‘Seven Sculptors’ Offers Engaging Sampling

In David Engbritson’s “Cone,” part of the “Seven Sculptors” exhibition at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Gallery, an opening roughly the size of a human head hangs at eye level, beckoning our gaze within. What we see when we peer through the wood slat construction is a charred interior--at odds with the gold painted exterior--and a small segment of the gallery floor, visible through the cone’s open point.

Silhouetted against this patch of floor are two small spiders that have taken up residence in the artwork. Their presence there, however unintentional, nevertheless satisfies a desire, shared by most of the sculptors here, for their work to be encountered in real space. No pedestals here; the work either stands freely on the floor or hangs from the wall or ceiling. These artists dissolve the distanced, protected realm of traditional sculpture and situate their work within our casual grasp.

Sculpture now, more often than not, exists in the same physical and psychological domain we inhabit daily. It aims to expand that realm, to stretch its boundaries to embrace metaphor, magic, mystery and memory. Of the seven artists in this show--an annual, invitational exhibition featuring emerging and mid-career artists--most do enrich that space. They fill it with curious visual presences and catalysts of the imagination. Together they present an engaging sample of sculptural possibilities.

The show’s only disappointments come in the form of technical theatrics that aspire to no real meaning, as in the case of Carol Hepper, or that aspire to more meaning than they deliver, as in Yolande McKay’s work. Thick bunches of bent willow twigs spew out of the curved metal pipe joints in Hepper’s work, stretching and twisting to make the next turn. Though physically commanding, the work’s dialogue between the organic and the artificial stops just past the point of introductions, leaving little for the viewer to mull over.

McKay’s weighty concrete forms have the imposing but ultimately powerless presence of blind authority. Each contains a clear glass window allowing a view of its interior, empty but for the interesting tones and textures of the walls. McKay alludes to a more pointed purpose in her work and to the threat of danger, but she never follows through.

Slighter in substance but far more enveloping sensually and intellectually are Wade Saunders’ small bronze “Water Drawings.” Part of a much larger series, these 15 objects grouped on the floor resemble tools, musical instruments, internal organs, plant forms, all of which are capable of being vessels or channels for fluids. A tight cluster of pod-like forms, a curved pipe, a wheel with knobby spokes--each bears the imprint of the human hand, having first been molded in wax, then cast in bronze.

Their gray, smoky surfaces and irregular, hand-wrought textures assert an affinity with the Earth, and they sit here as if freshly emerged, evidence of an earlier, simpler era. Tangible sketches of another time, they soak in the aura of history and human use. Shades of whimsy and mystery also graze across the work, giving it a refreshing breadth of interpretations.

Works by both Zizi Raymond and Michael Peed reach backward, too, into a personal past laced with both nostalgia and tension. Both artists also defy expectations of their materials.

In one of Raymond’s witty constructions, a stream of steel wool pours from an old-fashioned milk bottle into a limp heap on the floor. The bottle rests on its side on a wooden table that has been sliced in half and mounted high on the gallery wall. The proverbial spilled milk elicits no tears here, only a cry of surprise at the disjunctive play of materials.

Raymond’s “Secrets” has richer narrative potential as well as several of the same challenges to gravity, stability and logic. Here, half of a short ladder leans into empty space, its forward pull offset by a metal case a few feet away, to which it is attached by string. The case, closed with a padlock, sits, tilted, on a rolling pin. Ladder, case, rolling pin and string are all painted black, which shifts their significance from the functional to the metaphoric. Atop the ladder rest two clear glass jars, each holding a little girl’s black patent leather shoe. The shoes are preserved, relics, perhaps, of a thwarted journey toward maturity.

Two of Peed’s works also address memories of youth, but in a more lighthearted, sentimental manner. In one scene, father and daughter drive through the “Garden of the Gods,” Dad wide-eyed and gesturing broadly, the daughter holding the car door with a tentative hand and glancing at the spectacles outside with equally reticent eyes. In “Merle’s House,” two boys peer into the bedroom window of a young man who has just stripped to his underwear to pose before the mirror, flexing his nonexistent muscles.

The cartoon-like quality of these subjects is matched by their simplified forms, carved out of wood in low relief, then painted or varnished. The works address the viewer as paintings, rectangular windows on the world, but they also possess a weight and physicality exclusive to sculpture. The sophistication of Peed’s dialogue with technique jars with his childlike, cliched images, yielding a style that is clever and catchy.

Creighton Michael and David Engbritson refer to organic forms and geometric shapes in their work, but both remain purposefully vague. They invite our musings on the notion of gravity and challenge our expectations of materials, making the solid fluid and the common precious. Together with the other artists in the show, which continues through March 25, they spread a varied and often tantalizing feast of sculptural possibilities.