A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #27: July '09 - Cont'd
Gregory Nangle: Outcast Studios
Greg Nangle in his studio
Photograph by Paul David
Greg grew up in Narberth, Pennsylvania and studied glass at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He found his niche working in liquid metal at the University of Hartford Art School. Since then he has focused on pieces that marry the two materials. His mentors have been from Russia and Africa, with influences in surrealist sculpture.
In his childhood years, his parents encouraged his talent. But Greg often defied traditional classifications. School administrators shuttled him to classes for both the learning disabled and the extremely gifted children—not knowing to which he belonged. Though he had trouble absorbing information in the classroom, at only ten years old he was reading books such as James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses.
Knowing he was different, Greg later realized that he is a self-taught person, or “auto-didactic.” He reads constantly, and a lot of his artwork has been inspired by his curiosity about the world.
“I don’t have any natural talent in art,” Greg explains. “I have had to work twice as hard at something other people would take for granted, because of how my mind works.”
Nangle's spray can sculptures, glass
Courtesy of Greg Nangle
In addition to his own work, Greg is the owner of Outcast Studios, an art foundry and gallery in Fishtown—a newly gentrified neighborhood of Philadelphia. Fishtown earned its namesake from the working-class fishermen who sailed from nearby Port Richmond. Three generations of Greg’s family, including his father, grew up only a few blocks away from where his studio now sits. On one particular visit to his cousins’ as a child, he recalls walking by the old sandcasting foundry he now owns. “Looking inside [at the fire from the furnace], I was convinced it was Hell itself,” he remembers.
Bronze sculpture by Greg Nangle
Courtesy of Greg Nangle
Greg also recently founded a non-profit called the Philadelphia Industrial Preservation Experiment—or P.I.P.E.—which is the first glass blowing program for high school kids with special needs.
“I like to look backwards to look forward,” Greg says, adding that he will continue to experiment. Given what he’s already accomplished with a successful art foundry and non-profit organization, he had a very simple answer when asked what the future of Outcast Studios will bring: “We’ll be here working.”
Nangle has several upcoming exhibitions which feature his work in glass and bronze. On July 17-19, 2009, one of Nangle’s recent pieces will be shown in the GlassWeekend’09 exhibition at the Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center’s Museum of American Glass in Millville, NJ. He currently is exhibiting his spraypaint cans with glass, bronze and mixed materials at Micada Gallery in San Francisco, CA. Photographs of his recent work can also be seen in an upcoming book titled 100 Artists Working in Glass, which will be published by Schiffer Books.
Resources:
Artist, Gregory Nangle, demonstrating the art and craft of marrying copper and glass, in his art foundry, Outcast Studios.
Outcast Studios, Fishtown, PA, (267) 242-1332The Movement of Bronze: Andrew DeVries
Venus Torso, by Andrew DeVries
Courtesy of Andrew DeVries
Everywhere there is motion, and energy. It's there in the moments frozen in time in the dancers' poses; poses that are never entirely static, never fully in equilibrium. Instead, they seem to be forever going somewhere in a timeless choreography that implies its past and future yet offers only its immediate present as a certainty.
A kindred motion and energy are also evident in the surfaces of the bronze itself, where the artist shapes the metal's surfaces not to render the forms more realistic but to make them more expressionistic and more impassioned.
As a result, DeVries' art is as much about abstraction as it is about realism. As the two function together in the same work of art, they serve and add to each other, making each stronger and the combination in the finished work stronger yet.
DeVries produces his work in sizes ranging from as small as nine inches high to as large as 50 inches, with a few works considerably larger. Like most bronze sculptors, the vast majority of his pieces are produced in limited editions. For the smaller works, the edition size ranges from as few as 30 to as many as 100 works. The larger sculptures are produced in smaller editions, usually ranging between eight and 12 pieces.
By far the largest pieces to come from DeVries studio are his commissioned sculptures. In nearly all cases, these are scaled up versions of smaller works. An early example of this type is 1989's “Dance of the Morning,” which recreates a small bronze originally produced two years earlier. Destined for an outdoor location at the Hebrew Home hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, the nine-foot tall sculpture's dancing figure exalts the vitality that powers and celebrates life. You can see and feel this power in the roughly modeled forms of the figure's bronze musculature, and in the unstable pose which makes the figure appear to extend itself outside of the restraints of its base and thereby to engage with the wider world beyond.
“Dance of the Morning,” which was cast in seven sections welded together, also reveals what the artist refers to as his “intuitive engineering” which allows him to successfully construct the sculpture in spite of the fact that much of its weight is diagonally off-center relative to the single foot which links the dancer to its foundation. He achieves these results by adjusting the thickness of the work's bronze walls at various points, so that they're thicker where they bear more weight and thinner where less structural strength is required.
Sculptor Andrew DeVries at work
Courtesy of Andrew DeVries
Largely self taught, DeVries came to his approach to sculpture and art making through two major influences. The first was his experience repairing heavy machinery used on the farm his family owns near Rochester, New York. The experience gave him his first tastes of working with metals and sparked an intense determination to be an artist; more specifically, to be a sculptor.
Having set this goal for himself, he dropped out of high school and set off on a journey across the United States that soon would take him to his next point of significant destiny - a ballet studio in Denver, Colorado. There, over the course of a couple of years, he would spend nearly every day producing pencil and charcoal drawings of every detail and nuance of the dancers' poses and movements. Simultaneously he started working with clay, the material with which almost all bronze sculpture begins. All of the work that DeVries has since produced emerges from these beginnings on the farm and at the dance studio.
visitors to DeVries site can view a wide array of his bronze sculpture spanning more than two decades, learn more about the artist's unique personal story, and take a virtual tour of the extensive studio facility he built for himself in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts. You'll see him dancing with bronze, and dancing with life, in everything he touches.
“It is the artist’s duty to stretch the boundaries of our day-to-day experiences and go beyond them to a deeper understanding of ourselves,” adds DeVries.
Resources:
Andrew DeVries, Huntington, MA, (413) 238-7755
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Copper in the Arts: EVENTS
- Palm Beach Jewelry, Art, and Antique Show
Feb 15, '13 - Feb 18, '13 - Native Expressions: Dave McGary’s Bronze Realism
Mar 7, '13 - Jun 30, '13 - Evolving Character Head Demonstration with John Coleman
Mar 9, '13 - Mar 9, '13 - More Upcoming Events...
Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
Capturing the Wild West Through Bronze
Jerry Anderson bronze in the Silver Reef Museum
Photograph by Regina Jasko
Anderson approaches each piece with a new perspective, and no two works are exactly alike, although all are weaved into his signature Western style.
“My heart or desire is Cowboys, all animals and a lot of Indians,” Anderson adds.
Most of Anderson’s works are made to order lifesize bronze pieces that are impressive in size and detail, capturing the emotions of his subject. His work is then cast at Adonis Bronze in Alpine, Utah and Baer Bronze in Spanish Fork, Utah.
“Bronze is the best medium to depict my artwork---it has a certain charisma or eternal feeling of power,” says Anderson.
Using the lost wax process, Anderson starts by putting an oil base clay on the maquettes and lifesize pieces. Next, he applies the mold and then waxes the piece before pouring in the bronze. To finish the work, he patinates the sculpture to achieve his desired look.
Jerry Anderson bronze sculpture
Photograph by Regina Jasko
The museum contains several copper and metal artifacts found in the town, along with a collection of Anderson’s own art work, on view throughout the year.
“It was near the house we built in Silver Reef, so it was a natural building to restore and house my work along with other artists,” adds Anderson. “My favorite piece in the museum is the one quarter life size stagecoach,” says Anderson. “My brother made the stage and I made the rest. It will eventually be the model for the world’s largest bronze. The 6 Up Stage will be 120 ft long and 28 ft tall (double life size). “
Anderson recently installed his 50th life size monument this past May, and is an advocate for public art and bronze sculpture.
“I think that world is somewhat passive to bronze artwork now,” says Anderson. “But I do believe the hearts of many city mayors and historical minded people are or should be thinking of bringing back their heroes in bronze statuary. Every city has one or two heroes.”
Resources:
Jerry Anderson Gallery and Silver Reef Museum, Silver Reef, UT, (435) 879-2254
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
MET Features Work of Renowned 19th-Century American Sculptor and Metalist Augustus Saint-Gaudens - June 30, 2009
Diana, 1892–93, Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Davida Johnson Clark, Saint-Gaudens's model and mistress, was an inspiration for Diana, an 18-foot-tall, gilt sheet-copper weathervane that once topped the tower of Stanford White's Madison Square Garden. In addition to a plaster portrait of Miss Clark, the exhibition will feature a 6–1/2-foot gilt-bronze version of Diana (modeled 1893–94, cast 1894 or after) that has long been the centerpiece of the Engelhard Court and an elegant Diana statuette (1893–94, cast 1894 or after).
Saint-Gaudens's last major public memorial was the Sherman Monument (located in Grand Army Plaza, New York). In this gilded-bronze equestrian monument, one of Manhattan's finest public sculptures, General William Tecumseh Sherman is led on his horse by a winged classicized Victory. She bears traditional attributes—a laurel crown and a palm leaf—and is depicted by the artist as a guiding force. Her outstretched right arm leads the obedient horse, upon which sits a battle-hardened General Sherman. Saint-Gaudens painstakingly arranged drapery on numerous nude models for Victory before settling on what he believed was the perfect flow of her robe. In a letter to his niece, the artist wrote, "It's the grandest Victory anybody ever made. Hooraah!"
Highlights of the exhibition include a bronze bust of General Sherman modeled from life (1888, cast 1910); a bronze Head of Victory (1897-1903, cast 1907); and the gilt-bronze statuette Victory (1892–1903, cast 1912 or after [by 1916]), reduced after the full-sized figure. Also included will be a section on Saint-Gaudens as a master medalist. A highlight will be the high-strike versions of United States $10 and $20 gold coins, considered by many to be the most beautiful examples of American currency ever struck. The exhibition will close with images of Saint-Gaudens by other artists. Examples are two etchings by Anders Zorn (1897 and 1898); two oils—one by Kenyon Cox (1887, replicated 1908) and Ellen Emmet Rand (around 1904); and a bronze bust by Saint-Gaudens's one-time assistant John Flanagan (1905–24, cast 1924).
Resources:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave., New York, NY, (212) 570-3700
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