Posted on: Sunday, March 20, 2005
Heavy-metal art with poetry included
By Victoria Gail-White
Special to The Advertiser
Frank Sheriff writes poems in bronze and steel, poignant poems, usually with a sense of humor. His poems aren't actually written in bronze; they involve a vocabulary of casting three-dimensional elements (waffle irons, crucifixes, birds, coffee filters, wings, Buddhas, elephants, dogs, torsos, lucky charms, etc.) and constructing a language by connecting them together, like sentences. This exhibit, "lefty," includes 17 works, some old, some new. Only one piece, "Desert Prophet," actually contains words — a banner with "Argue not concerning God" on it.
Richard Earl Leong Yu Ralya Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday Through Saturday thirty nine hotel gallery/cafe 39 Hotel Street 599-2552 Sheriff sketches his cast work in wax.
"Wax is a good way of sketching," he says. "With wax, I can always melt it down again. There is a certain immediacy to it. It is one of my goals, when working with the materials, that it doesn't end up being a stiff reproduction. That is what is different about my work. I am not making something out of wood, making a mold and casting it. I have control over the whole process."
Nothing about Sheriff's work is stiff. In the older works like "Lucky Jesus" (the collaged bronze statue of Jesus with a wrench, frogs, dice, and a rabbit's foot) and "Alchemic Appliance: Waffles" (an antique waffle iron cast with crucifixes for making the indentations in the waffle) we begin to see the religious, yet all-inclusive spiritual arc of Sheriff's messages — which can be interpreted as irreverent at times — and his reverence for his materials.
Lately, Sheriff has been fascinated with kinetic sculpture. In "This Must Be Nirvana 1," 14 brightly-colored, bronze and flocked (waste fibers that are applied in a near powder form) happy Buddhas spin around in circles, like the ballerinas in a music box (without the music), inside a large steel lotus blossom, when the crank is turned. The Buddhas were not cast in his usual manner, but were bought and flocked in-studio.
Two new pieces in this exhibit are more somber.
"Container 1" and "Container 2" are life-sized, boxy human figures made of cut and soldered steel plates. Sheriff bends the steel on a break, welds and grinds it. The figures are dark and heavy with strategically placed handles.
"These were made a month and a half ago, after the confirmation hearings (for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales)," says Sheriff. "When I heard that Alberto Gonzales rewrote the definition of torture, it outraged me enough to make these pieces. I don't usually work that way, but it happened. They are helpless, hollow and sealed."
The handles on these works are placed in a way that the sculptures can either be dragged around or hoisted up by a rope.
Sheriff graduated with a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Hawai'i in 1989. Presently, he is a lecturer in the Metal Fabrication and Casting Sculpture Program there. This award-winning artist has had his sculptures exhibited from Hawai'i to Italy and also in Japan. He has been an artist in residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program in Wisconsin and the University of Georgia Study Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy. His work is in the permanent collections of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, The Contemporary Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Frank Sheriff's kinetic sculpture "This Must Be Nirvana 1," steel, resin and bronze, has 14 Buddhas spinning within a lotus blossom.
'lefty': new works by Frank Sheriff
