The sculpture work created by the four visiting artists last summer is about more than aesthetics; they say something deeper about the artist who created it.

For sculpture artist Benjamin Clore and his piece “Exposed” it is a statement about the dismal economy in his home state of Michigan.

“The economic climate right now has left people kind of on that edge of not being able to pay all their bills,” Clore said. “This was about that feeling of being left out in the open.”

Sculpture artist Nathan Hatch tries to make people think about the past function of forms.

“I grew up on a sixth-generational farm where there was a lot of old farm machinery, a lot of tools, a lot of functional things that were kind of obsolete,” Hatch said. “That held a great deal of appeal to me and a lot of mystery as a kid.”

He said as a child he did not understand how they would work and this would cause him to speculate what its possible use was.

Hatch said that is what he wants when people view his sculptures, for them to imagine a purpose for the form before them, not to tell the viewer what it is. That is why in his work he incorporates elements of movement with static forms, like his sculpture, “Home Again,” that has a wheel at the top of it.

Hatch said it is because a good art and shop teacher that he ended up combining his art with fabrication work. When he arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee he had access to a bronze foundry and a larger work area that led to larger sculptures.

Clore was a potter, someone who makes pottery and he comes from a family of carpenters, before he began his sculpture work at Michigan State University.

“I started working more with the installation kind of work and moved away from the functional ceramics,” he said. “My work has taken a turn toward sculpture because I can express ideas a lot more with figure forms like that than I can with more functional type of work.”

Clore said it is a great program at Eastern, he enjoyed working with art professor Jeffrey Boshart and “Exposed” led to an even larger project in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Marcus Smith can be reached at 581-2812 or

masmith6@eiu.edu.

Pictured is the sculpture “Home Again” by Nathan Hatch. (Marcus Smith

(more…)