Page 7 - HIWT Summer 2018 World of Welding

the P.A. during a day at the school, I would hear Peter Shelton, you on the surface. Welded rods joined these steel points to lag screws
have a call from Rachel Hobart in the offce. The activity on the attached to the foor below. The steel rods cumulatively, like an
whole foor of the school would suddenly stop and everyone would Indian nail bed, held the plaster block aloft once the scaffold was
pull back the curtains on their welding stations and look out to see removed. The burn marks were evidence of the welding.
me going by and with expressions on their faces that said, Why One could enter a small chamber just big enough for ones head. The
is Mrs. Hobart calling Peter Shelton? As the widow of William H. plaster form seemed marshmallow-like from the outside. The mass
Hobart and a longtime family friend, she was usually just checking of the plaster around your head inside was palpable and aurally
to see if I was okay or invite me to lunch. I loved my time at the dense. Our perception of the outside versus the inside was distinct.
Institute. It was one of the best things I ever did. It gave me the We tend to think of our heads, unless we are looking a mirror as the
confdence, competence and foundation for my life as a sculptor. objectless, immaterial place of the mind. Inside whiteroundHEAD,
What was your inspiration for the your head became material, like a big cabbage in an inverted pot.
photos pipegutwaterseatandSTANDSTIL
(cover), whiteroundHEAD and SWEATHOUSEandlittleprincipals 1977-1982, steel, 150
SWEATHOUSEandlittleprincipals? elements version. Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 1985.
Photo Credit: the artist.
pipegutwaterseatandSTANDSTILL, pipegut detail through
interior, 1983-84, steel, cloth shellac. 96X40 diameter. Portland
Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, Oregon. (Cover Photo) Photo
credit: the artist
I conceived this three-part sculpture to focus and connect the ends
of this museum. waterseat, the frst element, was a water-flled
plate glass amniotic throne. Then, STANDSTILL, with its inertia and
tomb-like presence, was a multi-ton cast-in-place concrete vertical
slab. A cast-in negative the shape of my frontal profle was just big
enough for me to stand up into it and fll its void.
pipegut, drew a long line diagonally through the museum. A
translucent shellac-saturated cloth-covered steel tensile structure
hanging from the ceiling, this tunnel curved so you could not see
its end. It seemed longer than it was. The steel modules rotated on
the axis so there was the spiraling effect as you moved through the
tube. This work was a study in contrasts. A small hanging enterable
steel room surrounded by 150 steel objects that in one way or
A set of tracks through the pipeguts interior conveyed a small car. another, refer to some part of the body, albeit often in an abstract
Initially giving access for construction, pipegut really became a or schematic way. I thought of the work almost as a kind of
metaphor for passage. Depending on which direction you travelled, psychophysical massage as you moved through it. You would
it could be viewed alternately as a birth or alimentary canal. encounter all these forms at varying heights that would trigger
A person could pull oneself hand over hand through its length associations to different parts of the body. And then, when you
metaphorically on your climb into what I called SWEATHOUSE, one would be in an empty
way to your beginning quiet space with just yourself and away from the near chaos that
or your end. surrounds it. Activity and graphic exuberance on the outside would
be contrasted by the empty space flled only you as the object
inside.
whiteroundHEAD,
1982, steel, cast HIWT is proud of the many accomplishments of our
plaster. 92X96 graduates. To see more of Peter Sheltons artwork, visit him
Artists Space, New at any of the following links:
York City. Photo credit:
the artist www.petershelton.com/
I cast a 5,000 lb. block https://www.facebook.com/PeterSheltonSculptor/
of plaster on a scaffold. https://www.instagram.com/petersheltonsculptor/
Upon removing the
mold, an interior https://www.tumblr.com/blog/petersheltonblog
armature appeared as https://twitter.com/ptshelton
a series of steel points http://www.lalouver.com/artist.cfm?tArtist_id=136

www.welding.org - 7 - 2018 SUMMER ISSUE