FRED NAGELBACH
Many sculptors have used architecture or furniture as a point of departure, even as a source of inspiration. Margaret Wharton’s work revolved around chairs for a time; more recently she has turned to books. Charles Simonds builds tiny houses–for “little people”–resembling the pueblos of southwest Native Americans. In the Site Cafe at the Museum of Contemporary Art, one wall is devoted to a Simonds installation that allows the viewer to imagine a culture, time, and place altogether removed from the urban experience. H.C. Westermann worked extensively with the shapes of architecture and domestic objects, building small houses as containers for feelings and dreams. Most seemed to be nightmares, in fact, which tended to leak out through the windows.
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By choosing the cupola or steeple as a reference point, Nagelbach has provided himself with a vast, multifaceted source of themes, which he skillfully explores but by no means exhausts. Like the hat on the head of a well-dressed gentleman or the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae, the cupola functions partly to complete the composition, an exercise in stacking forms. And just as the gentleman’s hat won’t keep his ears warm, and the cherry on the sundae doesn’t taste very good, the cupola is not a place to be but an object to look up to.
As I looked at this sculpture, the rhythmic whistling sound of a plane and fresh ribbons of wood piling up on the floor came to mind. I caught a whiff of the cedar and was reminded of my grandfather’s walk-in cedar closet, with its straw boater and starched flat collars seemingly preserved forever. That was a time when carpenters still knew how to use hand tools and build cupolas, and often did it dressed in high collars and elegant hats.
In the second room of the gallery is the “Mallet Series”: two groups of tools that hang from ample boards on the wall and a third group of three freestanding mallet sculptures. Here Nagelbach has provided the viewer with the various tools that the builders of giant shingled submarines or airships might employ. Some of the mallets look quite handy indeed. The “commander,” a name given to the largest hammer in the shop, is here a huge mallet with a steel ringed head. It seems more than adequate for the stubbornest of persuadees. Other of his mallets took like they could drive nails around corners, and one seems perfect for swatting the fly that has been buzzing the kitchen since last summer. To make these tools, Nagelbach has adeptly combined his own and manufactured tool handles with the various invented heads, some made of wood, others cast in aluminum.
