Title

Reclining Woman

Artist

Dennis, Michael

Date

1992

Medium

wood

Type

sculpture

Owner

SFU Art Collection

Accession Number

NA

Location

Simon Fraser University, Academic Quadrangle

Category

SFU Art Collection

Collection

Public Art

Lat/Long

49.278174,-122.915736

View in Google Maps

http://www.google.com/maps?q=49.278174,-122.915736

Reclining Woman is a large sculpture situated outside southeast corner of the Academic Quadrangle. Michael Dennis often produced large forms from wood left behind by loggers that in some cases are carved to suggest anthropomorphic forms; Reclining Woman, has been lightly shaped to suggest a human form. Some have speculated that this sculpture is a mate to another work by Dennis located at a park in Mount Pleasant. In 2013, the park took the vernacular title of that sculpture as its name, and is now affectionately known as Dude Chilling Park. This work is part of the Simon Fraser University Art Collection. The SFU Art Collection contains over 5,800 works. Approximately 1,000 works of art are shown throughout the campus and integrated in public, administrative and common learning spaces. A selection of the most accessible in this diverse repository are incorporated into the City of Burnaby Public Art Registry. For more extensive information about the holdings at SFU, visit: https://www.sfu.ca/galleries/Collections.html (text provided by SFU)

Michael Dennis (1941-present) has lived on Denman Island for 30 years, carving monumental figures in salvaged cedar; abstract and semi-representational, they have power, presence and personality and demonstrate Dennis’ intimate mastery of the human form. Originally from California, a professor and neurophysiological research scientist at University of California, San Francisco, Michael made a dramatic shift in the 80’s, from the academy of science to the practice of art and the making of “representations of self” and ancestral tropes. His work is in prominent collections here and abroad, his carved figures are familiar in Vancouver with public installations at SFU, UBC and ‘Dude Chilling park.