ZIG
I sculpt steel. Gas torch cut lines into solid steel releases urgency of my expression. Linear forms of metal stacked and wedged shapes are thrust, leaned, jutted, twisted, and radiate spatial push. Serrated cuts and solids of manipulated I-beams, channels, angles, rods and plate, climb and activate surrounding space. Energy is captured in negative space, mass and volume in unified form.
Mentored by Mark Di Suvero in a studio residency at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY, I refined my sense of large forms and furthered my commitment to sculpture in steel. Since that exploration I have installed many public art sculptures in New York City and vicinity including Long Island, the Tri-State area, the Hudson Valley, and western USA. Various environments, in which my sculptures are placed, transforms the location into a dynamic experience for the viewer.
The direct process of welding, and utilizing torch and flame for cutting metal, culminates through the beauty of smooth hard steel, juxtaposed in energetic angled patterns, releasing vigorous emotions and palpable impact. Steel, sourced for its warmth and structural strength, is transformed into sculptures of beauty, vigor, power and intensity of form.
“ZIG” installed on Broad Ave. in Leonia, New Jersey, is inspired by the famous early 20th Century sculptor, Constantin Brancusi’s “Endless Column”, in Tirgu-Jiu, Romania. The use of the zig zag pattern in the sculpture “ZIG”, stacked to the sky, painted in colors of blue, red and yellow, space is further expanded by the impact of visual color dimensions. Yellow expanding, blue receding and red hanging in mid-air, the piece radiates outward, incorporating negative spaces both within and around the encompassing space of the sculpture and suggests endlessness.
Michael Poast
Past Works Exhibited in Leonia
Lumen de Lumine
The split wood and steel sculpture by artist and composer, MICHAEL POAST, is a manifestation that relates to his musical composition written and performed with the InterMedia Ensemble at Saint Peter’s Church at Citicorp Center, NYC, in 2013. Lumen De Lumine, meaning “Light of Light”, is part of the Credo section of the Latin text that Poast used to compose his Color Music Mass. Being sculpted at the same time, splitting wood planks with a sledge hammer and thrusting them ,one after the other, into the vertical steel tube, that forms the lower section of the sculpture, it was as if the split wood, the action of the splitting, if one could equate it with the splitting of the atom, released a bright light, an expansion of energy. The addition of the curved angle bars of steel, signifying this expansion, became the physical reality of this radiating light. Lumen De Lumine, incorporating steel and charred split wood, is part of a series of sculptures using these materials exclusively. A large installation, Fence Sonata (2014), newly re-composed for the Unison Art Center in New Paltz, NY, incorporates these same materials, while also using the 4th dimensional quality of brilliant color as spatial exploration.
MUSE IV
Muse IV, installed at Station Parkway in Leonia, has been exhibited in the sculpture fields of Saunders Farm, sponsored by Collaborative Concepts in Garrison, NY, and in two locations in New Rochelle, NY, WildCliff Park, and Trinity Church. Muse IV, in reference to the mythological muses, is fourth in a series of muse sculptures, each representing a different category, such as Music, Poetry, Fine art, Dance, Philosophy, etc. Poast explains: “When I start a creative work, I wait for the muse to come to me, then I can compose or sculpt with intensified inspiration.”
MICHAEL POAST is on faculty of St. John’s University and Pratt Institute, where he had a solo exhibition of his Color Music Manuscripts in March 2014. Water Music, a large steel sculpture installed on the waterfront boardwalk in Yonkers, NY; the Unison Art Centers installation, Fence Sonata; and his piece, Atlas, that will be re-sited in Beacon, NY, are among his most recent projects.
For more information please visit www.michaelpoast.carbonmade.com