Sculptor Bradley Arthur expresses himself with vigor in his life and his art; as usual, a current exhibit of work old and new has plenty to say too.
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published May 27, 2004
[Image from Bradley Arthur]
Bradley Arthur, Capitalist, 2000, found object assemblage.
ST. PETERSBURG - Sculptor Bradley Arthur always has had a lot to say.
Plenty, for example, when some Hillsborough County commissioners complained that a sculpture he created for the Sheriff's Department under a public arts program was rusting and he contended the rust was an integral part of the work.
Plenty more, in another example, when leaders at a St. Petersburg synagogue disposed of an outdoor sculpture they say was an abandoned eyesore and he says was on loan.
An exhibition of works at the Galleries at Salt Creek, about half of them new, makes clear he's still talking.
Arthur does not mince words: He slices and dices them, using them as vehicles for both form and content. There's nothing allusive or subtle in the barbed wire he has used for years to craft a word or phrase into a "barb." For a new series he calls "wordzworkx," he has switched mostly to steel forged with more complexity, sometimes painted or gold-leafed. A word or phrase is hung flush on the wall. Attached at a right angle, so it is not readable, is another word or phrase. But downlighting projects its shadow directly below. So we see "FREE" in metal juxtaposed with "DUMB" as the shadow message. Or a pairing: "IDOL" and "WORSHIP" with "IDLE" and "WARSHIP." Sometimes it's too clever, bludgeoning us with portent. But conceptually, the works have a lyricism and beauty that can't be dismissed as they combine the solid with the ephemeral. The point they make beyond their overt messages - and sometimes counterintuitive to those messages - is that the things of humans are only fleeting.
The exhibition includes sculptures, most from the 1980s, using found objects. The common denominator in most are metal measuring tapes that Arthur bends around objects like old tools and ratty pieces of wood. Some have a frenetic, unfocused look, but others are fine in their spareness. Premier, for example, from 1983, uses the bent head of a small red rake as a base for the metal tape sprouting from it in rigid loops that grow like wild grass.
Beep Beep from 1988 loops the tape measure more horizontally, almost like a large blossom. An unplanned component was the lizard that sneaked into the gallery and perched in its center, giving it a shot of verisimilitude as well as attitude.
Among those that don't work is Capitalist, a way-too-obvious, crudely wrought hash of objects that include a dollar bill stuck through a computer disk and a slab of rock that looks like a piece of cheese.
LunaSea (more ouchy wordplay), created in 1999, seems to indicate a move toward more cerebral crafting. An old gas meter (or some mechanism associated with gas according to what I could read upside down on its rusting metal surface) anchors it and, given the title, it's probably the political underpinning for the piece. But the sculpture's value comes more from its formal elements than its didacticism, which seems to stop with the meter. Arthur twists copper tubes, soldered with brass, that gleam and stretch upward beside rough corrugated pieces of metal painted an unexpected blue. It has harmony and cohesion. Those qualities say all they need to.
"Simma down now," I'm thinking (thank you, Cheri Oteri of Saturday Night Live for that immortal observation). Art speaks for itself.
"Bradley Arthur: Artists' Matters" is at the Galleries at Salt Creek, 1600 Fourth St. S, St. Petersburg through Saturday. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (727) 894-2653.
