Martin Puryear
Martin Puryear
Martin Puryearis an American artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in wood and bronze, among other media, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials.:54-57...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth23 May 1941
CountryUnited States of America
quality identity today
There remains this belief that the work itself can have an identity that can speak, whether it's through beauty, or through ugliness, or whatever quality you put into the work. The work doesn't have to be a transparent vehicle for you to say things about life today.
american-sculptor felt
I felt it was part of the spirit of the whole program to do more than simply make an object.
magic range site
The site I landed on feels much more isolated than it really is; it's almost magical. Within its limited radius, there was a whole range of the local ecology.
ideas rawness chance
Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.
casting method carving
I realized it wasn't necessary to work in the traditional methods of carving and casting.
objects pure
I was never interested in making cool, distilled, pure objects.
knowing
The work is flowing from an inner knowing of how things really are.
art together sculpture
At a certain point, I just put the building and the art impulse together. I decided that building was a legitimate way to make sculpture.
grieving fire mobility
The fire was followed by a period of grieving and then by an incredible lightness, freedom, and mobility.
sculpture kind spontaneity
There is the potential for much more spontaneity with prints than there is with the sculpture, which tends to be very slow, accretive kind of process-labor intensive.
thinking two way
When I went to Africa I think that was when I really found a way to deal with what I had recently discovered; in two-dimensional terms, at least.
hands people working-together
The most precise work is generally done by hand, with hand tools. Some people rely on machines for their precision, and my way of working is backwards. I rely on the machines for doing the gross stock removal and then, when it comes to the final refinements and fitting of joints and things, making things work together, I rely more on sharp-edged tools that I push by hand.
art interesting people
I’m interested in vernacular cultures, where people lived a little closer to the source of materials and the making of objects for use. And for me, not to rely strictly on the history of art has always been an interesting process, to be looking into areas that we call craft and trades.
moving thinking grace
I think of moving as a kind of saving grace.