This exhibition, open through september 26 2010, celebrates Albert Paley’s diverse and significant body of work, his virtuosity as a monumental sculptor, and the completion and dedication of Odyssey, Paley’s gateway into Iowa on Interstate 80 at S. 24th Street in Council Bluffs, Iowa, near the Missouri River border with neighboring Omaha. Odyssey was commissioned by the Iowa West Foundation as part of their nationally acclaimed Public Art Initiative.
Albert Paley is the first metal sculptor to receive the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects, the AIA’s highest award to a non-architect. He began his artistic career as a jeweler — one of the major goldsmiths of the studio art movement in America. Best known today for his large-scale sculpture, he has been heralded for his inventive approach to form development and metal technique. The site-specific metal assemblages Paley has created over the past three decades place him not only in the forefront of contemporary sculpture, but also in the vanguard of artists working in the new, genre-defying area that has been called “Archisculpture.” His inclusion in this group is due to his skill in merging boundaries between the two disciplines and his innovative experiments with environmental and formal considerations.
The Paley exhibition at Joslyn illustrates the artist’s process in conceptualizing and creating his projects through preliminary and working drawings, site plans, photographs, videos demonstrating methods and materials of construction, and maquettes (small scale models). Included will be sketches and maquettes for Odyssey, a gateway sculpture of four component parts for Council Bluffs, set to be installed this month (see below). Other highlights are the steel and gold design study for Paley’s acclaimed Good Shepherd Gate for Washington National Cathedral; drawings and the maquette for Threshold, a large-scale, bright yellow site specific work at the Klein Steel headquarters in Rochester, NY (Klein supplies most of the steel for Paley’s sculptures), and Paley’s plans and drawings for commissions at Naples Art Museum (Naples, FL), Cleveland (OH) Botanical Garden, The University of the South (Sewanee, TN), Charlotte (NC) Coliseum, Iowa State University (Ames), New Jersey Transit’s Trenton Transit Center, and the Mayerson JCC at The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati (OH).
Image: Albert Paley (American, born 1944), Threshold Model, 2007, steel with polychrome finish
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