Non-Figurative

One of my most important art friends, Paul Marco, never painted his work. He only applied a rust inhibitor, Penetrol. Wanting to follow a mentor in some direct manner, I finished the surface of my sculptures in the same way for many years.

I began to add color to my work very slowly. The decision whether or not to use color is of great importance. Sometimes the sculpture’s subject and meaning requires a complete detachment from any color. Other times I use some color but leave a part of the steel in it’s natural state.

I once did a thin tall sculpture with sharp angles and jagged edges called “The Checkered Past” which I gave to a friend, Ken. We had been joking about the twists and turns of our lives, and how chance and accidents can be so significant in life. “The Checkered Past” was done without color, during early spring when I was seeing bright yellow forsythias sprouting up after a long winter. After completing “The Checkered Past” piece, the basic tall, thin form became an inspiration for a different piece “Forsythia” which I painted, and it turned into a series. (Images #6 and #7)

I was studying Russian Constructivism after having seen a gallery exhibit with Vladimir Tatlin’s “Model of the Monument to the Third International.” For the next two years, I worked on two “Constructivist” period pieces. They are both formatted as a picture frame tilted at a 45 degree angle on top of an I-Beam. It took over 18 months to construct and color them both. (See Images #1 - #5). After completing them, I felt like changing my name to my maternal grandfather’s original family name, Borohuvitch, which was lost in the immigration process.

When I study the works of a particular artist, I am sometimes driven to create a piece or pieces similar to their style. Examples of such “Homages” shown in this gallery are ones I did in honor of Sonia Delaunay, Hans Arp, and Jackson Pollack (#20). Creating these works gave me the opportunity to feel the essence of their work while making them. I would often create a variation of their piece that would partially include my own ideas, or combine a number of their images together with my own shapes. (See Arp pieces, #13 – #15)

I once purchased an abstract lithograph by Sonia Delaunay; I was thrilled with the quality of the color and the color’s juxtapositions that make the images appear somewhat cubist through the use of color. I then imagined what it would be like if one of her vivid pieces was a sculpture. It begged to be done and I did it. (#16, # 17) Thank you Sonia Delaunay.

I was quite proud of my configuration of a spinning pine tree. I went a bit overboard after completing it and received a patent on the spinning design.

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