Ursula von Rydingsvard makes huge sculptures out of red cedar. The 70-year-old is one of the few women working in wood on such a scale.
Her pieces are in the permanent collections of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art. And now they're also part of a new show at Manhattan's Museum of Arts and Design. It's called "Against the Grain" — a phrase that could just as well describe the sculptor's life and career.
Von Rydingsvard says she wants to break people's sentimental attachment to wood, "which is, you know, in the land of the elves or in a storybook for children," she says. "I don't want the cuteness associated with the wood, or even the nostalgia."
Von Rydingsvard seems to have little reverence for the medium, but nostalgia is another matter. She was born 70 years ago in Germany, and recounts in vivid detail the stories of her Polish mother and Ukranian father. He had been been conscripted to work on a German farm during World War II, and after a couple of years he sent for his wife.
"Trains were burning, and she had three little children, the youngest of which was 2 and a half, 3," she says. "Two of them almost died on the way."
When the war was over, her father didn't want his children to grow up semi-literate, on a farm, so the whole family embarked on an arduous journey that lasted several years.
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