Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Thaddeus Mosley at Karma in 2023

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 202025
 

The hand carved wood sculptures above were created from 2020-2022 by Pittsburgh artist Thaddeus Mosley and were on view at Karma in NYC in 2023.

From the gallery’s press release-

In a recent photograph taken in his studio, Thaddeus Mosley peers between the soaring columns of his sculptures. They are gallant constructions of wood, each hand-carved and formed out of unique sections from three to four logs. With his chisel, Mosley exalts the warm tones and woodgrain which lay beneath the outer tree bark. His dimensions vary, ranging from monumental to modest, rounded to angular, vaulted to hovering just above the ground. Their presence is determined by Mosley’s negotiation between natural materials and an exploration of weight and space. A feat of balance, his sculptures exist in a constant state of suspension: heavy sections seem to float above the delicately-carved pieces that support them.

Mosley began creating wooden sculptures in the 1950s while working at the United States Postal Service, which enabled him to both provide for his family and develop his craft in his free time. At 96 years old, Mosley continues his life’s work as an artist in his Pittsburgh studio near the Allegheny River. A strong influence in his practice can be traced to his encounter with a photograph of African American grave markers in Georgia. According to Mosley, their slender, soaring forms called to mind Constantin Brâncuși’s Bird in Space (1923). He explains that “in each of them I saw a similar spirit, a similar approach to clean fluid shapes coming from people working close to the earth and trying to fuse the earth and human spirituality into a single form.”

Mosley allows the natural forms of wood to guide him toward a conceptual and aesthetic meeting point, where European modernism meets the abstract and interpretive traditions of West African mask-making, and the movement of his chisel captures the rhythmic improvisations of a Jazz soloist. Mosley’s process bears traces of Isamu Noguchi’s own navigation of natural materials, providing new meaning to the late sculptor’s adage that “it is weight which provides meaning to weightlessness.”

Working primarily in hardwoods such as walnut, cherry, and chestnut, Mosley reveres the surfaces he uncovers with his chisel: deep lustres, arcs of bright coloration, growth rings, and the shadowy depth within deep cuts. Panoramic Quarter (2021) brings together inverted forms, in which recessed spirals and connected logs create a dramatic inflection. Horizontality is emphasized in Phase of a Phrase (2022), while Path of Pendulum (2020) delights in the vertical movement of arching forms, which are composed in a gravity-defying embrace. His work dances with viewers as they encircle it.  Mosley’s dynamic forms encourage deep looking, whether it is in Id (2021), a low, conical carving, or Southwestern Suite (2021), in which monumental sections seem to vanish when viewed at specific angles. In Elegiac Stanza for Sam Gilliam (2022), Mosley honors the life of the abstract painter and close friend through a lyrical intersection of walnut, varying between hewn and smooth surfaces.

On rare occasions, Mosley has incorporated salvaged metals into particular pieces of hardwood. In the case of Industrial Collage (2022), a curved cut of steel is affixed to a base of walnut, from which Mosley has balanced two pieces of chestnut, adorned with pounded metal that has been grounded off from the steel section. Mosley salvaged the steel piece from an abandoned industrial building, where it was previously used as a support beam for an industrial fan. It stayed with him in his studio for fourteen years while Mosley waited, searching for the right slab of wood. Each piece of wood, every material for Mosley is subject to this process of aesthetic consideration: a three-dimensional call-and-response.

His work can currently be seen in City Hall Park in NYC for the exhibition Touching the Earth, on view until 11/16/2025. The eight bronzes included were cast from wood sculptures he made between 1996 and 2021.

For more information on the artist- this ARTNews article is an interesting read.

Delaware Art Shows- Nate Harris at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Delaware, Mixed Media, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Dec 192024
 

“Fire in the Fishtank (Synchronized Dance)”, 2022, oil on birch, white oak, cherry, walnut

“Blue Like Jazz”, 2022, oil on birch, oak, and “Who more Sci-Fi than us?”, 2023, acrylic on mdf, walnut

“Blue Like Jazz”, 2022, oil on birch, oak, and “Who more Sci-Fi than us?”, 2023, acrylic on mdf, walnut (detail)

“Even Keel”, 2019, various wood, and “Yellow Butter, Purple Jelly, Red Jam, Black Bread”, 2023, acrylic on mdf, cherry

“Even Keel”, 2019, various wood

“Crowd IV”, 2016, woodcut print on BFK Rives cream

Multidisciplinary artist Nate Harris’s work for Arrangement, his solo exhibition at The Delaware Contemporary, highlights his ability to use his training in graphic design to create unique work using a variety of materials.

From the museum-

Design begins with the fundamentals; lines, shapes, and colors create compositional variety. No matter how complex the resulting product is, it can be broken down into these foundational elements. A keystone of design is “arrangement”. It defines whether the composition is representational or abstract, if it is a pattern and showcases repetition, or highlights key moments of visual interest. Multidisciplinary artist, Nate Harris, understands the critical nature of arrangement and by examining several mediums, showcases his expansive power of this knowledge base.

Based in New York City, Nate Harris is a formally trained graphic designer, who utilizes these fundamental elements as a launching point to direct variable bodies of work. While Harris produces with an array of mediums and in a range of scale, wood is a central throughline in much of his work. In his practice, wood can be utilized as an incised tool to create graphic prints or carved as an added sculptural element. Inspired by experimentation, Harris does not discard materials, opting to hold onto wood shards and other spare pieces. These leftovers are saved, sometimes for years, as shapes destined for unknown, future works. Harris navigates this “library of materials” as an iterative resource and a welcome limitation; the path into his experimentation that is also influenced by spatial constraints within his studio.

With a deep understanding of graphic elements, Harris can combine this education with his innate comfortability with wood as a medium. As a young man, Harris liked to work with his hands; fixing his bike and building skate ramps with friends, and this foundation has allowed Harris to transcend the medium within his practice. Through shape, color, and line, Harris consistently redefines his aesthetic. His woodblock prints can depict geometric figures animated with movement, while others may showcase abstract and clean duplication, ultimately becoming patterns themselves. Harris will expand from the surface itself, layering wood in conjunction with other materials, or will use numerous types of wood to create a free-standing sculpture.

Harris’s approach is based on fundamentals, uniquely propelled through material, and grounded in experimental vigor. These works showcase his keen sensibility as a designer, while simultaneously blurring this concept with fine woodworking. Harris is in dialogue with these two constructs continuously to create a style that expands definitions of design and fine art together.

This exhibition closes 12/29/24.

Ohio Art Shows- Barbara Stanczak at Akron Art Museum

 Akron, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Mixed Media, Ohio Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture
Feb 152024
 

“The Flameless Green Dragon”, 2018, Elm and acrylic

“In Rhythm”, 2018, Elm and acrylic; and “Water Music”, 2002, Inkjet photocollage on paper

“Introvert”, 2019, Elm; “Engendering Life”, 2020, Green soapstone

Two left sculptures made of Italian translucent alabaster and “Harboring Emptiness”, 2021, Maple and acrylic

Above are several works from Barbara Stanczak Spirit and Matter, the artist’s recent exhibition at Akron Art Museum.  Stanczak’s sculptures are energetic shapes created in partnership with the natural materials used.

From the museum’s web page-

Barbara Stanczak’s sculptures are born from an essential combination: the artist’s creative vision and the natural qualities of her materials. This two-sided collaboration remains in effect throughout Stanczak’s entire process of conceiving and creating an artwork. A piece of wood or stone presents initial possibilities that help to set a direction, but invariably the course will change—the substance may be so hard as to resist carving, or it may contain internal structures that must be accommodated. But the artist does not surrender her own interests, as she has found that a successful work must become the physical embodiment of a rich and valuable idea. In her own words, “I can only hold onto my idea of the whole by letting go of ‘mine’ and focusing on ‘our.’ The material becomes a partner who needs my patience, respect, thoughtfulness, cooperation, skill, and persistence.”

Stanczak committed to working with wood and stone only after a long process of discovery. Born in Germany in 1941, she moved to the United States in 1960 to assist her grandfather in painting church frescoes, and later worked in handmade paper, metal, and a variety of other media. She also worked alongside her husband, Julian Stanczak, whose paintings and prints were celebrated at the Akron Art Museum with a one-artist show in 2013. As her own career evolved throughout her thirty-seven-year tenure as a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Barbara carved her first wooden sculpture in 1992. “I was tired of searching,” she recalls. “It was time to arrive!”

Stanczak continues to find wood and stone compelling because, as she puts it, they are constantly “teasing, tempting, and provoking me to see more, to see beyond, to see the micro and the macro of the universe.” She finds these universal qualities not in immediately recognizable forms like leaves and flowers, but rather in dense rings and layers, subtle features formed over decades or even thousands of years. As Stanczak exercises her own intuition, she aligns it with these natural processes. As the artist and the materials harmonize, it is as if two forms of intelligence are working together—as if spirit and matter are not so separate as one might expect.