Sculpture examines themes of natural forces

“Spiral: Installation by Gillian Jagger” is on view through Aug. 25 at the Elvehjem Museum of Art.

Since the 1950s, sculptor Jagger has recreated nature’s themes of death and time, and its pattern, texture, and visual rhythms.

“My work has steadily attempted to evolve in this system of natural forces, a system that included death as a part of its cycle of life,” Jagger says.

She continues to work at with great energy and to create strong, challenging work. For “Spiral,” Jagger appropriated standing dead wood from land near her studio in rural New York to show nature’s cycle of birth, death, decay, and renewal.

Jagger added rocks that she cast from mixing cement and water flowing downhill, then blowing in a foam core. She also incorporated manufactured metal elements: a grid, chains, hooks, pulleys. Like her other major sculptures over the years, “Spiral” is complex and moving.

Born in London in 1930, Jagger received her B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1953 and her M.A. from New York University in 1960. She is currently a professor in the Graduate Art School of the Pratt Institute in New York.

On July 10, a large retrospective of Jagger’s work, “The Sculpture of Gillian Jagger,” will open in Brittingham Galleries VI and VII and remain on view through Aug. 25 along with the installation. The Elvehjem Museum of Art is open Tuesdays-Fridays 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission is free.