Function Art (Scott) asked me if I would like to contribute to this show about 3 months prior to it’s opening. Even though I was soon to be moving my shop to a new location and having an already busy work schedule, I said OK. I can make some wall pieces. After seeing my latest wall pieces, Scott informed me that horizontal configuration is a hard sell in Chicago; something to do with a lack of wall space. I said OK, vertical configuration. Over the next couple of months I would occasionally think about possible pieces for this show. This is what I normally do anyway during certain work processes. I think of things I would like to do later on. The character of current work often informs the character of a project being considered. In this case I had been working on 2 projects: one was the fabrication of very contemporary home office work stations out of anodized aluminum and glass, the other was building a large 2 door wrought iron gate in the “Old World” style of fairly dense forged ornament. Stylistically these were two very different projects.

That was the very simplified starting point for the two pieces I made for this show. I had a loose idea that the combination of contemporary looking anodized aluminum with the more traditional forged steel would be new and interesting for me. Limited time and necessity helped me edit my ideas. The aluminum was basically going to be a contemporary backdrop for the forged steel. I didn’t have time to have the aluminum anodized so I sprayed it with auto enamel for a similar effect, which I think I like better anyway.

Based on past experience with intuitive forging sessions, I figured I would start forging pieces of steel and let the initial forgings tell me where to go. As the pieces developed so did my own narrative of what these things might be. The results are these two “artifacts” of unknown purpose and origin, or so my narrative goes.

AVAILABLE INVENTORY:

Artifact, Cat. 631
Forged Steel, aluminum and auto enamel
49 x 10"
$5600.