4D
Monday, August 18, 1997
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
nothing catches the eye
White space can be an irresistible attraction to a pair of inquisitive eyes. Have your KANSAN sales representative help you to use it to your advantage when you place your next ad where students look first.
Sculptor gives creations life
Artist's work reflect human emotion, spirit
BROOKLINE, N.H. — John Weidman was sitting outside his studio when a leaf fell into his lap. He stared at it before clasping it between fingers called by years of shaping stone and steel.
The Associated Press
Nothing works better
"This is some sort of a sign. I'll have to create something with this," he said.
Weidman, 54, is a sculptor who converts items others throw away into art. He combines objects he finds with more conventional sculpture materials, including metal and stone.
"What I want in the act of doing this is the fun of the process. I look at a material and I say I'm not going to throw it away because I picture doing something to it," Weidman said. "It makes you feel alive; it makes you feel as though you've shared something."
That sharing takes place in Weidman's yard and workshop. His studio is a converted red barn filled with sculptures, jet engine-powered welding tools, slabs of stone and sheets of steel.
About 20 of his creations stand in the front yard. Some, like Ankle Biter, a three-wheel skateboard carved from granite, are dwarfed by trees.
Others have a dramatic presence Red-Breasted Sunbather is a seated woman leaning back on arms made of steel rods. She sits on iron wheels for buttocks and thrusts her red granite chest toward the sky.
Weldman said he tried to blend conventional materials within his more eclectic works so the viewer was not jarred by the transitions. Other sculptures rely solely on conventional techniques.
Among Weidman's most popular pieces are his Sleeping People. The bronze sculptures of facial parts portray men and women as they dream. Weidman said about 30 of his pieces were on display throughout the world.
"They are people I see on subways sleeping, people I imagine. A sleeping face is easy to see into, to look into it, because it's not looking back at you," Weidman said. "They're not making a statement."
Weidman is one of the founders of the World Sculpture Racing Society, which began in 1982 to get art into the streets — literally. The artists race by pushing their sculptures toward a finish line.
"They get the sculptures out of the galleries and into the streets," Weidman said. "It puts the art on the level of sports."
Although the society is defunct now, a sculpture race is held each year in Norwalk, Conn. Weidman has retired from racing, but he still holds the record for creating the world's heaviest racing sculpt-
John Weldman sculptor
ture — a 2-ton stone wave mounted on casters. The stone wave is 15 feet tall and 7 feet long.
Born in Wisconsin, Weidman grew up on the university campuses where his father taught history.
He discovered sculpting when he was 18 and doing summer maintenance work for the U.S. Air Force.
During a short stint as an artist in the military, Weidman painted the portrait of James T. Davis, the first American killed in Vietnam. The portrait was commissioned to hang at Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass.
He then attended, but never graduated from, various universities.
"I just took courses in college that pertained to what I wanted to know," he said.
He studied medicine and psychology because he wanted his sculptures of people to show the emotions that controlled and confounded them.
Welidman spends much of his time in the Ukraine, where he met his wife. He was inducted into Ukraine's Union of Artists, a group of that nation's most talented fine arts professionals. So far, he is the only American asked to join.
Welidman said he was drawn to the Ukraine and Europe because artists played a larger part in the community than in the United States. He said artists in the Ukraine and Europe seldom were, asked what they did for a living.
"Life is necessary for art, and art is a necessity of life. We use it. It's a function. We need it," Weidman said of the Ukrainian attitude toward art.
Though the materials Weidman works with are bulky, he strives to minimize their weight and to emphasize the space around them. A current project combines a marble slab, an iron beam and steel trellises to form a delicate 600-pound dining room table.
Weidman said anything was a potential work of art. In the loft above his workshop are several old workbench tops, scarred by torches, marred by knives and saws, and splattered with paint and grease. They are framed and hanging on the wall.