Sculpture Source

On May 25th, 2009, Brigitte Micmacker conducted an interview with Mark Chatterley. Chatterley will open a new solo exhibition at Sculpturesite Gallery on June 25th.

Brigitte Micmacker:  Mark, you have been making life-size figurative sculptures in clay for close to twenty years now. What was the impetus for moving in this direction?

Mark Chatterley:  I didn’t realize it has been so long, it seems like I am just starting on working on the figure.  I started out my career by making vessels, but they soon got boring, everything was round or distorted round.   I came to think of the pots as human forms.  The names you use to describe a vessel are human: lip, foot, belly, neck, shoulder.   So I decided to go right to the figure and take the functional quality out of the work.  The ancient Greeks postulated that Man is the measure of all things.  So I set out to understand the human condition.  Proportions, relationships, survival.

BM:  You built your own walk-in kiln, which you fill with many works and fire every three months. Did you adapt your work method to this huge kiln, or did you build the kiln to match your natural work rhythms? 

MC:  My kiln is 700 cubic feet, 8 feet high by 9 feet wide by 10 feet long.  I like that I can walk right into the kiln to load the work.  The reason I built such a big kiln was that I wanted to work big but did not want to fire the works in parts.  I found the seams to be visually distracting.   I thought I would never build anything bigger then this kiln.  The second time I fired it I had to dig the floor out to get the work in.  I fire a body of work around every 3 months.  I build non stop 6-7 days a week to fill the kiln.  Then I bisque fire, next the work comes out and I glaze for 2 weeks, and re-fire.

(interview will continue tomorrow)

Throughout time, sculptors have sought to produce works that are as permanent as possible, working with materials such as bronze and stone: marble, limestone, porphyry and granite as well as gold, silver and ivory. Less expensive materials are used as well for sculpture for wider consumption, including steel, glass, hardwoods, terracotta and other ceramics, plaster, and cast metals such as pewter, aluminum and zinc.

Some sculpture, often referred to as ephemeral, such as ice sculpture, sand sculpture, sculpture using sticks and leaves and gas sculpture is, by design, short-lived. Many sculptors seek new ways and materials to make art.  After Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal (one of his most famous “ready-mades”) in 1917 at a New York salon, everyday objects became accepted materials for sculpture.

With the advent of new technologies, many different materials are now used in sculpture, sometimes in conjunction with each other, in what is called Mixed Media or, for the works including video or sound, New Media. Yet, sculptors are also still using cast bronze and terracotta, in much the same way as they have for millennia. Today, when selecting a material for a sculpture, collectors have to take into consideration longevity, maintenance issues, but also desired effect and location (an outdoor sculpture in Canada does not allow as many possibilities for material as an indoor piece in a dry, temperate climate.)

Some of the most stunning, original, and famous artwork emerged in what is known as the modern age, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century. Works such as “The Scream” by the expressionist Edvard Munch and “Campbell’s Soup Cans” by Pop artist Andy Warhol were created during this time period. Ending roughly around 1970, works that came after are typically called contemporary art, or sometimes postmodern art. Modern art is closely related to, but not synonymous with modernism, which was also a break with the old, but specifically spurred by World War I.

When people list famous artists, they almost always hail from this era. The works of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Vassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, Henri Moore, and many, many more were all created during this time. The overall movement was a time of tremendous experimentation. As such, the bent toward abstraction began to emerge increasingly throughout this time. Noted sculptors were Picasso, Matisse, Arp, Duchamp, Brancusi, Calder and Smith. Each had his own unique style, but whether they created an abstract sculpture or merely a twist on realism, the sculptors of this time period provided unending inspiration for future generations of artists.