John Chamberlain's Rustic Beauty

These days, fine art is a broad concept unrestricted by classical standards unlike in the Greek and Victorian ages. Many sculptures believe that making use of scrap or found objects is a good way to help rebuild something by turning it into something else. John Chamberlain uses old automobile parts and crushed steel to create distorted compositions of rustic sculptures in pure abstract form. Chamberlain wen to the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College during his years of learning. He became quite famous for his unique style of painting into three dimensions and his usage of car parts. He works and resides at Shelter Island in New York and has been sculpting for over fifty years.

Sculpture by John Chamberlain - Photography by Ser Amantio di Nicolao

Chamberlain's sculptures have been seen in Biennials around the globe, including the Sao Paulo Biennial in the early 1960's and the Whitney Biennial in the 1970's. During his career, Chamberlain was also represented by two esteemed galleries; the Gagosian Gallery and the Pace Gallery chronologically. It is rumored that he actually has a piece of his artwork on the moon. Not many sculptors can boast that kind of accomplishment indeed. Aside from these little pieces of information about him, he has also garnered several recognitions from various institutions like the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture which awarderd him the Skowhegan medal for sculpture in 1993 and the National Arts Club in New York that conferred upon him the National Arts Club Artist's Award in the late 1990's.

Read more »

Bill Woodrow's Sculptures Combine and Create from a Degree of Metal Diversities

In the 1970's many new faces in the world of Britain's sculpture community emerged into popular society. Among the personalities, Bill Woodrow stood out as a contemporary sculptor of mixed media creations. Many of his very first sculptural pieces were works made from materials and objects found in scrap yards. He has a fondness for using metal wares and machinery that have been discarded and abandoned. Many of the artworks made by Woodrow actually retain a sense of their former elements. Woodrow alters a diversity of materials to present them to the public in a new context of understanding, but still creates a personal feel and narrative by which people can relate with.

Sculpture by Bill Woodrow - Photography by John McCullough 2006

He started using bronze as a material for his creative process during the 1990's. He was also one of the three artists selected to make a sculpture for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2000. Woodrow's many exquisite pieces made him famous for his metal assemblage skills and his original kind of creativity. Some of his other works distinctly proclaimed a new take on mixed media, such as his sculpture Pond in 2006 which made use of hundreds of copper or bronze coin shapes. The image featured above is Woodrow's sculpture Sitting in History which was bought by Carl Djerassi and Diane Middlebrook in the late 1990's for the British Library. Bill Woodrow's contemporary creations have earned him a following even among the younger generations of today's modern art world.

Read more »

The Complexities and Risks of Mixed Media

Sculptures in the classical age were all created with stone, wood or precious metals. This signified the ability to last from generation to generation within family possessions. Today however, a popular trend defies this historical observation, the evoloution of mixed media.

Mixed media is a term that people use when refering to works of art that contain two or more substantial or structural media within their main composition. The most popular forms of mixed media art include assemblage sculptures and hybridities between sculpture and other forms of art.

The artist' ability to foresee the combinations of materials can be the reason why many mixed media works often draw a crowd's attention merely from the contrasting beauty of its substances. Combining glass and wood for example is a good start to creating a still life sculpture of a river scene. Mixed media is an opportunity for artists to break down limitations in texture, color and even physical discrepancies. It also measures how much an artist knows about his or hee media as well.

The risks in creating mixed media works can be great. First of all, artists do not often take the long years to master two or more media, it is painstakingly hard to perfect glass casting for example. On the other hand if one would wish to work with glass he may instead go for an assemblage technique and make use of existing glass pieces, bypassing the need to cast anything. The point is, using two media usually means an artist does not have a complete mastery in at least one of them. This can be allocated to risks in stability, immediate presence and environment related issues. Another thing to consider about mixed media artwork, is their consistent originality, some artists make use of combining old or antique wares or manufactured products like plastics. These would most likely have been made by external sources that could close down or disappear in the future, stripping the style of a key medium and forcing it to change consistency. These are some of the issues presented to mixed media art, however they are minor at most and do not always happen to be the case. Mixed media is still a novelty art innovation that continues to surprise our society every day with newer and bolder creations.

Read more »