John McEwen

Like Glitter Ascending Into Fire

June 6, 2020 – July 18, 2020

Artist Statement by John McEwen:

The title of this exhibition, Like Glitter Ascending Into Fire, is the last line in a section of a poem by Wallace Stevens, which I’ve had sandblasted in glass and installed in my studio for a number of years. My current exhibition is a meditation on that fragment. Many of the poem’s images – fire, stars, and sparks – have long resonated within my own life. From time spent training as a welder fitter, to the repair and sale of cast iron wood stoves in the mid-seventies, to my ongoing investigation of the blacksmiths forge, all have been formative experiences which continue in my work.

My sculpture practice formally began with the flame-cut animation of inert slabs of steel, before finally expanding to my current interest in stars, whether absent (in telescope-like instruments), or present (in porous life-size bodies) as a transformative core. Within the poetic fragments by Stevens is what he calls ‘the right to be’. This exhibition of new works with old parts is, through their relationships with the material world, with animals, and to each other, an investigation of that right.