The Luba people

Luba

Location: The Luba people (who are also called the Baluba) live in the forests and savannas of a large area of the southern Congo.

Language: The different groups of the Luba people speak different but closely related languages. Mostly because the different groups of the Luba people are of different origins.

History: At one time, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century most of the Luba people were ruled by a paramount chief called the Bulopwe or Balopwe. Now that has changed and they do not have a central ruler. They have formed small independent chiefdoms. These were always around but it wasn't until after the seventeenth century that the majority of the Luba people lived in independent chiefdoms.

The Luba people tell the history of their tribe and people by using an object called a memory board. A memory board is made of beads and uses differnt color beads for the different Tribes or people. Not everyone is told how to read or interpret the memory board.

Daily Life: The Luba hunt, fish, gather, keep livestock and farm, mostly maize and cassava. They live in small villages that have only one long street with rectangular huts on both sides. The Luba people worship a supreme being and natural-spirits. They believe that when something bad happens to a person it happens because of something bad that that person did in the past.

Best Known Feature: The Luba are great wood carvers, especially of ceremonial axes, head rests and anthropomorphical figures. The Chiefs and royals carry staffs that explain how they became what they are and their relationship with the sacred land.

Though this page has been carefully researched, the author does not claim expertise on the Luba.

Please send questions, comments, and corrections to emuseum@mnsu.edu and include the URL.

If you are Luba, your feedback is much appreciated.

Sources:

Luba. Britannica.com, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9049210

The Luba Tribe. http://www.msad54.k12.me.us/MSAD54Pages/MCSS/SmithStuart/African%20Tribe/the_luba_tribe.htm

Author: Lucian Young

This just makes so much sense to me. luba people. LUBA to me is an extension of a person. LUBA belongs in the forest, the Luba people were woodcarvers and LUBA is carved from wood. I dont know is Ursula was connecting to the Luba people when she created this piece but I don't know how could couldn't, its so apparent. Finding this just made me so happy

definition of LUBA

Luba may refer to:

• Slavic origin feminine name which means "someone who has love"

this just makes sense to me. I want to wrap my arms around LUBA. I connected to LUBA when I saw it. I smelt the wood and thought of being a kid and being in the wood shop with my dad, My dad can build anything, (Hes the set designer/builder for the local playhouse in our town) and I remember loving being down in the basement with my dad. and of course I love my dad. I guess I think LUBA reminds me of my dad but I think LUBA is a she. BUT my dad is full of love. my dad is also full of worry. I feel that LUBA is strong but full of worry therefor she need all those individual blocks to hold her up not to mention the spider leg to keep her balanced. LUBA has love for everyone who looks at her that is why she has so many building blocks to keep her together, she has enough to share.

LUBA and the SPIDER

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The cast peices of LUBA remind me of Louise Bourgeois spiders. The legs are so delicate and fearful. Walking arould them make me nervous and seeing something like that on LUBA made me feel the same way. Despite the fact that LUBA doesn't make me feel that way at all. LUBA makes me feel the exact oposite of the spider. But the caste bronze brings me back to the first time I saw a Bourgeois spider. And how it freaks me out when a a find a big spider in my house and I hate to kill it but I dont want to think about it crawling all over me with those thin legs. I just got chills. I feel like they are LUBAs legs keeping her up. Balancing her. Without them she may lean to one side and topple over.

LUBA and the wren

read this book to kids and then look at the sculpture LUBA.

http://www.amazon.com/Luba-Picture-Puffins-Patricia-Polacco/dp/0698119223

New Paltz public art

This was in front of Bacchus on Monday 7/26 around 7:00 it was made out of some kind of powder, therefore it doesn't last forever.
I was sitting in Rock Da Pasta with 2 of my friends previous to seeing this piece and running around main street was man in a blue full body suit and a woman in a red one. You could not see their faces. They had flip flops on and the woman had a purse but other than that they were just walking around the down town area. They were in Cafeteria at one point just hanging out and then continued on their way. Public performance art.
ALSO


I don't really know how to describe where this is located but its off north chestnut going towards southside near where you turn to go down where pencil hill is. They had just painted the arrows for traffic as this intersection was always confusing and then the next day this appeared.

I feel I am now more aware to public art and just get excited when I see it. Especially work like this when its not commissioned and its just there for a time until its removed or cleaned or just dissipates

nubs

I connected with what I call the "nubs" that protrude off LUBA. The feel to me like the pimples of the piece. Like organic growths. waiting to be plucked off. I wanted to portray a nub but I have never carved anything thing ever. So i attempted it. I went to Lowes and bought a plank of cedar and had to guy cut it for me and I had no tools so I spent somewhere around $70 on tools but I wanted to experience the idea of carving this nub. It was a very frustrating 4 hours. It looks like a shitty 4 hours but it was my process of creating a LUBA nub. LUBA is rubbed with graphite so i rubbed my nub with graphite as well. I then sanded it in with 150 grit sandpaper to make it more worn in. LUBA is weathered and I could not gain that look of course, but this is my shotty attempt.

NYC Trip

I saw this building and realized that i was surrounded in NYC by LUBA. Any structure that springs from the earth where it is welcomed is LUBA to me now. It doesn't seem to matter what the materials are now I'm just reminded of the smell of the wood and the numbs and how I felt when I first saw the piece. Skyscrapers In NYC are protrusions from the earth. They are not natural to the world but NY is a city and city's need buildings to operate therefore they belong.








This is a view from the highline. This reminds me of the numbs that stick out from LUBA. Protruding out. With or without purpose. You choose

Llyn Foulkes
Portrait of Leo Gorcey 1969
Oil and synthetic polymer on canvas


When I saw this piece I immediately connected it back to LUBA. The tall mountanous form. Looming over you. Unstable and you below it wondering will it fall. It looks like this peice is representing a rock boulder of some sort. Defenitly a mass from the earth. LUBA as I have said before to me is a mass from the earth. Discoved.

Leo Gorcey (1917-1969)

Born to Vaudevillian parents in 1917, Leo Gorcey practically grew up onstage. As a teenager, he was spotted in a play by a talent scout. When the play, Dead End, was made into a movie a couple of years later, Gorcey went to Hollywood where he worked steadily, mostly in film series such as The Dead End Kids, The East Side Kids, finishing his career in The Bowery Boys comedies. He more or less retired from the screen in the late 1950s, taking on cameo roles from time to time. Gorcey passed away in June 1969, just one day shy of his 52nd birthday. Leo Gorcey Movies Available From Movies Unlimited


Reading about Leo Gorcey and how the peice is a portrait of him in his death year is very intresting. Why a giant boulder? I will get my dad to download me a movie or 2 maybe I can find out

watch this video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt8P2FxvxxI

Video of Ursula von Rydingsvard talking about her work.

Very to the point. interesting.

http://www.ursulavonrydingsvard.net/site/selected_sculpture/

Tons of images at the above site

The Sorceress of Cedar

by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy

"Ursula von Rydingsvard's dense, eccentric, craggy sculptures fascinate me, yet I can't remember any art that has made me so strangely uneasy. Her mammoth constructions quiver with power and evocative, disturbing contradictions. These cedar creatures, their scarred and striated surfaces frequently darkened with rubbed-in graphite, are monumental yet intimate, crude yet delicate."
http://www.ursulavonrydingsvard.net/site/articles/sourceress.html

I dont know if I agree with the opening paragraph of this article yes her work is eccentric and fascinating but it it doesnt make me uneasy it makes me very happy. I want one in my backyard ir a wall peice like "unraveling" in my house.They are monsters of cedar but the monsters of the good kind like monsters inc. They are delicate and very well thought out. So well crafted and amazing. Monumental scale and a one may say obtrusive I say welcoming.

Tourists

I already talked about the tourists in front of LUBA but it really bothered me. When people crowed around a sculpture or painting and take "family photos" or even just photos. WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH THEM. there are a million photos online and you are never going to look at them and if you take them with a digital camera are you ever going to print them up? It bothers me when I'm trying to view and study or even just enjoy a piece that a million people are crowed around it taking a million photos of it.http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/mar/09/mona-lisa-tourist-snappers-louvre


How can you enjoy that?

cave

It may only be this photo but from this angle it looks like the view from inside a cave. The wood in transformed into stone. Hard stone curling out to give us a view of the daylight. Wood can take on so many dimensions depending on what angle of how it is looked at. Also the artist rubbed graphite into the wood to make it appear darker. Different tones of wood give different shadows. I like the was the opening of the "cave" is not straight. It almost dances open giving us the stone feel of an organic material in its natural setting. Not that I was opposed to this peice in the setting it was in. A sculpture park is always strange to go to though. everything needs to somehow fit in the landscape and if it doesnt it just looks out of place...
I dont' know what this piece is called but it haunts me every time I walk past it. It's in the New Paltz Peace Park and it does not fit the space and I cannot imagine any space it would fit. The hard angels and materials don't communicate peace and don't belong in this setting.

skin

Old person skin

The texture of the piece reminds me of the skin of an old person. Weathered and textured but still warm. It has different layers to it but they are relatively smoothed together. making the piece inviting. You want to feel the piece but the sign reading "DO NOT TOUCH" warns you off. I wanted to feel the wood against my skin. I wondered if it would be hot or cold same ad an old persons hands, sometimes clammy sometimes freezing. It depends if the old person is your grandma then you want to touch her hands much like this piece but some random old guy you meet at the supermarket you need to help with his groceries you may not want to touch his hands.

There's also something elegant about how the wood is put together. Its rounded and curved following a form. delicate yet rough.

Mountains

The mountain previously known as the 'Southern Sky Column' in China, which has now been named the 'Avatar Hallelujah Mountain'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1246457/China-renames-mountain-Avatar-movie-Avatar-Hallelujah-Mountain.html#ixzz0ts9dgm6X
Ursula Von Ryding

LUBA 2009-2010

Cedar, cast bronze and graphite

LUBA looks like the Hallelujah mountains from Avatar and in turn the real life mountains in China. Growths from the earth. Skinny juts into the sky. You would feel free at the top of this structure as you would at the top of the mountains. There is something hopeful about this piece. It looks like the earth and like its belongs in the earth. I wanted to stay with this piece all day and lay under its shade. It made me feel comfortable. It did until a bunch on non-English speaking tourists came and took many photos next to this piece. They all took turns standing next to it with their children. It made me wonder if the photos will wind up shuffled away in a photo album or on the fridge or maybe even in a frame. I wondered if the piece made them feel as happy and grounded as it made me feel.