Artwork of the 80's
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Artists & Works
Steve Currie
American (b. 1954)
DIPPER (1989)
poplar, wax, aluminum
46" x 36" x 49"

STYLE: Sculpture,
biomorphic

©Steve Currie

Steve Currie is known for his innovative use of nontraditional sculptural materials as well as his ability to combine different materials in one work.

Although many museum visitors liken this work to the shape of a baseball cap, in fact the title of the work is a more exact clue to the artist's intention. Currie was interested in elemental forms when he made this work, forms which were as close to nature as possible. In this sculpture he is making a visual reference to a gourd that has been hollowed out to make a rudimentary vessel, to be used for dipping water out of a spring or river.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS
Ronnie Cohen, Steve Currie, Grace Borgenicht Gallery catalog, 1989
"Currie, who is in his mid-thirties, is one of the most fascinating of the talented younger group of artists helping to invigorate the genre of 'abstract sculpture.'...He is one of the best at marrying form and expression...Each sculpture begins as an image in the artist's mind. And he begins to draw the image first, to put it down on paper. With this preliminary drawing which might be as simple as a roughed out pencil sketch of a round form with an indention is what initiated the process of generating the form. Making sculpture, for Currie, is primarily about making this image real...Besides drawings Currie also uses templates to guide the actual construction...The very different appearance a freestanding sculpture or relief piece can have when seen in the round or from all its significant sides only points up the unpredictable character of Currie's forms...In attracting the eye what happens in these sculptures succeed in capturing the imagination with their impossible-to-pin-down though obviously provocative looks."
David McCracken, Chicago Tribune, 4/14/89
"Currie was juxtaposing sculptural materials in graduate school in the early 80s, but got an added push not long after from the work of Richard Deacon and Chicagoan Martin Puryear. "Puryear had quite an impact on me when I first saw his work. He's a far superior craftsman to me," Currie said. 'Other people have told me they see an affinity there , but to be honest with you, I have a hard time seeing it, although I do feel it...I have an image in my head that I work out on a little notepad. Very simple line drawings, basically to get the silhouette and the proportions and where I might have a twist or something. Then I do a large, full-scale drawing right on the wall or on newspaper taped to the wall, to get the scale correct. And I build from there.' ...Currie joins the strips of poplar with glue and screws to create the ovoids and spheres that often form the basic shape. The physical characteristics of poplar have made it his material of choice for years."

George Melrod, Sculpture review, July-August,1992
"Steve Currie's work, however, marries nature and artifice, fusing wood and metal into spare, almost painterly hybrid forms. Handcrafted and highly tactile, his labor-intensive works recall Martin Puryear's gnarled saplings...his imagery evokes trees, protozoans, robotics, even fractal geometry. If the joy of Currie's style is its concise language and formal virtuosity, then his intuitive merging of the natural and the manmade is the spark that gives these works their animate presence. In the past Currie has employed half-closed, circular forms, suggesting giant eggs or mollusk shells, with square slices cut out...With this new show...Currie adopts a more delicate, linear style...there's an obsessiveness to Currie's working process that limits his formal vocabulary."