Nash

Everybody has to start somewhere.

Iphegenia (ca.1955)

Carved from a stick with my Brownie Scout knife, this was my first exhibited sculpture, which took 3rd in the Adult Novice class, and was bought by a collector of primitive art. At the age of 12, my artistic career was launched!

Artist’s statement:

When trash talks, I listen. It tells me how to reconstruct it, giving it new life as sculpture. The native shapes of the salvaged substances suggest new configurations, sometimes influenced by the art of ancient civilizations which used the materials at hand to depict facets of their culture. I'm fond of reflective surfaces, transparency, and the eloquence of negative space. And I have a love/hate relationship with Styrofoam, with its paradoxical ability to occupy large amounts of space with very little substance (not unlike some public figures). My ambition is to repurpose as much single-use "disposable" material as possible in my time on this fragile earth, our island home.

Caught in the act: playing with fire in the alley behind the Metcalf foundry and metal fabrication shop at the Rhode Island School of Design. I love torches, noisy machinery, and blades. And I've found some really good art parts in alleys, particularly this one. You just wouldn't believe the great stuff they throw out!

The Great Goddess / World Tree

World Tree view

Photo courtesy of Vid Mars

About this group of assemblages:

I have a deep affection for the beautiful Mexican state of Oaxaca and its wonderful people, who have given me a profound appreciation of their ancient heritage, preserved not only in the magnificent historical sites of Monte Alban, Mitla, Yagul, and so many others, but in the traditional arts that are practiced today just as they were centuries ago, using the resources that abound in the Valley of Oaxaca.

Colorful weavings display a full palette of brilliant shades derived entirely from natural substances such as yarrow, alfalfa, marigold, indigo, and – the crown jewel of color – cochinilla, the incomparable royal red that the conquistadores prized as highly as gold, for Europe had never seen such a color. Oaxaca remains the primary environment for the cochinilla beetle, which has resisted export (except for a small operation in the Canary Islands). Each of these works has its own touch of cochinilla, in tribute to the ancient works that inspired these modern interpretations.

Monte Alban: Transfer of Power

expanded polystyrene

Inspired by stele VGE-2 at Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico

The Great Goddess / World Tree

The Great Goddess view

Photo courtesy of Vid Mars

The elaborate mosaics of “The Great Goddess / World Tree” were excised and pieced together from those familiar produce and meat trays from the supermarket, as were the tomb panel pieces depicting the mighty Jaguar Ocelotl and the Owl Tecolotl. Tombs are of great importance in Oaxaca, where departed loved ones are fervently invited to return during the Days of the Dead (Dias de los Muertos), one of the most profoundly joyful celebrations I have ever experienced. Squelching my claustrophobia to crouch my way into cramped tomb passages rewarded me with enduring images of the persistence of the spirit. The soul exists forever.

Tomb Panel: Tecolotl (Owl)

Styrofoam packing elements and grocery trays

All of the Styrofoam pieces in this group are constructed from salvaged expanded polystyrene packing materials, and altogether represent about half a small Dumpster load of waste. Formed Styrofoam has most of the surface characteristics of granite or sandstone, which allows me to produce fairly realistic “stone” carvings, and the fascinating molded shapes suggest the niches and angles of ancient structures. In the spirit of true assemblage, most of the large Styrofoam elements are “as found.”

There's another way Styrofoam resembles stone - it's persistent. It may wear down faster than granite, but it does have a very long half-life. I'm going to be testing some Styrofoam sculptures in my garden to see how they stand up to the elements.

Tomb Panel: Ocelotl (Jaguar)

Styrofoam packing elements and grocery trays

The remaining piece, “Quetzalcoatl”, also came from a Dumpster – he’s made from a reconfigured diner chair, a bone fragment, vintage buttons (his fetching green eyes), and red “feathers” that cushioned the innards of network printers during shipment.

Quetzalcoatl (The Plumed Serpent)

The three Styrofoam figures below were the first of my work with expanded polystyrene. While managing the deployment of numerous network printers and desktop computers for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, I was appalled by the sheer volume of Dumpster space taken up by this ultralight single-use material.

A little research turned up wildly varying estimates of how much of the volume of US landfills consists of Styrofoam; pro-EP estimates say .01%, and blame the bulk on paper. Anti-EP forces say it's as much as 50% Common sense suggests the number is somewhere in the middle, which is still a shockingly large number. Further, a fairly large sample of people were tested for styrene in their systems - and 100% of the tests were positive. Anyone tempted to wave away this finding should read the OSHA-required Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for styrene. Polystyrene is everywhere: plastic tableware, hot beverage cups, meat and veggie trays in the supermarket, and cushioning electronics in their boxes. All of these items are labeled "disposable." But as Barry Commoner's Second Law of Ecology states: "Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no 'waste' in nature and there is no 'away' to which things can be thrown." (Commoner, The Closing Circle, 1971).

Mindful of this, I started filling my truck with the big chunks of Styrofoam that came with the hundreds of printers and thousands of computers we were installing. Having taken custody of as much as I could, I'm now faced with using it, preferably to make as strong a point as possible. Art is visible, and big art is more visible. Since the forms I've collected are already fairly large, combining them allows me to make REALLY large works. These are just the beginning!

PackMan and Polly Styrene

Coming . . .

Polly Styrene and PackMan

. . . and going.

Out of the Box, Into the Ecosphere

Styrofoam packing pieces, bottle caps, wine corks

Metal. Steel, bronze, iron, copper, silver, gold. I love the feel of it, and I love to make art with it.

Bronze.

What a beautiful metal!

Icarus (left and right) is my one and only bronze, but true to my favorite methodology, it is an assemblage. Seven sets of wings were cast in wax from the same mold, then I attacked the waxes with a torch, melting and deforming them progressively. Then they were repeatedly dipped in a slurry to form a ceramic shell, which was burned out in a kiln to create the mold for the molten bronze. Once cast, the wings were welded to the slender, curving stem, which is anchored to a fierce fist-sized chunk of bronze that forms the base of the piece. The stem pieces and base were all products of overpour or mold blowouts; I fished them out of the scrap bin before they could be melted into ingots. When all the parts had been assembled, I applied various chemicals to create a patina that went from bright bronze at the base to scorched black at the apex. Then I took Icarus to the beach to get these pictures with the sky and sun providing the perfect setting.

All Hell Cut Loose a Few Steps Out of Frame

Steel junk assemblage

Yes, some of it did come from the trash bins in RISD's alley.

Fun with a cutting torch and junked car hood.

A Merc is a terrible thing to waste.

Un-Still Life of Techno-Lemmings

Steel patio table bases, stainless rigging elements, stainless house, CDs, sheet acrylic.

Oh, and lemmings.