Metal and Nature

RUST & ROOTS

Much of Barney Bellinger’s artwork brings the outdoors, in: His rustic furniture incorporates natural elements, like tree trunks and antlers, and puts a bold twist on the stick-and-twig variety of Adirondack art.

For his new installation at The Wild Center, though, he’s gone the opposite direction. Bellinger’s outdoor sculpture exhibit, “Welded Steel: Shape, Form and Light,” depicts fish, plants and other natural forms—but is constructed entirely with man-made, industrial-grade materials.

The 17 pieces, placed along our Forest Music exhibit and around Greenleaf Pond, are studies of form meant to evoke subjects including jumping fish, pickerel weeds and pitcher plants, a particular favorite. “We’re not mimicking nature—we’re only being inspired by it,” says Bellinger, whose goal is

“You can find art all around you and inspiration all around you,” Bellinger says. “You just have to go find it.”

to show how rusty, salvaged metal can add a different dimension to the natural world without overtaking it.

He knows the abstract nature of the sculpture may take a while to grasp. “Maybe some people won’t understand it, or won’t get it until they walk through and then see how you’re taking these raw materials and forming and shaping them to mimic nature, in how it can live with nature,” he says. he’s hoping visitors will take the next step and use nature as a muse for their own creativity. Maybe they’ll be inspired to take out a canoe and look for a pitcher plant. Or maybe they’ll just open their eyes to the random wonders that surround them. “I may be driving on a back country road in the Adirondacks and see an old car,” he says, proving his point. “You see what’s growing. You see the vines that are intertwining between the wheels of a car.”