Leif Brush – “Terraplane Chorography I”
Artist Leif Brush, who taught at the University of Minnesota Duluth from 1976 to 2002, died on March 15 at the age of 88. His obituary can be found on cremationsocietyofmn.com.
The video “Terraplane Chorography I,” embedded above, is a performance with audio tape and live piano, shot at the Tweed Museum of Art in 1979 and digitized from videocassette in 2011.
I never took a course from Leif, but considered him a mentor and friend. I spent many hours in the sculpture studio with Leif just talking — about art, sound, history and life. I had the honor of filling in to teach a course while he was on sabbatical. He was a bit eccentric, for sure, but he was a very deep and empathetic human. He will be missed.
Leif Brush also created a variety of sound devices designed to make music in the forest. From AllMusic.com:
You can hear Leif talk about the project in this excerpt from the documentary Inside the Hidden Landscape.
One of his forest instruments, the Wind Ribbon, is part of the permanent collection in The Sound Forest, a free open-air museum of sound installations in the forests of Belgium, which seems like just the right place to maintain his legacy.