A car or a vacuum cleaner might be a long way from your idea of sculpture.
But to an artist like Todd Stuart, a Lamborghini or a Dyson easily qualifies if you take into account the central tenet of art. For Todd, the combination of the creative and the imaginative — when that blend produces a three dimensional object of uplifting beauty, meaning, and truth — is sculpture in itself.
From year nine at school, Todd dreamt of becoming an industrial designer. Influenced and taught by his father, he loved using his manual skills with wood- and metal-working tools and machinery to create practical objects, especially furniture.
Completing his industrial design degree in 1992, he joined a substantial Perth contemporary furniture producer as their lead furniture industrial designer. The experience gave him the impetus to set up his own furniture manufacturing business.
He conceptualised ranges of upholstered furniture which took on an unconventional, organic and compound shapeliness, given the limitations of frame making, and materials and production equipment used in the industry.
Furniture design flair attention
His flair for contemporary furniture design, production, and export promotion quickly gained attention, especially in the Middle East. One project in Muscat in 2008 led to a request to source someone capable of designing and producing large scale sculpture.
Through his furniture manufacturing, some of which was also produced in China, and with his interest in three dimensional art, Todd had seen Chinese factories and foundries producing sculpture.
As he thought through the brief, he realised he had the design experience, artistic flair, and project management expertise to oversee the venture himself. His reputation for detail, quality, and timely delivery allowed him to sell himself in conjunction with the artisan skill set from some of the best pre-qualified Chinese foundries that he’d personally researched and worked with.
The trust built through contracts for successfully delivering commercial volumes of bespoke furniture allowed him an entrée to opportunities for which other sculptors would have needed 10 or more years of an established presence to win the job.
Two sculptures of ten metres and seven metres in height followed, and his career as an internationally respected sculptor was born.
Leave ego out of the equation
After nearly 30 years in the world of design, and ten of those dedicated as a sculptor, Todd says he has learned to leave ego out of the equation. The discipline and precision of working within commercial constraints was always paramount. What drove his business then, and today fuels the mastery in his art?
Todd puts it down to the creativity required to innovatively develop realistic production processes. This in turn generates the precision needed to create jigs for product lines needing specific angles and accurately documented diagrams and cutting lists.
Paradoxically, those same restraints resulted in his selling the factory to pursue a more flexible creativity with his sculpture. With hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in sophisticated machinery dedicated to accurate yet necessarily repetitive production, he needed a change, a release.
Architects and designers began to demand work based on materials, processes, and skills which become more and more outsourced, and quality control that was managed outside the confines of his own factory base. His understanding of production processes, materials, and finishes expanded considerably into metal, glass, moulded plastics, CAD technologies, and a gamut of finishing methods.
A three-way tussle
Todd describes his professional sculpture career as a three-way tussle between ego, creativity, and fulfilment. In another paradox, the fulfilment component is not his, but his clients’.
Because many of his 60 plus completed works to date are commissions — sculptures people order to express an often very personal concept — he feels a heightened responsibility.
‘I see my purpose as helping others find theirs. When someone commissions me to render an idea or emotion or principle, I think they bestow on me a kind of sacred duty.’
When architects or designers commission a work for a public space, or one likely to be seen by many people, his sense of obligation multiplies.
Birth of Dragonfly
He describes the inspiration and the frustration of his early career, exemplified in one of his seminal and best-known pieces, Dragonfly.
Dragonfly is a luminous work in a combination of polished #316 stainless steel and multi-toned patina silicon bronze. His masterful craftsmanship expresses itself in the delicate filigree of the wings and the ephemerality of the creature’s body. The interplay of anatomical accuracy and reflected light gives it a ghostly quality belied by the solidity of the polished stainless steel.
Frozen in time as it touches down upon a floating branch, its wings still vibrating, Dragonfly captures movement in perfect balance.
As a first attempt in creating sculpture, Todd emailed detailed sketches and documentation of Dragonfly to his selected Chinese foundry. They would act as a directive for building the clay model that would become the master template to implement the final sculpture. Personally inspecting the final clay model, Todd found that although the artists employed to bring his design to life were talented, they had translated his concept in a very Chinese way. Language and interpretation issues had also intruded.
Heart and hands
‘When it’s a three dimensional format, there’s only so much detail you can communicate before you have to get your heart and your hands into the process.’
Frustrated, he took hold of the tools and started again, remodelling in clay the spirit and principles behind the work. As he worked, five of the foundry’s leading artists gathered around to watch. His process and thinking came across as wholly different; they had never seen anything like him.
‘I don’t always start with clay, but I usually need to come to the foundry to establish the shape, realise the design details, and make sure the right feel emerges. I always produce the maquette (a sculptor’s small-scale working model) and oversee a team of artisans for upscaling moulds for larger projects. Then I ensure the translation of proportion, balance, and details are as they were meant to be — from the original artist’s hand.’
Time in the foundry is often restricted when production cycles for other projects can interrupt. Where Todd might have just a few days to shortlist from five design concepts to a complete maquette, his Chinese in-house counterparts could have two weeks to attempt to translate a single idea, but still fall short or wide of the mark.
Design and art balance
Todd says he still feels more under the influence of design than pure art, though the balance is slowly evening out. Design considers every angle and explores every possibility, based on known principles and values.
The advent of CAD and other technologies has enriched design by expanding the field of the possible, and reducing the time needed to achieve it, if designer and client have the courage.
Art, on the other hand, seeks actively to invent, avoid, or break rules that most of us accept as convention.
Getting sculpture commissions is an exciting challenge. It helps him develop ideas that satisfy him as a creative. But it challenges him to appreciate the artistic and psychological needs of clients as well. They make a substantial emotional as well as a financial investment in his work. Both owner and sculptor yearn to see the dream transform to legacy.
‘I should simply connect people and place’
‘I’d say the thing of greatest importance to me, coming from a design background, is that on every occasion I independently create a style or use a material not because I see it as branding me as an artist, but more that for the fact that it speaks in greater depth to its root purpose and underlying meaning. I think some artists get pigeon-holed and stuck with the theme, materials, or finishes that they’re recognised for, and I see that as limiting. At the same time, it’s not for me to tell the market what it should or shouldn’t have. My work should simply connect people and place in a way meaningful to them.’
Like most artists, Todd endures moments of hesitation and doubt. He refers to an advisor’s use of the term ‘lizard brain’, the self-protective mechanism that tries to shelter us from disappointment and failure . It discourages grand endeavour — the promise of perfection. It attempts to persuade us not to embark on ventures beyond our capacity.
Todd concedes he faces initial moments of uncertainty at the outset of a project.
‘Every time I start a sculpture, for the first half day my head tells me: “You’re not good enough to do this.”’
This is when the decades of design discipline ride to the rescue; knowing that this is just part of a process where a few hours of persistence always pays off to enlighten the depth of the outcomes.
Pushing through to a golden road
‘When I’m scratching away with clay and my head finally stops thinking, my heart and my hand become one. When my head stops controlling the other two, it becomes spiritual. I just have to trust myself. I know I can push through to a golden road.’
Todd has completed more than sixty works, many of which are in noteworthy collections around the world. With the next to be unveiled in mid-town Manhattan, New York in January this year, and more in the pipeline, who would disagree that his golden road stretches ahead?
Are you exploring the idea of a sculpture with an internationally reputed artist? Before you commit to a brief, talk to Todd Stuart on +61 4 5151 8865, or visit mainartery.art.
You might also look at other useful blog links: Sculpture as investment, and Is sculpture really worth the price?
