TITLE: Temple VI
ARTIST: Austin Collins
DATE: 1996
MATERIALS: Steel
DIMENSIONS: 10′ 4″ x 3′ 8″ x 2′ 6″
TYPE: sculpture
Close your eyes and imagine a temple. Got it? Now open your eyes and have a look at Austin Collins’ Temple VI (1996).
Is it any different than what you saw in your mind’s eye? How?
Do you think this sculpture is a temple? Why or why not?
Collins, a Holy Cross priest and a professor of sculpture at the University of Notre Dame, described this series as follows: “In my recent work, The Temple Series, I hope to invoke in the viewer a sense of sacred space, of retreating, of reflection. By constructing a space with abstract geometric steel forms, referencing architecture, games, and toys, Temple VII generates a bodily response from both structure and composition.”
How do you feel in the space that this temple provides?
To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_VI,
which includes information created by Herron School of Art and Design and IUPUI
Museum Studies faculty and students in 2009 as part of “A
Survey of IUPUI Public Art.”