller side describes an opening to infinity, while an approach from the larger end reveals the dimensions of a cornucopia. Riff's multivalent structure might also allude to bleached white ribs of an animal, or to the bones of a handmade boat. Molded in waves, the wood emits a wonderful energy while defining negative space. Pigment, wax, and gesso coat the eight strands of maple that arc and fall in sweeping strokes from a 100-inch length of mahogany in Raga. Suspended by a cable, the large-scale work is skeletal in the way it smoothly composes emptiness. The sculpture's outstretched gesture recalls branches of a willow tree or fragments of a boat cradle. As a visual interpretation of the musical raga, its random pattern describes Grimm's improvisational bent. There is a remarkably feminine sensibility in these abstractions, and the markmaking is clearly labor intensive. Grimm coaxes transcendent shapes from earthly matter, expressing a Zenlike and consonant notion about artmaking.

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