'Frenetic Composure': Local sculptor finds calm in chaos

January 09, 2015 11:00 pm • Last Updated: January 09, 2015 3:42 pm

By AMY J. BARRY, Special to The Day

"Dad's Chair," a sculpture by Robert Greene, was inspired by his father's struggle with ALS. Greene photographed the piece on his dock overlooking Long Pond in Ledyard.

"Frenetic Composure," the title of a new exhibition at Mystic Arts Center, may sound like an oxymoron, but it makes complete sense once you look at Robert Greene's sculptures.

Made up of hundreds of pieces of wood cut into strips of varying lengths and widths, Greene's newest series attempts to control the chaos within an identifiable form.

Greene says he considers himself a figurative sculptor; he has a traditional art background working in clay. However, rather than expressing the human figure through precise anatomical structure, his newest work represents the human form through abstracted structures that are derived from both the figure and the human condition.

"Mind and body electrical impulses are my inspiration," he says. "Everything I do, whether figurative or nonfigurative, has a common thread, and that's the activity that's happening inside the piece."

A resident of Ledyard, the young artist graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) and in 2010 went on to pursue a Master's in Fine Art at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he taught for several years in the 3D department. Greene returned to ECSU in 2013 after receiving his master's to teach in the school's visual arts department.

Although a recent graduate, Greene's sculptures have been gaining recognition along the East Coast with several pieces in private collections.

There are eight sculptures in the show at MAC, as well as a time-lapse video of an environmental sculpture as it deteriorates over time.

Greene describes sculpture as his "main thing" and drawing as his "other love." He says he treats each of his sculptures like a drawing.

"Each piece has hundreds of repetitive lines that represent activity happening inside of the form," he says.

Greene's "lines" are all made of wood; whether teak or pine or reed, wood is his primary material.

He says he loves working in wood because it's familiar and warm and feels right in his hands and that it can be shaped in countless ways or left in its natural state to express its inherent beauty and characteristics.

"I tend to think of my work as drawings crafted in wood," he says.

Greene cuts all of his own wood using either a table saw or band saw.

"I get into an almost meditative state and I cut them and cut them and fill buckets," he says. "Some sculptures desire different sizes and in others, all the pieces are the same size."

FINDING A CURE FOR ALS

Finding a cure for ALS is a cause close to Greene's heart. His father succumbed to the disease in 1999, and his father's struggle with ALS is the inspiration for his newest piece in the show, "Dad's Chair.

Greene says the sculpture is derived from the Ice Bucket Challenge, in which participants allow buckets of ice water to be poured over their heads for a donation that goes toward research and treatment for ALS.

"I thought it was fantastic, it brought tons of awareness (about ALS), but it was also difficult, it brought back some old memories," he says. "They showed a lot of people with ALS that looked just like my father did.

"I decided to do a piece representative of my father when he was basically stuck in a chair," he continues. "I'd go to high school when he was being put into a chair and come home and he was still in the chair. His mind was perfectly fine, as is the case of ALS patients. He was a brilliant person confined to this chair."

Greene explains that he used a waving, repetitive line made of reed woven into a chair versus using straight pieces of wood, as his dad was no longer a strong, strapping individual at the end of his life; the reed expresses the limpness of his limbs and joints.

Greene says the piece was inspired by the style of drawing of French 20th-century artist Daniel Jacomet with the use of chaotic lines to suggest the image.

If the piece sells, Greene will donate all the proceeds to ALS TDI (Therapy Development Institute) because the institute is particularly focused on research.

"Hopefully, the amount raised will get one more person on the list for their experimental treatment, which looks really promising," he says.

Another piece, titled "Nerve," takes its inspiration from his father and other family members.

In this sculpture Greene challenged himself to create a huge sphere - using all the same size pieces of wood - attached to a length of rope.

"It's an abstract interpretation of a severed nerve," Greene says. "It plays into the fact that my dad was dying of a disease that was killing his nerves. But also, some members of my family have OCD really bad and what's happening is the nerves in their brains are completely in overdrive - its just chaos. They have to have so much control just to get by. I did my interpretation of that through my art."

REWARDS OF TEACHING

When he isn't making art, Greene is teaching it to both art students and non-art majors in lower level classes at ECSU. He enjoys nurturing creative minds and engaging his students in thought-provoking exercises and projects.

"Many of my students are surprised to see what they can make and have no idea of the talent they have until it's brought out," Greene says. "There's nothing more rewarding than to see them being impressed with something they made with their own hands, without knowing they could do that sort of work."

Greene says he also tries to impart to his students that art is not a dying field and that "teaching someone to embrace their creativity is something that's highly worth it, no matter what field they go into - art or business or whatever - to think outside the box and not to hide their creativity."

Robert Greene's exhibition at the Mystic Arts Center takes its name from this sculpture titled "Frenetic Composure."