Steven Lockwood

Steven Lockwood will be having a solo show 8/13/10-8/18/10 in Water Street Studios 2nd Floor Gallery and continuing in the adult classroom. His Opening reception will be held August 14th at 6pm.

Deriving my work from architectural influence, I like to organize geometric shapes in a manner reflecting blueprints in relief form on a wall. This allows me to work toward styles reminiscent of both the early 1880-1920 Art Nouveau and the late 1908-1935 Art Deco. Using metal, light, and plastic, I blend these periods' most known characteristics from their geometric and angular shapes to their graceful, elongated, curvy lines, with an industrial twist. I tend to use positive and negative space to interact with each other making a more elaborate surface structure. An overall industrial tone with large geometric shapes resembling cogs keeps it simple with a minimalist approach. I pursue the look of implied movement-gears fitting into each other like pieces of a puzzle. To finish it off, I enclose my work within metal picture frames to resemble paintings or low relief forms.

I pull ideas from a sense of fear that I find in the strength of towering buildings standing powerfully alone, thus I feel my strongest means of creation is with three dimensional materials. This medium, I believe, gives us a better sense and feeling of a piece's existence. We become intimately immersed within the piece, literally and physically surrounded by it. A piece may engulf or dwarf us, making us to feel its presence. I tend mostly to work with pieces on an extreme scale, inspiring the sense of intimidation we get in the presence of something massive.

Small objects may affect us in similar yet strikingly opposite ways, and, in working with small objects, I believe that I can draw out a parallel sense of intimacy in their delicacy and feebleness. Where a large object may inspire an innate sense of fear, a small piece may generate feelings of affection and pity. In both cases, large and small, the emotions evoked are functions of the objects' physical and intimate presence within the three-dimensional boundaries of our own world. We do not simply view these pieces; we live within and among them.

-As we exist in front of the piece, it likewise exists in front of us. It intrudes into our comfort zones, stares back at us, and encloses us in its own.-

That being said, I've lately found myself steering toward subjects that appear to be bio-mechanical: part machine, part organism. I am fascinated by subjects that seem to have been born, or to have aged into the mature forms that stand before us now. Blood vessels replace gears, and tissues replace mechanical joints; all of the metal and all of the flesh co-dependent. It is a dynamic contrast, one of symbiotic nature, where something as fragile as an organism must rely on the unrelenting, steadfast precision of a machine in order to survive or even to function. This new direction allows me to create something elegant and docile and infuse within it mechanical aggression and power. As a result, these pieces often possess a rich irony drawn from the very materials themselves, and the finished products are elaborate and conceptual by design. These pieces often fulfill my original objective: creating something powerful and alone. Such pieces can still intimidate and create a sense of elegance and power no matter their forms. Through a fragile or peaceful disguise, the pieces possess alluring grace and strength as they stare right back at us.