Although Ursula von Rydingsvard’s sculptures are large, they retain an inviting sense of human scale. To construct both For Paul and Luba, the artist turned to four-by-four lengths of cedar wood, a material, she has said, “I’m able to speak through.” The artist stacks, glues, and cuts into these beams freehand with a circular saw, an intuitive process that she has likened to the freedom and creativity that many artists associate with drawing. 

Luba—a term meaning “female you are close to” in Polish and Russian—is the first large-scale work that Von Rydingsvard created in solid cedar. (For Paul, made nearly twenty years prior in dedication to the artist’s late husband, is composed of an internal honeycomb pattern and sited so that its repeated openings can be seen from a landing above.) On one side of Luba, a delicate appendage, intended to resemble a mother’s arm cradling a baby, extends downward to the ground. The lower portion of this arm, supporting its spindly reach, is made of bronze, marking the first time that Von Rydingsvard combined cedar and bronze in a single work. Underscoring both her craft and her tangible connection to the sculpture, the artist rubbed graphite into areas of its surface, emphasizing the shadow and depth of the saw’s cuts.

Von Rydingsvard has described her personal background as an influence on her practice. She was born in postwar Germany to Polish and Ukrainian farmers, and her early childhood bore the strain of living in eight different refugee camps over the course of five years. She immigrated with her family to the United States when she was still a child. In form, process, and meaning, she sees her work as being responsive to Eastern European peasant traditions. Throughout her career, Von Rydingsvard has pushed the boundaries of her chosen materials and techniques, creating an expansive body of work that includes several large-scale public sculptures.