Rising Tide the Sculptors Guild 2013 exhibiton

RISING TIDE SCULPTORS GUILD EXHIBITION GOV ERNORS ISLA ND, NEW YORK

www.sculptorsguild.org

GINGER ANDRO & CHUCK GLICKSMAN MEG BLOOM COLIN CHASE MICHELLE GREENE YASMIN GUR

RISING TIDE

LUCY HODGSON STEPHEN KELTNER BERNARD KLEVICKAS CONRAD LEVENSON ELAINE LORENZ SASSONA NORTON PHILIP SIMMONS

CURATED BY SARAH SCHMERLER

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The 6 th Annual Sculptors Guild Exhibition Governors Island, New York June 9 - September 29, 2013

CUR ATED BY SA R A H SCHMER LER

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“Rising Tide” is the 6th-annual Sculptors Guild exhibition on Governors Island, housed in a yellow clapboard Victorian mansion in the Nolan Park section on the northeastern edge of the Island, which, during Hurricane Sandy, was the site of a 16-foot tidal surge. Little damage was sustained on the Island overall, but the same cannot be said for many of the participating artists, who here contribute works of diverse media. “Might we not ask what other factors rock our creative community on a daily basis,” writes the exhibition’s curator, Sarah Schmerler, who selected works by 13 Guild artists for this unique, and at times site-specific-style installation? “Economic crises, the demands of family and job, the changing face of art world politics…. this show focuses on the new forms that artists come up with in their continual efforts to ‘stay afloat’.”

I would like to tell you that the installation of this show was a breeze but at times it felt more like a tropical storm. I selected artworks and calculated dimensions, hoping that in the near future, the Governor’s Island Trust would assign us a site large enough for the works to adequately be seen. (They did.) Once I saw the spot–what ended being a Victorian mansion in Nolan Park, rich in character (read: a cool, gigantic, leaky, rundown wood house with peeling paint)–I decided where all the works should ideally go, and requested

that they arrive in a specific order. They ended up arriving pell mell. This was due to no fault of the artists, mind you; it was just the winds of change blowing, beyond anyone’s control.

Sassona Norton’s bronze piece–two hands, one literally lifting the other out of the tide– was replaced at the last minute, even though I had hoped that massive works like hers would be the first to arrive. Instead delicate objects d’art like Philip Simmons’s blown-glass were first put into place, and we found ourselves tiptoeing and otherwise working around their

incredibly fragile forms. Despite my best intentions for maintaining ultimate control (!) being thwarted, somewhere around the last days of installation, an unexpected ‘conversation’ started happening, and the works took on a life of their own. It was almost magical. They just merged with the site. Its rundown, peeling-paint persona, its ghosts, and who knows what embraced the work, and soon you couldn’t tell one from the other.

By the time the docents arrived for training, and I took them up the stairs and down the narrow hallways and all around, the show was an integrated whole, full of unexpected convergences.

Stephen Keltner’s smooth metal sculpture of shifting, geometric shapes–all dynamic angles and fool-the-eye tectonic planes–looked out of an upstairs window that faced the Freedom Tower (then under construction)–all cranes and work lights in incomplete ambitions.

Andro and Glicksman’s “Rear Window” video installation was installed in a cozy nearby bedroom, and the ticking clock of the soundtrack–taken from one of the artist’s grandmother’s mantelpiece clock–seemed like it was emanating from the mantelpiece over the fireplace. And Bernard Klevickas, a worker in re-cycled and upcycled materials with political and social message, made a veritable solo show out of the mansion’s kitchen. He managed to get a swirling miasma

of detergent bottles to spring out of the house’s sink–offering a brightly colored hortatory message to the non-biodegradable material waste of the world.

Left to my own devices, on afternoons of sudden, torrential rain, before the public was set to arrive, I wandered from room to room with graphite stick in hand, writing my comments and wall labels directly on the walls themselves. (That’s a curatorial technique I’d used in exhibitions past, but I felt it was tailor made for “Rising Tide.”) As you read the catalog here, you’ll see those labels transcribed, pretty much verbatim, and hopefully you’ll get a feel for what the public felt as they meandered around and ‘read’ the walls themselves. It was my intention that we all appreciate how artists, sooner than the rest of us, see the writing on Society’s wall.

My thanks go to the whole Guild for their cooperation and professionalism, but in particular to Elaine, Chuck and Ginger, Bernard and Sherrie. They were the all-handson-deck crew on ‘Tide.’ I’d set sail with them again, any time.

–Sarah Schmerler Summer, 2013

GINGER A NDRO & CHUCK GLICKSM A N

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Andro and Glicksman often use reflections and mirrors in their multi-media works. Here they also employ a 100-year-old window they found on their property in New Jersey. All the video footage was shot on a rainy day on Long Beach Island in 2007, with the camera set to shoot in 5 frame increments with 1 second pauses and intentionally edited out of sync with the sound of a ticking clock.

The scent in the air is also part of the work; it is created from the oils of plants that grow near water, and is intended to add to the atmosphere of anticipation -- a sense of the unsettled. Long Beach Island suffered extensive property damage and beach erosion in Hurricane Sandy.

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Rear Window, 2013 Mixed media installation: video projection, sound and scent 120”h x 96” x 144”

MEG BLO OM

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The artist has had a long career in social work; 30 years, fighting for the rights of battered women and troubled teens. Meg Bloom often works in delicate materials like silk, organza, and jeweler’s wire. Here they resemble the long tendrils of some unknown desiccated sea creature.

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Intermezzo, 2008-2013 Paper, silk, wax, wire, fish line, metal 74”h x 9” x 9”

CO LIN CH ASE

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When the artist first arrived in Manhattan, days after Hurricane Sandy, he was moved by how the tragedy had brought out so much kindness, tolerance, and acceptance in the community.

Colin Chase often works in wood and steel -- here he employs aspen, birch plywood, as well as common grade plywood that he salvaged from construction sites near his studio in Upstate New York.

The Dharma Wheel of Buddhist philosophy is often depicted as having 8 spokes -- a structure it shares with the steering wheel of ships.

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Buoy, 2013 Wood, steel, graphite, pigment, paper 85”h x 40” x 40”

MICHELLE GREENE

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This fire alarm was taken from an abandoned ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where the artist has her studio.

Says Greene: “The only control we have over the unexpected is our reaction.”

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Fire Alarm, 2013 Recycled ship’s fire alarm, recycled electrical wire, brass, cardboard 12”h x 9” x 3”

YASMIN GUR

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Israeli-born artist Yasmin Gur and her family were among the first settlers in the town of Arad when it was still desert. As a child, she grew up around construction sites and building materials.

The artist, who often works with raw wood, didn’t alter the pieces in any way, except to arrange them, keeping their “original character and history.” Says Gur, “I want to create a sense of physical tension with the language of materials and form.”

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Urban Construct, 2013 Reclaimed wood, nails, fasteners 60”h x 120” x 96”

LUCY HO DGSON

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Lucy Hodgson considers herself a New Englander, even though she’s lived in New York for 50 years. Much of her work is about our dependence on petroleum and how our search for oil is affecting the landscape.

The antlers are those of white-tailed deer -- either found in Hodgson’s back yard, or bought from hunters’ websites on the Internet.

Says the artist: “Once you cross the Rubicon, there’s no turning back.”

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Crossing the Rubicon, 2012 Wood, antlers, Envirotex, 5 Pieces 50”h x 9”x 15”

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Stags I Have Know, 2012 Wood, antlers, Envirotex, 5 Pieces 16”h x 14”x 12”

STEPHEN K ELT NER

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Stephen Keltner has been working in steel since 1970, and with planar distortions since 1975, and has always been interested in the phenomenon of perception.

Keltner files the metal to give it a slight angle and enhances it with color to increase the illusion of depth from different vantage points. Says the artist: “What’s going on in your mind is more important that what’s going on in the piece,” says Keltner. “I try to make the pieces as clean as possible to eliminate distraction.”

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Still Waters, 2012 Painted steel, rod, mesh 27”h x 52” x 5”

BERN A RD K LE VICK AS

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Bernard Klevickas often works with recycled and upcycled materials. You may have seen his “planter” made of a bicycle wrapped around a lamppost sited at various points around Manhattan and not known it was his. Such interventions in the urban landscape generally go unsigned for the artist’s own protection.

Here, Klevickas imagines a backwash of brightly colored, yet toxic, plastic detergent bottles and plush toys. The installation expresses the artist’s concern about plastic in our Oceans.

White Styrofoam food containers don’t decompose into the landscape. Here, they take the form of icebergs, “melting” into the linoleum floor. Melted, colored Styrofoam (not glue) holds the food containers together.

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Gyre, 2013 Plastic detritus Dimensions vary

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Icebergs, 2013 Polystyrene food containers 60” x 60” x 36”

CO R A L PENELO PE L A MBERT

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Coral Lambert is based in Alfred, NY, where she teaches foundry at Alfred University. Over the years, she has researched the history of metal, and its relation to civilization and industry as a whole. Says the artist, “Iron comes from the core of the earth, meteorites from the sky -- metal has a connection to the very essence of who we are.” The iron used here was taken from recycled radiators and drainpipes. Also included in the piece is an actual meteorite that fell in Russia in 1917.

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Ladder to the Land of Dreams, 2013 Cast Iron and Bronze, Wall piece 120”h x 240”x 240”

CONR AD LE V ENS ON

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In the days before refrigeration, ice was harvested from frozen rivers and lakes -- cut with massive ice saws and taken by horsedrawn vehicles to be stored in icehouses, or shipped to customers. Levenson employs actual vintage saws that were used on the Hudson River in his work. Though massive, the saws are also remarkably pliant; hence Levenson’s welded-steel sculpture moves, bending and swaying when activated by touch or strong wind.

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Symbiotic Twins, 2012 Iron and Steel 60”h x 20”, x 12”

EL AINE LOREN Z

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Elaine Lorenz likes to think about the dual nature of Natural forms -- how waves, for instance, can seem both devastating, and beautiful. Here we see various nesting forms with sharp edges. Some spiral gently, while others grow in size and menace, dwarfing what may be a circular landmass in the distance. All are stoneware fired to 2232-degrees Fahrenheit, and covered with a gunmetal glaze the artist likes for its “variegated, oil slick” type quality.

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Retribution 2013 Glazed Ceramic 27” h x 48” x 40

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Maelstrom 2013 Glazed Ceramic 12” x 15” x 4”

SASSON A NO RTON

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Israeli-born artist Sassona Norton finds the hand to be a more evocative part of the body than the face; hands convey emotion (pain, desire, the striving for transcendence) without the distraction of individual ‘personality.’ Hands are also active -- hence they make a kind of solipsistic reference to the creative process itself. These hands balance on a single small point of contact with their steel plinth, which, in turn leans on a diagonal -- further imparting a feeling of tenuousness. Says the artist, “my work is rooted in the constant wondering of how people manage to rise after crisis and to find the strength to reach out and rebuild their lives against all odds.”

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Into the Wind, 2006 Bronze 16.5”h x 20.5” x11”

PHILIP SIMMONS

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Simmons is fascinated by the everchanging physical form of clouds. For him, their mutable shape is a kind of metaphor for ideas like those of philosopher David

Philip Simmons made these works in watercolor on paper while on the sea, and later, on land -- all of which was part of a larger project in which Simmons spent

Hume, who said we don’t have absolute knowledge of the natural world. Each glass sphere needs 3 points of contact -- or the ‘cloud’ will fall apart.

time on fishing vessels, working with the fisherman, observing them, and ultimately exchanging his art for fish. Says the artist: “On some days, the sea and sky blended together seamlessly, and it felt like being alone in another world.”

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Storm Clouds, 2013 Glass, spray paint 36”h x 42” x 24”

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Fish Exchange - The Netherlands, 2011 works on paper