Art & Culture
Holly Russell and the metals of art
> BY COURTNEY ZOFFNESS
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

Dispersed throughout Russel's weekend home and barn/studio in Washington, Connecticut, which she shares with second husband Jack Rosenthal, President of the New York Times Foundation (they married in 1986), are box like bodies, cross-hatch spines and wedge-shaped skulls with unexpected perforations. Furniture includes wrought iron sconces, camshaft tables and horseshoe chandeliers.

Glickman, a former colleague of hers who opened the high-end antique shop Duane in TriBeCa two years ago, sells Russell's functional art. The artist "looks at objects in new ways," he said, and industrial tables and lamps become elegant. (One table in his shop sells for $4,800.) Similarly, birds made of steel look gentle and light.

Joan Talbot, 79,who lives next to Russell in Connecticut, admires Russell's craftsmanship. "She finds rusty things and welds them together in a way that suggests something--a mood, a person, an animal, a grotesque creature," explained Talbot, whose late husband William, also a sculptor, has work on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art. "It's a strong statement of how she thinks and feels in more articulate terms than words," she added.

Friend Randy Kocsis, a psychotherapist also from Washington, said she believes viewers form a relationship with Russell's work. "Holly's self expression becomes something everyone can relate to and touch and hold," Kocsis said.

Each of Russell's creations, which take anywhere from five hours to five weeks to complete, is composed of objects to which--even if she can't identify them--the artist feels connected. Russell may spend up to a year looking for the arms or legs for a half-built body. She often finds usable objects at unexpected times.

Kocsis recalled a trip to Martha's Vineyard during which Russell took to a huge hunk of metal. ("Nothing's too heavy for her to cart," joked Kocsis.) The two women hauled it into the back of Russell's car, took it on the ferry and drove it back to Connecticut.

"People thought we were crazy," laughed Kocsis. Eventually, the piece became the head of one of Russell's creatures. "Holly relates to a moment or an emotion in a way that's very genuine," explained Kocsis. "That's how she finds her art."

While Russell wasn't always a junkyard collector, she maintains she's been "rescuing" things throughout her life. By the age of 23, Russell was already mother to "a couple of birds, dogs and cats," she said. Where did she find these neglected pets? In the same places she finds scrap metal, she said. "When you look, they're there."

She opted to pursue a social work career when she graduated from New York University in 1968--the same year she married her high-school sweetheart- with a degree in English and philosophy. However, Russell became a full-time mother when she gave birth to Chris at age 23, and Andy 16 months later. (The boys currently co-own Tanda, a hip Manhattan restaurant.)

At age 34 she left her first husband and went ot work for Grey Advertising. "It was important to me that, whatever I did, I did it on my own," she said. Within a year, she rose from receptionist to junior writer and, when she quit at age 50 to pursue a master's degree in social work at NYU, she was a creative director.

Though she enjoyed her stint at Grey, she said, she wanted to help those who were under-appreciated. Months into the program, Russell met and "fell in love with" John, an 8-year-old "crack baby" from an abusive foster home. She wanted to adopt him, but she and her second husband agreed it would be unfair to take in such a young child at their age. Russell contacted the Children's Aid Society and ultimately helped to find him adoptive parents.

"I realized social work wasn't appropriate for me unless I could adopt every child that I met," she lamented and subsequently dropped out of NYU.

However, the undiscovered artist was about to begin a new career. Around the time that she met John (with whom she still keeps in touch) Russell rescued her first piece of trash at a Brooklyn warehouse: a "light vault." (A what?) You know, a rectangular iron plate covered with bumps of glass ("to let light into the basement," Russell explained). Try telling her you've never seen them before. "You have," Russell insisted. "You just haven't noticed them."

The artisan envisioned the piece as a tabletop and, acting upon her idea, purchased legs and a border from a metal shop in TriBeCa and gave DiLorenzo Fabrications the pieces to weld together. However, Russell said, she really "wanted to learn to do the whole thing myself," and enrolled in a welding class at the former Sculpture Center in Manhattan.

"Within minutes I fell in love with welding," she said. In what became an unintentional Rorschach test, Russell recognized a forsaken scrap. "I looked at its face and saw a little boy," she explained. The sculptor began to discern torsos and faces in the heap and realized her passion was making creatures that "had souls." Many clearly reflected her life. For example, after constructing a metal "couple," Russell said, she couldn't decide whether to attach them to one base or two. "A single base wasn't fair because the independent creatures should be able to stand on their own," she realized. The interactive twosome is one of Kocsis's favorites.

"They can look at each other, turn their backs, hold hands . " Kocsis mused. Russell maintains that she responds to the way the creatures feel. "I move them around according to their mood," she asserted. "They're really nuts."

Not all of Russell's sculptures are so playful, however. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "I created a monster," she says. The seven-foot tall, 300 pound creature, which rests atop a metal sewer cover (a Mother's Day present from her 30-year-old son) continues to elude its maker. "I'm still not exactly sure what it's about," she admitted. She began construction on the floor of her studio, where, in the midst of assembling metal parts, she began to cry.

"It wasn't a sad cry," she explained. "It was a petrified cry." She feared "whatever it is in human beings that leads to that kind of violence," she said.

Talbot said she thinks the piece resembles a "vast, threatening insect" and acknowledged that the work "reflects the mood" of post-Sept. 11. Immediately after she built the beast, Russell made one other creature: a bird.

Recently, Russell and sculptor John Riedeman founded the Six Dog Iron Company to market her commercial work. While she doesn't enjoy filling customer's orders, she doesn't mind, either. "How can you not make sconces for $3,000?" she remarks.

Her invaluable creatures, on the other hand, are not for sale. "Maybe I'll eventually stop caring enough for certain creatures to sell them," she said, then reconsidered. "But I can't imagine that."