Sculptures (busts) 1993

on reverse:

 

Bohr at the height of his creativity breakthrough in his twenties. do you know Niels Bohr? 1885-1962 perhaps the foremost brain scientist, philosopher, family man, helper to many people to come into their own.

Book = Niels Bohr by Abraham Pais (splendid)

Book = Niels Bohr by Ruth Moore (splendid)

 -written so that you and I can understand-

Niels Bohr: Nuclear physicist / complementarity / Quantum phsyics.

in your tongue = [light years ahead or beyond relativity]

"Einstein study" 1993 

 

I just stood at the window taking in the sight

 28 June 1988

Dear Phillip, 

How are you? -very busy and enjoying life with your family?

Here the battle is a familiar one = (1) no rain for months, (2) the ground is dry to 3 feet deep, (3) all the main ingredients for a water tank are here yet the lifting and welding depends on a neighbor (we are all doing more than we have time for)

The joy of today are various thunderstorms! 3/4" of rain so far. for an hour I just stood at the window taking in the sight. 

-the first rain in 2 1/2 months.

-a month ago I began modeling in wax, figures, gestures, (man) human beings and snakes. How to co-exist? (not only with snakes)

-just now the water pump is running again. the power was out (thunderstorms). Now I can heat the wax - back to work; a work of love.

always thinking of you

Wolf

Do you know how the great greek thinker, Heraclitus (500 BC) died? at 60 he crawled into cow manure, a big steaming pile, therein he died at age 60.

We advanced somewhat in taking care of one another!

We seem to be paralyzed in grasping everything at once

4 July 1986

Woodlot

Dear Phillip:

Once more, I like to thank you for your sharing thoughts and feelings, letter May 8, the death of Krishnamurti in February, the bulletin, a copy of which you sent. This in turn I gave to various students, friends as Bill Fleming (studio courses, 1970-72).

You are saying that you are moved, not so much by the words but by the acknowledgement of the truth (fact) the reality Being (Heidegger) of life itself. hold it right there. try to find with me together an expression which describes your feelings, thoughts, inner constellation without the adding: it self. life! yes! that I share with you and Krishnamurti before his death. It is his saying that we shall live wholly as one. when we say: life itself we begin to separate life and us from it. but that is exactly the miracle - which in some sense is not a miracle but the truth or fact or being or whatever is is called that we are

everything under the sun

the sun included

i.e. nothing excluded

nothing: not a thing or thought or feeling or or or excluded [this is the most difficult to live]

we just seem to be paralyzed in grasping everything at once. all our education: pinpointing (as in one and one is two)

a friend and student, Hannah Hultgreen, was taught by her mother how to count. Mother: "Hannah, you do have two apples here, give one apple to Danny" (also 4 years old). Hannah did so. Now her mother asked: "Hannah, how many apples do you have now?" and Hannah promptly replied: "two." Mother exasperates not. "Let Danny eat the apple". Hannah agreed and all sort of waited while Danny ate the apple. Mother: "how many apples do you have now? Hannah!" Hannah: "Two: one in my hands and one in Danny's tummy." Mother: But Hannah, you gave this apple away as a gift to Danny." Hannah: "Yes, mom, so I gave it to him, I would give him all of my toys, I like him so much." pause "But the apple is mine, you said so yourself - it is my apple I gave it to him..."

Over 20 years later the lady, Hannah, still remembers her feelings = sure, it is my apple - and Danny ate the apple - but I (Hannah) wanted him to have al I could give him, so this apple [and in it my love for him] it is still my apple that made him relish the meal of an apple.  Hannah: "I lost nothing but I gained his expression of joy!" So much for our accounting system...

My best thoughts are with you Phillip, 

Love, Wolfram

Below is a scan of Wolf's plan for building a root cellar included with this letter:

A short list of books I am reading

Oct 22, 1985

I will share with you a short list of books I am reading:

Inside The Brain by William Calvin, PH. D./George Ojemann M.D. (Mentor book 80-81134 ISBN $4.50)

Understanding Physics: Light, Magnetism, Electricity by Issac Asimov (Mentor book 451-ME 2121 $2.75)

Understanding Physics: Motion, Sound, Heat by Issac Asimov (Mentor book 451-ME 2365 $4.50)

Particles (An Introduction to Particle Physics) by Michael Chester (Mentor book 451-ME 1899 $2.50)

Understanding Physics: The Electron, Proton and Neutron by Issac Asimov (Mentor book 451-ME 2402 $4.50)

The Brain by Richard M Restak M.D. (Warren Books 0-446 32282-2 $4.50)

We all do push to begin to work, this is normal, we have to overcome one momentum with another one

21 Oct 1985

saturated reds and yellow radiate in the evening sun's shine over and through the trees = autumn. and deep, blue sky.

Dear Phillip,

Your letter brought joy. Your thoughts are open and healthy. Often I admire you insight into human actions. Since action is so thoroughly interrelated to feeling and thought (therefore) it does not matter where we search (dig) or study; we can paint a house, a billboard, a painting- soon we come to similar thoughts, similar feelings, similar advance in wisdom.

what does matter, profoundly so, is out attitude, our longing - as our longing is synchronized or peripheral or opposed to what we are doing. 

when our doing is neutral, then our longing can continue to unfold.

when our doing is contrary to our longing, we are soon frustrated - the longing will obtain two stages - one of which we fall into, the other we lose it or we become fanatic in holding on and become neurotic about it.

Once more, the poorest person can be of highest dignity. what we can observe is = when we rush - we lose all or at least much of this state. [dignity = insight, clarity, responsiveness = feeling, recall and foresight] And from your letter I can see that you are aware of all of this. You are saying what I think, your way, I'm saying what you think my way. So we are at ease and at home. 

The disappointment at the art competition (art competition = is that not a contradiction in terms?) So many times I went through this - as you. In part, I was spoiled because between 1952 and 1972 I made just about all and any show I applied for - then came the great surprise - I wanted some of my portraits accepted! --No way--! And who can judge it better what matters, and what does not, but the maker?

Phillip - let us remind one another, at times, that our social structure is such that we need arts- period. Arts - nothing else. the face, the human face is a power house, an enigma so powerful that this society with this structure of Art-need cannot bear the sight of an individual, unless a membership is emblazed upon the face which makes it a machine part.

Again I say, do what you do to earn your place to sleep and food. Let us not try to confirm, convince, change or inform others. Not yet. two good reasons 1. the lot (or bunch or the many) are not ready to give up their dope or drug or addictive whatever. 2. the very few, who are acting in accord to natural dispositions are all in a most gentle way (inductively, indirectly) just doing this, which we are all advancing to - insight, little by little - very slowly - time means nothing to the natural event. actually time does mean something to the natural event as the 9 months of pregnancy versus 6 months or 12 months, still it is the time it takes which we are often not willing to wait for. we push, we rush - and we lose our senses.

Therefore I will retire as soon as possible. (this "as possible" is not more of the old rush, but patiently waiting for the moment when I can retire with a little bit more than just my shirt). I heard that by December a package is ready. Soon I have an interview with our president = it is he who can advance or stop such action.

For all the years I said = let us save during this time that we have no money: it will be the only time when saving is possible, let's save some for retirement. Now that I intend to retire I realize how the pennies then would mean dollars now. But now no saving will help much. I need a studio, foundry...

But 29 years ago the pennies would bring a difference. Still, I feel good about stepping aside and begin 100% effort on sculpting. Not for show, exhibit... but friends.

You are describing the death, illness of your father. Again I admire you acumen, your perceptive ability, your insight. Again - no confrontation will help, nothing will help but our own action (doing), affording, bringing out our own careful work, honestly felt, the kinks worked out. That is slow, but that is development. the only one worth to have - around the globe!

Spring 1985 - Yes - what a great thought you are evoking by asking if I will be at our woodlot. Yes, of course, this is quite vital to me, the sculptor. Welcome, help building a studio. thereafter, welcome and use the studio! [It is 12:35 the next day - another art class History Of Western Art Forms. teaching is, in general, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. drawing and psychological aspect at night] I am already out the door and beginning my lecture haha! It is demanding - taking it seriously. So is everything. Your job the same way. therefore remain at ease with yourself. paint - but do not push. you are by now clearly distinguishing between pushing yourself to work from pushing the work. We all do push to begin to work, this is normal, we have to overcome one momentum with another one.

-in admiration for your working as a painter. more tomorrow. 

Love, Wolfram

There are people who think without words

30 September 1988

Woodlot

-we sometimes think in words.

-at those times we depend on words to sense the sense they make.

-then there are people (thinkers, poets, artists, housewives, children) who think without words.

-paintings, forms, instrumental tone, the unthought tone of voice, brought about without the help of language are, more often than not, the clearer, deeper (more eloquent) expressions of our being as it is in a total world (which we have assimilated).

(to this world we intend to live intelligently Latin: inter = Engl: between; Latin: legere = to gather, to choose)

we are disturbed (quite early in a lifetime) by a society with a fixed set of codes (of conduct, response, work station, school expectation, religious expectations)

-in my letter to you of May 5, 1986 I related to you how Thomas Cappuccio and I were quite unable to bring about verbal responses to your paintings as represented by photos (which you had sent to us). And that by means of careful exchange of many words a few hints to the propensity of your work (paintings) emerged (as in: Blue Contained)

perhaps (I am not uncertain when I write perhaps) we have to paint (we, all of humankind) and paint and paint, little or much or none at all, for a while.

When you talk to your wife - free of "words", when you hug your child in that way - that is painting at it's foremost. That is living at it's highest. (If we could only trust that most personal experiencing)

The greatest thinkers, artists, poets are those who do sense, as you do and begin to realize the uniqueness as well as the universality of this taking place within and about them.

And in so living (i.e. painting) we "give" color, pattern, form, touch, exchange of  nods of the head, or looks of the eyes, or a gentle holding of the hand, an ever so faint greeting...

when we, as we do so (and we do so!), we begin to stand on the foundations of humanity - human being - being.

Once we are aware of it, we will feel an inexorable, unstoppable vigor, a strength to convey this awareness. To help others to experience life, to live life out of this magnificence, this ease, as Krishnamurti writes: "the beauty of all of it."

The counterpoint to this deep insight experience is the "follower", the one who wanted to be told what to think, how to think, where to think.

personal experience, self reliance - (an ordinary school experienced individual is void of such capacity... has been decapitated). this is our way of domesticating animals like cows and horses and rabbits. the world population becomes rapidly such, or is such since thousands of years? (you can read this sentence also without the question marks)

The dialogue, the exchange and the questions we have from deep within us - they are timeless, and are our treasures. In exchanging: we strengthen, widen, live.

for over three months most of my activity was to bring water from the pond (our own) to the trees, which stood in soil that was powder dry to a depth of four feet. thousands of tree (seedlings and up to 3 feet) dimply died. I could not bring water to 17000 trees, yet I drove with the tractor and 500 gallons water wagon day in day out, walking in the hillsides with 5 gallon pails and 1 1/2 thick hoses. Some - those who received their water rations regularly, even thrived, since the sunshine was during those days: continuous. Last week we had 4, later 2 inches of rain. now this week i became a bit more human in that I have "time". time to do else but run for water, time to visit, time to read, time to feel, time to think and time to write, time to say hello!

Today, a long-time acquaintance accorded a bust commission. As soon as my left ring finger can flex again (got squashed against a log splitter) I will begin modeling. A fine man - with a concern for the well-being of all with whom he comes in contact.

We had our first frost. Since I have a woodstove, wood is needed. The forest is full of "fire wood". Now: getting it.

The shelves (storage) are full of plaster molds to be transferred into plaster casts (well over 30)

two bronze casts completed, 6 small modelings in wax, ready for casting - when?

slowly, ever so slowly a begin.

And yet, I feel fulfilled. 

with love, 

Your Wolf

Independent thought, independent from indoctrination and any belief

13 July 1988

Studio

Dear Phillip,

Thank you for your two letters, thoughts, greetings and questions. Immediately I am flooded with possibilities to illuminate the "area" in which you are standing as an artist. However, to do justice to the intense seriousness and commitment of yours, it will be more appropriate  to be specific (references to sources - as you are specific when mentioning Krishnamurti) and precise, short enough to be understood. Therefore I am pleading for a day or two to write and rewrite and find what is familiar to me, but better, more concisely said by others - to photocopy these in some instances, translate some thoughts written in another language.

You are a magnificent companion with your sharing your own personal inquiries into the meaning (goings-on) in life. Soon I will reply. 

Love, Wolf

P.S. Independent thought, independent from indoctrination and any belief = trust your senses, all of your senses. Your body (brain included) has survived the general pool for hundreds of millions of years. YET, each individual cell, from the beginning on, has to afford itself to the ultimate of it's best "know-how" to survive. 

We have come up from physical survival into a realm of psychological survival! You are doing well in keeping up your efforts to gain a clearer view of 1. what is hindering the psychological success? 2. what promotes psychological success? (psychological event is a specific physical event)

You are living a life of awareness. Nothing higher can be achieved.

8 March 1988

Monday

Mild

Dear Phillip, 

Your letter brought much joy! Soon I will write you a reply.

Marcus (#1) and Lisa and Cliff (#2 son) and Belva and (their) daughters and I visited the Aerospace Museum on Constitutional Avenue Wash D.C. We were astonished in wonderment and surprise how wide the "Voyager" airplane was, how thin the material, how small the cabin for two people to lay in flat - like a pencil. 9 days 3 minutes and 44 seconds is a long time under those conditions. 

My reading (midnights) = Jean Piaget (child psychologist) The development of thought (Equilibration of Cognitive Structures) makes fascinating brain food. Often enough he comes close to Heidegger's description of Being. (an ?active? = letting be)

His (Piaget) central idea is = knowledge proceeds neither from experience with external objects nor from intuitive or logical internal processes, but knowledge develops from a series of cognitive structures, built one above the other, requiring continuous adjustments and leading to further constructions.

like your daughter's "latching onto something only to let go a week later"... (Arnold Rosin)

Piaget: "To understand is to invent."

Also I am learning the Hebrew alphabet.

My Greek studies continue.

Mike Piechocinski (1974-76) has an exhibition here at Washington DC on April 2 - 27. I intend to be at the opening.

--No comparison!--

Your work is: an event, is inventive, arises, rises from your live substance!

Piaget = "Most important not to get stuck with one solution." Not only are there many solutions to a problem or question, but also it is likely that we find better, easier (conservation of energy), more appropriate solutions with other directions.

As I can see you are living a life of awareness. Nothing higher can be achieved. I hope to see you this year. Love, Wolf

Every single thing is connected with all there is in a most magnificent, enticing way

 22 February 1993

Dear Phillip:

What a joy to receive your letter. This envelope of yours is surely packed with a lot of news. Your family is now situated in a kind of paradise! The land, the hills and vegetation must be beautiful. Your wife is teaching. And you cannot find work. For a while, this may be a blessing in disguise? Working, thinking as an artist, that means to sense life as it is. Few artists are truly artists - because they cannot, will not sense life, clouds, mountains, plants, children, people as they are. Why not? Why can these many people not sense life as it is? --preconceived ideas? You bet! In a rush? You bet! once in a rut there is hardly any chance that these people ever come to their senses; ever. 

Proof? Well we may look at what Nixon called the silent majority. Silent? Perhaps the more appropriate term would be = silenced !!! Well, you are still thinking and aware. NOT lost yet. Keep up, keep your head above the water, look at life between the rocks, between the leaves of your environment. And I gather you are taking your children with you when walking into this island paradise. Ask them what they see. A Gecko? A lizard? A bird? -what kind? what color? what pattern? what does it live on? The same when we see people = what do they think? Why do they think money-? and not: how can I help you? or how would you like it if I make you so free that can tell me what you think of me! And what we do together, planting a garden, a forest.

Your work, as represented in the photos, show me a person whom we in older time (60 years ago) would have called a master. A master knows/how to/make things work in a given setting. That includes the Zen masters. ONCE a very rich lady in Canada addressed me with that word. I sort of shivered. I thought it inappropriate for me, since I never thought of, to have mastered anything -forever growing into what there is- to let "things" "speak" for themselves. Never a system or structure or method. That is all delightful = the older I says to the younger = teach me.

Perhaps in your remoteness, removed from the self accelerating stimulus of a hectic civilization you may discover what Cezanne (the only painter who did?) discover when he painted simple people, simple landscapes. (If I dare make a verbal statement: and as a fool as I am, I love to dare) Cezanne in his way, and Van Gogh in his, and Gaugin never, neither Renoir or Matisse or... 

Cezanne in his way discovered what every mother knows by heart (until civilization tears it out through education and indoctrination?) that things out there = every single thing is connected with all there is in a most magnificent, enticing way. This I can see too in your work. (only?!!) Cezanne kept the image, the pattern, the direct connection to the very "thing" which was his cause for looking + thinking + feeling + action. He celebrated life, he was in an overwhelming way (illegible) of the interwovenness  of all there is = stone, air, plants, animals, and stars (i.e. our sun, light, room to be in.)

You know all this too well. So? Do not lose it, strengthen your self in it. How? By talking with the children of the land with the land with the water with the people 

                                                                                                  no comma

Now I will go back to my lump of clay. Then to town to mail this letter. Then up into the hills, two feet of snow. I do feed the birds, rabbits, squirrels and deer, one raccoon and one very old (big) opossum. 

Designing a foldable (collapsible) modeling stand to take with me on the airplane - to Europe. The first try weighs 40 lbs, the second 22 lbs, now the third try...? I'll let you know how I make out.

In the meantime, keep your wonderful spirit refreshed with mountain air. Perhaps when convenient I may be able to save enough and visit you over a weekend? Greetings to your dear wife and the children. Soon I will write you again Phillip and send a few photos. Thank you for your photos. 

Love, Wolf

The similarity was there in the first twenty minutes

 St. Peter near Freiburg

(near Swiss and French border)

(6-93)

Dear Phillip,

Your letter and critiques of your publications are still fresh in my memory. And I admire your drive and intent to bring about an improved sense of interrelatedness among the many various outloooks among us human(s).

Here in Germany, as I may have already indicated to you, I am working on a bust in clay of Dr. Maria Schätzle (Dr. M.A.C. Otto) author of many books; especially = The Begin (archai). The similarity was there in the first twenty minutes. However, that which inspired me in the book (and other books of this author) required considerable changes during the ensuing days - and there are still more changes to be initiated.

Yesterday evening, the publisher Dr. R. Jona of Freiburg arrived with his wife for a little celebration and we all had a lively exchange of thoughts, as they had occurred during our life.

Saturday I will visit my step mother (near Heidelberg).

Often I wonder how you and your dear wife and child make ends meet when there is no work? Why is there no work when the banks and the stock of the large companies are at an all time high?

Take care; best greeting, my thoughts are with you.

Your Wolfram

In Atlanta I was immersed in an entirely new world

Virginia 1993

7, August

Dear Phillip,

Your letter followed me from Wheeler to Atlanta, Georgia to Manassas, Virginia - long enough that I want to write you now some greetings. Not much time is left in my work for private time. Especially in Atlanta I was immersed in an entirely new world - reading the gestural and physiognomic pattern-forms of primates, especially Bonobos, a "related form" of small chimpanzees (they are not chimpanzees look superficially similar). The request is = can a bronze sculpture be made, which conveys by gesture of body and face an intention of the Bonobo to help a child which is unable to speak (totally mute) to express itself via a "keyboard". (keyboard = a plate with symbols, when touched will give (illegible) the sound of the meaning of the symbol). I entered this task with great commitment, as it should help the children to receive such keyboards and to further the research in general on an improved approach to teaching (NOT training)

With Cliff and Belva I had the chance to discuss the project of research and the form given in clay for bronze, in detail. 

Soon more of it's development.

How are you? Did you obtain some work? When you left California did you know the conditions at Guayama? You were properly informed or not?

Best wishes, your Wolfram

Exhibition Press Release: University of Minnesota Duluth, 1963

October 31, 1963

A UMD art faculty exhibition of paintings and sculpture opens with an 8-10 p.m. reception November 5 in Tweed Gallery. It will remain up through December 1.

The contributors will be: J. Dorrance Kiser, Rudolph I. Schauer, assistant professors; Orazio Fumagalli, associate professor; and Forrest R. Bailey and Wolfram F. Niessen, instructors.

Fumagalli and Niessen will show sculpture. A first-year member of the faculty, Niessen's work deals chiefly with life experiences. Many of the pieces were done while he was at Michigan State University.

 

Stout State University Sports and Fitness Center, 1966

MENOMONIE (August 19, 2020) - The sculpture on the east wall of the Sports and Fitness Center has caused students over the past 50-plus years to pause and take a look at it. After studying it, the sculpture appears to be a football player getting ready to catch a ball.

But, like any art form, the sculpture can be more than that, according to the artist who created the sculpture - Wolfram Niessen. 

Niessen, a Stout State University art instructor at the time, designed the all-aluminum sculpture to be attached to the building in 1966, two years after the 1964 completion of what was then called the Health and Physical Education Center.

The following is a Sept. 9, 1966, article from the The Stoutonia, the school newspaper, outlining Niessen's work on the project and what his vision of the project was.

ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENT FOR STOUT FIELDHOUSE (Sept. 9, 1966, The Stoutonia)

In designing an image of athletic achievement, a Stout State University faculty sculptor instructor captured the integral spirit of athletics striving throughout the entire university in his latest work for the University's Health and Physical Education Center. 

 

Wolfram Niessen, assistant professor of art and sculpture, has designed and constructed a 36-foot by 21-foot piece of sculpture in recognition of Stout's athletic achievement this past year. 

 At the suggestion of president William J. Micheels, Niessen designed a figure that was to represent the Stout athletic teams – the Blue Devils; however, the artist feels that his aluminum sculpture can be interpreted in many ways. 

 

"The essence of the idea is to convey the spirit of the university, whether an individual or a team," Niessen told the student newspaper The Stoutonia. "The design represents a figure. He could be a football player, a man in space or a man reaching and receiving at the university. It could also be a Blue Devil, due to the two horn-like projections on the "head," but they all culminate in the explicit urge of reaching and receiving." 

 

Wolfram Niessen assembles the sculpture that will be affixed to the health and physical education building

Wolfram Niessen works on the sculpture that would hang on the east side of the Sports and Fitness Center.  

The artist chose to carry out his two-dimensional design with sheet aluminum to complement the new health and physical education center on which the complete work is mounted. 

 

"The brick wall of the physical education center is such a covering over a steel skeleton that the wall itself has not much body compared to the entire building structure. Since the weight is relatively light," said Niessen, "the open spaced aluminum sheet sculpture work is a most fitting enhancement as the brick shines through the open design." 

 

The four-piece sculpture, completely hand-worked by Niessen, is mounted six inches from the east wall of the physical education building, facing the athletic field. 

The German-born Niessen has also taught drawing and sculpture at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He has exhibited three or more works at Kunsthalle, and Kustveriese, Schloss, Manheim, Germany; Bilkende Hande, Stuttgardt, Germany; Franfurt, Germany; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada. Niessen taught three years at Stout, from 1965-68.