Sculptor puts life into steel

By LAURIE M. FISHER
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
A 10-foot-tall circular black steel sculpture creates several steady streams of water that empty into a 4-foot-square reservoir. Smooth gray stones are precisely placed into trays surrounding the base.
In an opposite gallery corner, a skylight brightens the aqua leaded glass parallelograms set in an angular bronze 8-foot work.
The art of Don Gummer is a study in contrasts and challenges for the Butler Institute of American Art.
More than 27 of his works are part of a retrospective exhibition entitled "The Lyrical Constructivist: Don Gummer Sculpture," which will run through April 21.
This is not Gummer's first work in the area. His monumental sculpture, "Primary Compass" was dedicated in front of the Trumbull Butler branch in 2000.
His materials: Gummer uses both dense media such as steel and bronze as well as fragile materials such as balsa wood and foam core to create his free-standing and wall-relief structures. Individual works typically use flowing curves or hard-edged angles.
"My work uses the same principals of constructivism," he explained in a telephone interview from his New York studio. "I introduce more elements and vertical movement, instead of abstract ideas in space," he added.
Gummer said he begins the creative process with a notion, not a fixed feeling of something. "I decide that I want to do something with curves, fluid movement, something that has life. As I start putting things together, things change. It's always a challenge to stay focused and yet stay open to change."
Often Gummer begins his work with cardboard, paper, wax and wood. When the structure design is complete, a work may be cast into bronze molds made by a foundry.
"The term lyrical is a good one [to describe his works]. They are fanciful," said Butler executive director Lou Zona. "You think of steel as dense, heavy metal. The fact that he bends it and puts light through it creates a feeling of lightness. However, try to move a piece 10 inches, and you realize what an incredible medium steel is to work with."
Here was challenge: The weight of the large steel sculptures challenged the show's installers. The work arrived via large moving vans in supersized crates. Workers were relieved to discover that art could be transported to the second floor on the museum's elevator. Many items were placed with a crane and forklift and required extra manpower from Pincham Moving Company.
This installation has been a "physical challenge beyond belief," Zona said, but noted the result was worth the extra effort.
Gummer said he did not place the pieces in the galleries in chronological order, but by physical requirements as well as how they relate to one another.
"A sculptor looks at a room like a painter looks at a canvas," explained Zona. "While he wants individual works to satisfy a space, certain pieces should be grouped together, while others stand apart."
For example, under Gummer's precise direction, he requested that the fountain be located on a stone floor. The stone, steel and water sculpture weighs more than 2,000 pounds. Installers had to check with local architect Bob Buchanan to make sure the 100-year-old museum could structurally sustain the work.
During midweek, pieces were still being moved around the galleries. Gummer and museum staff consulted long-distance via digital photography and staff progress reports.
In contrast to the heavy-duty steel and concrete, a series of painted ultra-lightweight wooden wall sculptures fill the adjoining gallery wall.
Inspired by drawing with his 10-year-old daughter at the kitchen table, he originally made "small abstract doodles," which he later developed into wall reliefs.
Biography: Gummer was born in Louisville, Ky., in 1946 and was reared in Indianapolis. He entered the Herron School of Fine Arts in Indianapolis and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He earned bachelor's and master's of fine arts from Yale University School of Fine Arts, New Haven, Conn.
He works at his studio in New York and his home in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife, actress Meryl Streep, and their four children.
"The fundamental basis of my sculpture must rest on solid ground in real life. Gravity, space and time are the three elements that exclusively fill natural reality. I want my work to embrace reality; therefore it must be physically based on these three elements," Gummer explained in his artist's statement.
"The aim of my work is to identify and display creative life through an intuitive manipulation of structure [gravity], shape [space] and movement [time]. I begin with the assumption that I can make a sculpture that isolates the movement when natural reality and human emotion unite to form spiritual recognition. The art is the guiding process from its hopeful beginning to physical completion without compromising the sculpture's true nature," he continued.
XA public reception for the artist will be from 1 to 3 p.m. March 17 at the Butler. At 2 p.m. Newsweek art critic Peter Plagens, author of a book on Gummer's work, will present a gallery talk and informal tour.