Bound Logs
1972–1973

With their rough, unpolished surfaces and handmade quality, the sculptures Jackie Winsor produced between 1967 and 1976 reflect her reaction to the industrial fabrication techniques associated with Minimalist sculpture. Bound Logs is comprised of raw tree trunks heavily wrapped with twine, whose excessive abundance suggests a kind of secular ritual. As in the contemporaneous work of Eva Hesse and other like-minded artists, the time-consuming, contemplative wrapping involved in making Bound Logs represented a new emphasis on process rather than finished product. The piece may also suggest a response to the coastal Newfoundland landscape where Winsor grew up, which she remembered as a place “made barren both by civilization, when farmers cleared the land, and by nature, the wind and the sea.” According to Winsor, the heavily articulated joins of Bound Logs were a means of “subduing” the aggressive presence of the trunks, so that they wouldn’t look “like all outdoors.” Yet in their related coloring and texture, the logs and hemp are symbiotic, signaling a confluence of nature and the artist’s handiwork.