In the Studio With a Sculptor Who Works Only in Salvaged Steel
Every piece in the yard used to be something else. That is the entire point.
The studio is a yard behind a decommissioned rail shed, and it is impossible to tell where the material ends and the work begins.
Provenance as a constraint
She will not buy new steel. Everything comes from demolition — beams, plate, reinforcement bar — and each piece arrives with a history she researches before she cuts it. The constraint is severe and entirely self-imposed, and she is clear about why: new steel would let her make whatever she already had in mind.
I am not making the thing I imagined. I am making the thing this particular piece of steel will allow.
Letting the material decide
The consequence is that the work is genuinely unpredictable, even to her. A beam with a particular corrosion pattern will suggest a form she would never have drawn, and she follows it. Several finished pieces began as an attempt at something completely different that the metal refused to become.
Whether that is a philosophy or an elaborate excuse is a question she seems happy to leave open.
Mara Ellison
Mara writes about contemporary painting and the economics of an artistic career. She has been covering studio practice for nine years and still believes the best interviews happen while the paint is wet.
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