HARDCORE
Ira Sherman: Couture Sculptor Interview by Brenda LaBier As I park and approach an unassuming duplex, I sense what lies inside will challenge me and help me gain insights on this world-renowned sculptor and his artwork. Ira Sherman invites me in and I sit at a small table near the entry to his studio. He appears to be a man with something important to say. Ira’s career expanded from jewelry making to wearable sculptures that go deep, and expose pain and vulnerability. Ira says, “Most of my college studies focused on art and biology. I took a jewelry making class as an art elective and immediately fell in love with the media. I dropped out of college and began to study every aspect of jewelry design and fabrication. These studies led to exploring blacksmithing technique and industrial metal fabrication technologies. I soon realized it was possible to meld these interests and build kinetic fantasy objects. In the early 70s, I opened a custom jewelry business because jewelry making was the only skill I had to earn income. The jewelry business eventually expanded into a successful custom wedding ring business allowing me to continue exploring my real love for making mechanized metal sculpture. I also designed hundreds of small sculptural jewelry pieces and use many of these designs as maquettes for some of the form in my current work.” We tour Ira’s home and as we move through the spaces, he reveals elements about what he does, how he accomplishes it and its challenges. “I am a sculptor/metalsmith who uses my many skills and resources to design artworks that attempt to define a technologically perplexed world dazzled by modern day scientific advances. From my background as a jewelry designer, a large percentage of the art and sculpture I have created over the past 40 years fits on or attaches to the human body. Objects that touch the body take on a very powerful personal connection, an amulet, a wedding ring, a ritual object. I am an artist who uses mechanical technology and biomorphic aesthetic to invent devices that blur the definition of useful achievement; making social justice daydreams into plausible realities.” He reflects about the creativity, determination and perseverance in his work. “I’m inspired by the work of Gaudi, da Vinci, Albert Paley and H.R. Giger. I also believe I am organically gifted to look at the world with constant curiosity seeking aesthetic relationships. I question aesthetic, social and religious relationships. Much of my designs and projects begin with just playing and relaxing my brain to allow ideas to mush together and see if any new images