Steve Lohman’s whimsical thin wire and thicker steel sculptures at the Turpentine Gallery make you smile with glee. They are playful drawings in space, all constructed with a single line that animates his compositions of birds and figures in all sorts of poses. Whether small, large, hanging, or standing, Lohman’s art comes alive, vibrating or bouncing in space with the merest of touches or the smallest of breezes.
Situated on the West Tisbury gallery’s beautiful grounds outdoors, the sculptures interact with the foliage and natural light, making them look different from every angle as you walk up and around them.
Lohman explains his artistic process. He doesn’t start with pencil sketches, but instead “draws” in wire. Indeed, an array of these black-wire quick sketches is on display.
“I work in wire to design. I’m better at drawing with wire than a pencil. I was a wood furnituremaker from the 1980s to the early ’90s, and I used wire to make rapid sketches. Then I started putting people in, to see if they looked comfortable, and to get a sense of scale.”
He continues, “I did them for years before I thought of them as anything more. Then I started taking wire with me when I traveled around the world. I would have a coil of wire and a pair of pliers. If someone invited me into their home, I would make something. They liked watching it happen in front of them. Often I would make a piece to pay for a meal at a restaurant or my stay at a hotel.”
Primarily working from live models, Lohman makes his sketches in about 20 minutes. The short timespan circumvents overthinking, as he is caught up in the sheer act of creating. Those that catch his fancy he then transforms into larger sculptures.
Lohman, who spends part of every year in New Orleans, finds the warmer climate perfect for working in steel, laying it out in the sun for a few hours to soften before working.
When sculpting the large pieces, he uses the palm of his hand to coax the steel, sometimes needing to warm it up with a torch when he wants to create tight bends.
“Everything’s freeform. That’s what gives it that spontaneous sense,” he notes. “I want it to look like I took a pencil and drew in the air. To do that, you don’t want perfect lines. You want it to have that quick, gestural feeling, which is easy to do with thin wire, but much harder when working with larger steel.”
The bigger sculptures might have 40 or 50 feet of steel, so Lohman works in segments of roughly 12-foot lengths at a time. He bends one segment and then another, and welds them together.
The next step is cleaning up the welded spots so that they become invisible, before painting the piece white if he is not going to leave it in its original stainless steel silver. “The paint creates a beautiful gloss, and also holds up to the elements well, which is important in places like Martha’s Vineyard,” explains Lohman.
Lohman sometimes works on commissions. Most often, people will come to him with a space and ask him for ideas: “I think, as a sculptor, that’s more likely.” Although sometimes people will buy an existing work. “Often,” he says, “they want me to make something for them. Calculating how a sculpture will fit into someone’s environment is part of the creative process.
“I’m fortunate that I love what I do. I tend to find that when anyone comes up with a project, even if, at first, I don’t think maybe that it will be really interesting. These are often the ones I end up enjoying the most, although they might not be the type of thing I have in mind at first glance.
“People, when they look at my work, often see things in a new way,” Lohman says. “I think a lot of people get intimidated by art. But you can look at these and say, ‘I get this,’ even though it has abstract elements. If I can give someone a new way of seeing, that’s fabulous.”
“Steve Lohman Sculptures” runs through September at the Turpentine Gallery, 554 State Road in West Tisbury. Reception is on Sunday, Sept. 15, 5 to 7 pm.
