SCULPTURE AT LAKESIDE STUDIO
At Lakeside Studio in Lakeside, Michigan, right behind a big white hotel, a large ceramic fish, a prehistoric-looking thing, nestles into a plinth as if its own weight is forcing it to sink into the ground. The glistening and spiny creature seems exhausted but not yet defeated–gathering strength for one last attempt to flop across a driveway, through a fence, and into an algae-covered pond about 30 feet away. It’s not going to make it. It’s already starting to smell really bad.
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The first piece one is likely to encounter here is a gray metal door frame standing upright near the edge of the field. At first glance the sculpture, made by Los Angeles artist Steven Kafer in 1983, looks like the standard sheet-metal studs used in framing office partitions. In fact the members are solid rather than being open on one side, and they lack the usual knockout holes for conduit and plumbing. The structure is carefully joined with pop rivets, like a semitrailer or a fiberglass canoe would be, rather than with the sheet-metal screws typically used in construction. This fastening method, the solidity of the members, and the care exercised in the process of fitting the pieces together separate this structure from those of a construction site. Although the piece seems cold and out of place in the grassy meadow, standing on the “stoop” and passing through the doorway is like leaving the city, or conventional thoughts, behind, and turning the mind loose with sculptural expression.
Langworthy’s sculpture looks like a ship, perhaps submerged underground with only the mast and helm protruding. It reminds me of another kind of ship from my youth, a tall, cartoonlike rocket ship made of steel pipe in the playground of my grammar school. It had a ladder and an elevated platform with a steering wheel. Turning the wheel didn’t make anything move, but to climb aboard was to go on a voyage, if only for a 15-minute recess. Langworthy’s piece involves the viewer as a user like a large playground apparatus for adults (also like Di Suvero’s For Lady Day at Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park, though the function of Di Suvero’s ride-in pendulum is obvious from afar, while Langworthy’s piece asks to be manipulated and only then offers its experience).
