Title: cloudsandclunkers
Artist: Peter Shelton
Year: 2003
Medium: Steel, cast iron, fiberglass
Dimensions: Each form ranges in size from 2' to 5' in all three dimensions
Description of Artwork:
In this wedge-shaped section of A Concourse, artist Peter Shelton has created an environment of many complimentary forms: light and heavy, translucent and opaque, floating and earthbound. Fiberglass “clouds” are suspended from the skylights, while identically shaped cost iron “clunkers” occupy the steps. Both the “clouds” and the “clunkers” are made from the same patterns – hybridized forms referencing human, industrial and natural shapes. The artist is curious about how two sets of forms, made from different materials, can have very different associative qualities. The sculptural installation responds to its architectural setting, creating a quiet eddy in an otherwise busy concourse. It is Shelton’s intent to
present this location as an opportunity for reflection and lingering, particularly at the west apex of the wedge, where the clunkers reside.
"I like to think of my work as a threshold between in and out, object and space, heavy and light." – Peter Shelton
About the Artist:
Born in Troy, Ohio, and raised in Tempe, Arizona, Shelton has become a key participant in the American Post-Minimalist movement. Studying the whole gamut of subjects including anthropology, sociology, and theatre while as a pre-med major, Shelton graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California, with a degree in art. Shelton has exhibited extensively throughout the world in both solo and group exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was in 1979 at the Wight Gallery at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Portland Art Museum.
Shelton's pieces allude to the dialogue that occurs between different materials and settings. Rendering the same design in a variety of media, he carefully investigates the dynamic qualities of light and dark, of the ethereal and the earthbound. Shelton works in both large and small scale, in metals (steel, iron, lead, bronze), glass, cement, water, paint and a variety of the fiberglass and resin composites first adopted by artists in the late ’60s. His sculptures incorporate both abstracted and figurative forms along with anatomical and architectural motifs.
