Wire Artists

Kyle Fielding

Elizabeth BerrienIn her teens, Elizabeth became involved with the wolf preservation effort when John Harris, "Wolfman of Hayward," introduced her to his urban wolf pack. Her favourites were Clem and Jethro, ambassador wolves John eventually took on tour to school auditoriums around the country. Because of Clem and Jethro, a new generation of nature advocates came into existence. Later, Berrien would become a volunteer at the Oakland Zoo.

Her encounters with cheetahs were especially useful toward making an accurate cheetah wire sculpture for the Los Angeles Zoo. When all the California Condors were gathered in from the wild, the zoo commissioned Berrien to sit in blinds and study the massive birds from life, then create a California Condor wire sculpture with 9 1/2 ft. wingspan to soar over the zoo's entry. When Berrien asked keepers to critique her sculpture, they said it was so accurate they could tell which condor it was!

Yong Won SongKorean artist Yong Won Song creates life-size thread and wire sculptures that look like scribbled drawings come to life. Somewhere between a dream and a nightmare, fantasy and reality, the artist's pieces explore the unconscious mind. Taking the perspective of a writer merging real-life experiences and creative imagination, Song assembles surreal sculptures that also lie somewhere in between realistic and artistic.

The artist says, "My work attempts to present ‘a world of dream’ as a combination of unconsciousness and consciousness." His augmented scenes visualize figures and objects as fragmented subjects. They are incomplete in their presence, reflecting the haziness of one's memories of their dreams. Song's sculptures are representations of unconscious, scattered thoughts that one tries to piece together in a lucid state.

pARlaiTin

pARlaiTin (par-LAY-in), is a wire artist that makes ‘kicks’, shoes and sport sneakers. He makes them like this as when he was younger he couldn’t afford real shoes so he made his own.

With no design background pARlaiTin, and only an engineering degree from school, he knows wire and its properties, to sculpting with it was easier, than he realised at first.

Shi Jindian

After searching for years for “a material that was brand new, completely untraditional”, he settled on steel wires. By trial and error, he learned how to crochet the two-dimensional strands into three-dimensional forms using tools of his own devising.

His wire meshes start out as wrappings around some common object. When the mesh is complete, Shi Jindian destroys or extracts the object, leaving only its steel “shadow”. The result, he says, is a kind of fiction, a virtual reality that can be walked around and touched.

Barbara Licha

Polish born artist Barbara Licha’s recent sculptures explore the physical and emotional space of our contemporary urban environment. Here is a world where human emotion meets the exaggeration of our imaginations, the human condition magnified by dreams that linger and our memory of the past.

Barbara always goes for morbid, while highlighting the cultural diversity Rookwood is renowned for. Sydney-based Barbara Licha will have her wire sculptures on display: “My work explores what it means to be a human being through the use of wire to show different expressions, daily activities, and interests that portray movement and behaviour,” she says, “Human behaviour is something that I always like to portray in my scultpures.”

Ivan Lovatt

Ivan Lovatt is a professional sculptor who has been creating sculpture for private collections, corporations and public exhibition for the past 8 years. Ivan’s work is characterized by his ingenuity and innovation, which motivates him to find new and interesting ways to capture his love of nature and his fascination with humanity.

By layering, twisting and shaping this very ordinary medium Ivan creates both abstract and realistic representations, which are tactile, appealing to the viewer to touch. As Ivan’s skills developed and evolved he was drawn to figurative work, and Ivan began a series of portraits of famous people which candidly demonstrates his superior level of craftsmanship and attention to detail.