Creating Sculptural Art and
Telling Stories Using Steel and
Found Objects
"When my ideas become sculpture, I can never be certain how the viewer will experience the work. Art is full of subtlety and metaphor."
Telling Stories Using Steel and
Found Objects
"When my ideas become sculpture, I can never be certain how the viewer will experience the work. Art is full of subtlety and metaphor."
ON BECOMING A STORYTELLER
My focus is not creating art that simply looks beautiful or strikes you as whimsical. I hope my sculptures give you pause, make you stand back
and take it all in, and leave you both puzzled and excited.
After all is said and done, I’ve discovered I’m a storyteller. These days it’s been taking me a long time to complete my sculptures. There are lots of pieces to design and assemble, and each sculpture often has dozens of possible permutations. That has been my personal story this year.
I’ve worked on three sculptures in 2019- Reflections on the 13 Acts of Creation; Monument to Lost Gloves; and Hot Still Scape in 3-D: A Sculptural Reflection on the Stuart Davis Masterpiece. Each sculpture tells its own unique story-be it reinterpreting the biblical creation story by focusing on the acts of creation rather than the days; OR spending years collecting lost gloves in my neighborhood and hanging them together as a testament to loss and separation; OR deconstructing a complex and magnificent Stuart Davis painting in order to reconstruct it in 3-D.
In the process of making these sculptures, I discovered my true calling as a storyteller. I want you, the viewer, to carefully observe how these stories reveal themselves in sculptural form. My focus is not creating art that simply looks beautiful or strikes you as whimsical. I hope my sculptures give you pause, make you stand back and take it all in, and leave you both puzzled and excited.
The making of the art is only part of the experience. My interactions with other artists and art show visitors actually completes the ‘experience’ for me. I want to share several stories from the past year that make me fully appreciate the power of public art. It certainly has kept me energized to keep at it.
When my ideas become sculpture, I can never be certain how the viewer will experience the work. Art is full of subtlety and metaphor. How does a lost glove become something that it isn’t-a symbol for loss and separation? How do distorted and disfigured pieces of silverware represent the profound tragedy that was the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre? And how do 13 discrete organic shapes in steel piled one on top of the other tell the biblical story of the creation?
I often start making a sculpture before I really understand what I am trying to explore. Since I don’t do figurative work, I’m often not sure why and how a piece takes a particular shape. Tackling a new work is both exhilarating and terrifying. Given the number of ‘choice points’ that every sculptor faces in creating a work, all of us must trust our instincts and sensibilities. It’s part of the sculptor’s job description!
Yet it’s really you, the viewer/audience who affirms (or not) what I am trying to do. I have something I want (and need) to say through sculpture. The three stories I’ve shared above serve as a window to understand how my viewing audience experiences what I’ve created.
As a final thought, I’ve spent most of 2019 on a single work of art: Hot Still Scape in 3-D: A Sculptural Reflection on the Stuart Davis Masterpiece (see this piece in the ‘What’s New’ tab on my website). Spending so much time with this painting builds a special kind of intimacy. I’ve studied every nook and cranny of Hot Still Scape to figure out how the painted elements could be converted into a 3-D format. As much as one can, I feel connected to the ‘soul’ of this extraordinary painter.
Allen M.Spivack
OMOS* Studios
*My moniker- the Other Man Of Steel
My focus is not creating art that simply looks beautiful or strikes you as whimsical. I hope my sculptures give you pause, make you stand back
and take it all in, and leave you both puzzled and excited.
After all is said and done, I’ve discovered I’m a storyteller. These days it’s been taking me a long time to complete my sculptures. There are lots of pieces to design and assemble, and each sculpture often has dozens of possible permutations. That has been my personal story this year.
I’ve worked on three sculptures in 2019- Reflections on the 13 Acts of Creation; Monument to Lost Gloves; and Hot Still Scape in 3-D: A Sculptural Reflection on the Stuart Davis Masterpiece. Each sculpture tells its own unique story-be it reinterpreting the biblical creation story by focusing on the acts of creation rather than the days; OR spending years collecting lost gloves in my neighborhood and hanging them together as a testament to loss and separation; OR deconstructing a complex and magnificent Stuart Davis painting in order to reconstruct it in 3-D.
In the process of making these sculptures, I discovered my true calling as a storyteller. I want you, the viewer, to carefully observe how these stories reveal themselves in sculptural form. My focus is not creating art that simply looks beautiful or strikes you as whimsical. I hope my sculptures give you pause, make you stand back and take it all in, and leave you both puzzled and excited.
The making of the art is only part of the experience. My interactions with other artists and art show visitors actually completes the ‘experience’ for me. I want to share several stories from the past year that make me fully appreciate the power of public art. It certainly has kept me energized to keep at it.
- At the Crane Estates show in Ipswich, MA, a 9-year-old shyly approached me. Her mother coaxed her to ask me what my sculpture, ’Reflections on the 13 Acts of Creation’ was about. I told her that I was trying to capture the biblical creation story in 3-D. She stared at my sculpture for a long minute and then blurted out, “I know which parts of your sculpture represent the acts of creation.” For the next 15 minutes, she thoughtfully and logically explained which part of my sculpture represented each of the 13 acts. I was mesmerized. Mission accomplished!
- I installed my ‘Monument to Lost Gloves’ in the Riverway Park in Brookline, MA for the Studio Without Walls show in May 2019. I came back to take it down in mid-June and was approached by a young woman. “Is this your sculpture?” she asked. When I said it was, she told me the following story. “My boyfriend left town for the summer a few days ago and when I was walking through the park the other day, I saw your sculpture, read the text, and started to cry. Thank you.” This sculpture used dozens of lost gloves to capture the loss of connection with others through separation and death. This young woman made the connection between her own pain and a piece of steel full of lost gloves.
- As I was disassembling the ‘Monument for Lost Gloves’I looked up and saw an older Asian man staring up at me on my ladder. When I came down, we started to ‘chat.’ He was from China, was in Boston to visit his son and was himself an artist. He used his phone translator so we could carry on a conversation. We shared photos of our families and, he showed me his paintings. Then he offered to help me load the sculpture into my car. When I was ready to leave, we took a picture together and gave each other a friendly hug (see photo-go to my In The News tab.)
When my ideas become sculpture, I can never be certain how the viewer will experience the work. Art is full of subtlety and metaphor. How does a lost glove become something that it isn’t-a symbol for loss and separation? How do distorted and disfigured pieces of silverware represent the profound tragedy that was the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre? And how do 13 discrete organic shapes in steel piled one on top of the other tell the biblical story of the creation?
I often start making a sculpture before I really understand what I am trying to explore. Since I don’t do figurative work, I’m often not sure why and how a piece takes a particular shape. Tackling a new work is both exhilarating and terrifying. Given the number of ‘choice points’ that every sculptor faces in creating a work, all of us must trust our instincts and sensibilities. It’s part of the sculptor’s job description!
Yet it’s really you, the viewer/audience who affirms (or not) what I am trying to do. I have something I want (and need) to say through sculpture. The three stories I’ve shared above serve as a window to understand how my viewing audience experiences what I’ve created.
As a final thought, I’ve spent most of 2019 on a single work of art: Hot Still Scape in 3-D: A Sculptural Reflection on the Stuart Davis Masterpiece (see this piece in the ‘What’s New’ tab on my website). Spending so much time with this painting builds a special kind of intimacy. I’ve studied every nook and cranny of Hot Still Scape to figure out how the painted elements could be converted into a 3-D format. As much as one can, I feel connected to the ‘soul’ of this extraordinary painter.
Allen M.Spivack
OMOS* Studios
*My moniker- the Other Man Of Steel