October 1988. Granite, painted steel. Dimensions: 168 × 48 × 24 in (427 × 122 × 61 cm). Private collection - Minneapolis, MN.
Crosscurrent develops the vessel imagery that entered my work in the late 1980s, growing from my earlier experience with ceramics and the functional container. The vessel-like steel forms were cut from found sections of pinched steel tube or pipe, but here they begin to read more clearly as ship hulls. The tall ladder-like structure and precarious arrangement give the work a strong sense of movement and passage—ideas that would become increasingly important in my sculpture.
The title Crosscurrent suggests forces moving in different directions—things at odds with one another and the difficulty of maintaining a course through them. The painted steel reflects my experiments with pastel drawing at the time, when color began moving from my works on paper into sculpture and expanding the expressive possibilities of the stone-and-steel vocabulary.
October 1988. Granite, painted steel. Dimensions: 168 × 48 × 24 in (427 × 122 × 61 cm). Private collection - Minneapolis, MN.
Crosscurrent develops the vessel imagery that entered my work in the late 1980s, growing from my earlier experience with ceramics and the functional container. The vessel-like steel forms were cut from found sections of pinched steel tube or pipe, but here they begin to read more clearly as ship hulls. The tall ladder-like structure and precarious arrangement give the work a strong sense of movement and passage—ideas that would become increasingly important in my sculpture.
The title Crosscurrent suggests forces moving in different directions—things at odds with one another and the difficulty of maintaining a course through them. The painted steel reflects my experiments with pastel drawing at the time, when color began moving from my works on paper into sculpture and expanding the expressive possibilities of the stone-and-steel vocabulary.
