Sculpture is something made to stand in an interesting way.
Paul Sullivan: Before Landes Sullivan, my interests were sculpture and design.
All pieces below are 1997 - 2003 created at 111 First Street in Jersey City NJ.
Balanced but durable
about 2.5’ tall, just a piece of 2 x 4 with some saber sawn slots for character. It has some threaded rod running around and through it. Balance and resolution rest with a handful of lead weights hanging off the rod on string. It’s inspired by a wine bottle holder.
make the work more familiar
What meaning my work has is wrapped up how successfully I use gravity and balance to make banal materials expressive. Non-precious hardware store materials make the work more familiar, more accessible and human than I could manage with more crafted or precious materials. If I can make a sculpture gestural and simply comprehensible, it can say something about chance, risk, urgency, decision and repose which may draw a hopeful and empathetic response from the viewer.
The found scrap of vibrant construction barricade needed to be part of a new barricade in a way that suited its reduced circumstances. But how do you hold up a two legged fragment when another leg or two would look too stolid? Use an anchor.
The piece lurches forward, reaching for the 5 pound weight, while at the same time it holds back in a state of calm readiness. There’s a nice sway to it when you gently push down on the wood and release.
It was hard to get the right tension for the brass wire extending between the gilded sponge and the piece of wood to the left. Hence the broken bit of wood was used as a Spanish windlass to tune the tension. The windlass was left in position should the need arise for further adjustment and in the meantime, it’s a nice focal point.
the predicament as the new starting point.
I wanted to lift the large horizontal beam off the ground. I thought I could that with the vertical and the bent length of threaded rod. When I couldn’t, I accepted the predicament as the new starting point.
The big beam is a pin cushion of screw and drilled holes of successive tries until a dowel was attached to hold the penny jar and extra lead sinkers far enough way to achieve lift off.
I had a hefty squared off length of wood that I cut some rectangles out of unmindful of the deep longitudinal cracks until the cut up piece of wood split into pieces.
2 lengths of threaded rod “reunites” all the pieces of wood in an exploded view. To keep the rod in place without epoxy, the wood is cabled around a fragment of granite countertop. (Epoxy leaves no room for wondering and 2nd thoughts.) At the top, another piece is stitched back on.
The window frame was discarded in the hallway of 111 First Street. Threaded rod vs wool scraps are from a mill in Vermont. The base always bugged me. I think it needed some saber sawing cutouts.
the expressive strain of stapling
The L shape piece is from a house building site, a fragment cut away from a pre-fab wall. It has the look of a horse’s head. The L shape is tilted forward to suggest pulling.
Tying the head off to its load or anchor of wood didn’t have the same expressive strain of stapling a length of burlap to the corner of the L.