Albert Paley is an American modern sculptor, renowned for his monumental metal sculptures. He has worked as a jeweler and a goldsmith. He challenges metals of all types to go beyond the rigid structures, that it usually represents, and to fashion more organic forms. His skills are grounded in working with metals in a super-heated state, where they are more plastic. He is able to manipulate the metals into more natural forms. This is one paradox, which he creates within his sculptures of rigid forms juxtaposed with more organic forms.
Albert Paley is very meticulous about the monumental sculptures and how it relates to the environment. This may be in the natural setting or in the architectural spaces where the sculpture is located. His other important consideration, is how the people viewing the sculpture will interact with it. Will the pedestrians walk around it ,or will they be allowed to walk through it, or will they be only able to view it from across the street?
The recent request from him was to erect a "gate" for a zoo. He was asked to place figurative elements representing animals, trees, and flowers in the massive sculpture. Models were built of the "gate" and each of the figurative elements individually. New skills were developed to form all of these elements.
"Drawing is very intimate. You focus all your energy on seeing something and understanding every element; it's a kind of hyper-realization." Albert Paley started drawing early on in his career, beginning at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. He was interested in nature, in particular the forms exhibited in the natural environment. These images would some day work itself into the organic elements in his sculptures.
Most recently, Albert Paley has created large metal sculptures from the discarded materials from his previous work and from what is left-over at his source for iron and steel (from other projects). He may juxtapose steel "I-beams" with left-over steel cylinders and remains of cut-out sheets of steel.
I am a sculptor. I have used recycled steel for my sculptures. Skills were needed to bend steel rods and curved steel sheets. I am familiar with some types of welding, but I could learn a lot about the welding done by Albert Paley. This was an exciting weekend for me at the Grounds for Sculpture.
Quotes by Albert Paley:
"The sculpture is quite different from the actual animals. My intent was not to do a naturalistic rendition. Then you just cast an animal. With this there was an interpretive quality as well. Why should people experience anything? Why do we do what we do? Those questions are important."
"What I was dealing with was complexity and interlacing and interrelationship and - I just perceive things incredibly complex and I have all the skills and disciplines - that was evident in the metal, plus the demands of thinking, the demands of control, the demands of process and material."
"All my other work is abstract, non-literal. This time I was using technology to create a visual, literal vocabulary. You cut a piece of steel and it has an edge, but if you cut it a certain way it can look like fur or feathers. Serpentine forms become a snake weaving through a jungle or fish swimming in the ocean."
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