A Delightful Conversation with Lewis Colburn

Photo Credit: Rachel Van Anglen Photography. Studio portrait.

Lewis Colburn is an artist and educator based in Philadelphia, working primarily in sculpture and installation. His works blend digital and manual methods of making to create meticulous replicas of historical objects and artifacts. He teaches sculpture and three-dimensional design at Drexel University, where he is an associate professor. Lewis’s work has been shown internationally and throughout the United States, at artistic spaces, galleries, and museums, including the Arlington Arts Center, the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Intuitive Art Space, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, California, Locust Projects in Miami, Florida, the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan and elsewhere. He has participated in numerous artist-in-residence programs, including at the Franconia Sculpture Park, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sculpture Space, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, R.A.I.R. in Philadelphia, and the D’Clinic Studios in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary. I had the pleasure of asking Lewis what made him want to become a professor, what he thinks are the biggest advantages of technology and how does he leave his connection to art in every piece he creates.

UZOMAH: At Drexel, you teach Sculpture and Design III, with a focus on integrating digital fabrication technologies with traditional, hands-on making processes. How would you sum up where the class will take the artist in their creative process and their aim in attaining the artistic technique?

LEWIS: Most students come to my Sculpture I class after having taken Drexel’s Foundation Design sequence, which explores basic principles of design and visual composition in black and white, color, as well as three-dimensional design. These courses give students a strong formal background as well as building a sense of studio practice- the hands-on process of making and discovery that goes into producing artwork or a designed object. 

In Sculpture I, I combine a variety of more advanced making processes (woodworking, welding, mold making, and casting, and some digital fabrication) with a deep discussion of various conceptual approaches to making sculpture. My hope is that students begin to see their works as carriers of meaning and as a means to explore challenging and complex ideas while still leaving space for material exploration and discovering the joys of hands-on making. I’ll admit that this is a lot to juggle pedagogically- and in certain instances, the making or the ideas get short shrift, but to me, the most compelling artworks are products of both deep critical thinking and deep engagement with a process or material (or several). Every artist finds their own balance between these elements, but at minimum, I hope to make clear to my students that there is not a contradiction between these approaches- they are mutually reinforcing. 

U: What made you want to be a professor?

L: It’s likely cliché, but I do genuinely love teaching. Especially in teaching sculpture, there’s a balance between discussing complex and interesting ideas and the hands-on work of actually producing a physical object. Both of these things give me great joy, and I hope I can share that with my students, and as I mentioned above, empower them to think and make critically as they go forward in the world. 

As an artist- teaching, of course, affords a degree of flexibility and support for my own practice that’s rare to encounter in almost any other profession. So, I consider myself extremely fortunate to be teaching in a discipline that I love while having time to produce my own artworks.

U: What is the most important lesson you want each of your students to learn?  How do you help your students explore the unimaginable?

L: Exploring the unimaginable seems to be a task we are all facing in the present moment, given the levels of rupture and disaster that humanity faces in the early 21st century. Students come to these classes engaged and thinking critically about the moment we are in, and I want to encourage them to bring these thoughts into their work and the classroom.  

At the same time, I want to give them a sense of empowerment- not only to see their artistic practice as engaging with the world around them but also through the language of making and building that I share with them. We spend a lot of time in the virtual world now- and astonishing creative works come out of that space- but I do think that this comes at the expense of a certain kind of hands-on experimentation. Even just making a few cuts on a band saw, making a simple joint in wood, or welding two pieces of steel together starts off a chain reaction of understanding how things in the world are made and that you, as an individual, can participate in this language of making, and perhaps even intervene in it, whether to practical, critical, or artistic ends (or all of the above).

Disposable Monument II (After The Boys Who Wore Gray), 2021 Polymer modified gypsum, graphite, aluminum, polypropylene, and pine.  60” x 84” x 53”  @ The work is based on a damaged Confederate monument, which crumpled and bent when it was pulled down by protestors in Durham, North Carolina in 2017.

U: What inspires you to select what replicas of historical objects and artifacts you will create? What is the research that goes into recreating each historical object and artifact?

L: I tend to look for objects or sculptures that contain multiple meanings, contradictions, or which embody complex histories beyond their recognizable visual presences. Take, for example, the Apollo Belvedere. This Greek/Roman sculpture was historically lauded as an iconic depiction of male beauty, but as soon as we start to pick at that narrative, we see that in parallel, it was used as an example (of idealized whiteness) in the scientific racism of the 18th and 19th centuries. Or, more recently, looking at Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. This is an iconic work of Modernist sculpture- but at the same time, the Futurists held dear some deeply troubling ideologies- embracing fascism and war, for example. So looking for these complexities is a key part of the work. 

When it comes to actually making the objects- I am a bit of an opportunist. If it’s possible to 3D scan the original, that’s certainly an ideal situation- but often, I’m not able to do so. Some of the objects I work with are long lost and exist only in images, or they may be halfway around the world and impractical for me to access. So, it becomes a process of research, gathering images, and perhaps even looking into how a given object was originally made. From there- I think about the materials and processes I have at my disposal- as well as the connotations of each of these materials and processes. I don’t tend to think of digital fabrication as a unique source of meaning- it’s just another process to use and almost always gets combined with a great deal of manual work as well. 

I’m also interested in the gaps and lapses in the records of a given object- what do I have to ‘make up’ in order to produce a convincing replica of the thing? If it’s a well-known sculpture that’s been cast in plaster many times and 3D scanned, there are few if any gaps. But other things require more interpretation or improvisation- and these moves are sources of meaning unto themselves.

U: Why would you recommend artist-in-residence programs? What is the greatest lesson you have learned from being an artist in residence?

L: I’ve been lucky to participate in quite a few residencies over the years. For me, the most interesting residencies are those that give access to a new site or resource- rather than those designed simply to support artists in making their ongoing work. A couple of residencies stand out in this regard- the Glen Foerd historic house and the Recycled Artist-in-Residence (RAIR) program, both in Philadelphia. The first gives artists access to the historic house as well as its collections and archives, and even better, allows the artist to present their finished works in the context of the historic house itself. To me, this is a rare opportunity to see behind the curtain of a historic site- and also to intervene directly in the way this history is presented to the public.

RAIR, by contrast, gives artists access to material moving through the waste stream at a large recycling center in Northeast Philadelphia. This is almost the polar opposite of Glen Foerd- rather than engaging with selected, meaning-laden objects and histories, the flow of materials at RAIR is so vast as to become overwhelming, and instead, you simply grab objects which seem interesting in the brief moment they are available. RAIR also allows for incredibly large-scale, temporary works, which are simply documented and then released back into the waste stream- which is incredibly liberating for someone whose work is predicated on making large-scale, relatively permanent objects. 

The Best of All Possible Worlds, 2019. Installation, dimensions variable. This configuration 8’ x 12’ x 12.’ Aluminum, plywood, MDF, walnut, mahogany, brass, fiberglass-reinforced plaster, and salvaged pine. The work consists of a full-scale replica of the Apollo Belvedere, combined with replicas of Marcel Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages, a portion of Walter De Maria’s Broken Kilometer, the 1899 International Prototype Standard Meter Bar, as well as numerous casts made from trash and detritus from a Philadelphia neighborhood.  

U: How do you store or even recycle sculptures after an exhibit?

L: This is, of course, an ongoing dilemma, both professionally, practically, and emotionally. I have a storage unit in the building where my studio is located. I’ve told myself that it’s going to be the only storage unit I rent- so practically, I go back into it every year or so and remove a few things to make space for new works. Pieces get recycled or cannibalized for their useful components- hardware, larger bits of material, etc. once I feel that my work has moved along enough that I don’t envision showing the older works again. For all I’ve tried making smaller things over the years, I tend to gravitate to things that exist on a human scale and/or their real scale in the world. Pragmatically, though, much of what I make is built-in components that disassemble for transportation and storage. So, a large object might pack down into quite a small space for storage purposes- and I think that the visual language of portability or modular structures is something that holds an abiding interest for me.

U: What can you express in installations that you cannot when creating a work of art sculpting?

L: I think, in general, the ideas are similar- but the physical presence or impact of the works tends to be different just based on scale and the level of complexity that can exist in an installation-based work as opposed to a singular object that might be presented in multiple contexts over time. 

 It’s interesting that you use the term ‘sculpting’ in the question, as this particular process- modeling a form in clay- is one that really didn’t play a big role in my sculptural education. While I had exposure to some of it- I spent a lot of time in a mode of fabrication and building as opposed to modeling. In retrospect, I wish I had a stronger background in modeling the figure, as it’s a skill I think would be really relevant to a lot of the work I do now, but in a certain sense, the digital skills I’ve cultivated become a kind of stand-in for having that figure modeling expertise. 

Regardless, though- I think of the works as exploring an interlocking set of ideas about the ways we construct and edit our historical narratives. Often the smaller sculptural works evolve over time in the studio, while the larger installation-based works are the result of a specific proposal or opportunity- so for all, they are often larger and superficially more complex works, they tend to hew a bit more closely to the proposal simply due to the logistics of making something large, temporary, and far from my main studio. 

Finally- a note on the idea of sculpting vs. building- one thing I tend to find compelling is works that bring together multiple materialities or modes of making- as each process and material brings its own language to the work. So, most of my works, whether temporary or permanent, bring together a great many elements in dialogue- perhaps something modeled and cast, another element digitally carved, a found object or two, some fussy little machined metal elements- thinking about the tense and complex visual and conceptual narrative that can exist in the relationships between all of these things and their histories.

U: Who are some of your favorite sculptors and artists  - those who have had the greatest influence on your work?

L: This is always a tough question as there are so many artists I love for so many different reasons. Probably the formative experience of my early sculptural education was visiting a show of Martin Puryear’s work at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa during my first year of college. I still deeply love his work- and it’s only grown stronger over the years- as he’s engaging both with a deep and sophisticated knowledge of the craft, as well as pulling from really complex and troubling elements of American history in an open-ended way.  

I give a big lecture at the start of each term at Drexel called ‘A Brief History of Sculpture,’ and I’m constantly updating and changing the list of artists I include in it. It’s quite subjective and broad-ranging, and I organize it thematically instead of chronologically- so drawing parallels between, say, a Duchamp readymade and Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum pieces, or a contemporary sculpture by Reza Aramesh of Palestinian youth and a 15th-century Austrian carving of Saint Sebastian. I like this kind of hopping around and connecting, and I think that’s how I approach artists, artworks, and objects that draw my attention. The list is always changing, so I suppose I’m a little resistant to just naming a whole list of artists I love- there are so many and for so many different reasons. 

A Fountain for a Dark Future, 2021 Aluminum, plywood, pine, fiberglass-reinforced plaster, cellulose sponges, electronic components, containment trays and plumbing components. 8’ 6” x 12’ x 10.’ Image of the work as installed at Locust Projects, Miami, FL. The orange robot arms repeatedly stroke the surface of the sculpture, while water circulates in the trays at the sculptures’ feet. The sculpture is a re-creation of Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, considering the ways in which the Futurists’ embrace of fascism and war rhymes with disruptive events that humanity faces in the 21st century.

U: What is your creative thought process as you translate 2D to 3D?

L: Oddly I don’t work too much in 2D. Drawing has never been my strong suit- I certainly sketch quite a bit in a sketchbook, but half the time, these are just notes, words, or small diagrams hinting at how something might go together. As I’ve gained familiarity with 3D modeling tools like Rhino and MeshMixer, these become sketching tools as well. They allow me to explore spatial relationships quickly and in some semblance of three-dimensional space, but they really never manage to communicate the ideas of scale and physicality. So it’s always a surprise and a negotiation when an object I’d imagined or explored digitally comes out into the world. 

Similarly, I often ‘sketch’ in the studio by clamping things together or propping them up temporarily- just simple, quick ways to establish a relationship between these things, enough to see whether they operate in the kind of visual relationship I want before I start into the longer and more laborious process of making the specific elements which might connect them in a finished work. 

U: What are the biggest advantages of technology in basic art practices?

L: First off, digital fabrication tools allow me to create things that I would never be able to do by hand. There’s no way I could carve the Apollo Belvedere from wood or stone- this just isn’t part of the skills that I’ve learned. However, with access to these digital tools and a 3D scan, I can re-create it; I can essentially quote it in a work- bringing all of its historical meanings into a project. 

Philosophically, though, I see these processes as just another tool- not an end in their own right. If it makes sense to make something digitally- I’ll go that route, but plenty of processes don’t translate well through that mode, so maintaining a strong knowledge of hands-on processes remains essential to me. My thought is to cultivate as many skills as I am able to since knowing a given process always informs new ways to make work and/or work with a given material. All of these modes are connected and just different means to an end. 

There Are No Miracles Here (Laocoön/Flamethrower) 2020 Various woods, aluminum, brass, polymer-modified gypsum and found objects. 96” x 70” x 60”

U: How do you leave your connection to art in every piece you create?

L: That’s an interesting question, and I might want to read it in multiple ways. As someone who’s interested in the histories of sculptural objects- I am re-creating a given artwork, of course, connects to the original and the various histories which led up to the creation of that object. I definitely do not believe that any given artwork arrives from nothing- nor does any particular idea or object, for that matter. I work by re-combining existing forms, ideas, histories, etc.- and to me, that’s a great joy and allows for genuine complexity and connection to this larger dialogue we understand as art-making. 

Please visit Lewis’s site for more information about his artwork, and follow him on Instagram.