Portfolio: Larry Lawrence

by Lynn Woods, April 28, 2009

In a sprawling stone-walled basement in Woodstock, Larry Lawrence crafts kinetic sculptures out of bright steel wire and copper-coated steel rods using a jeweler’s torch. With their curved armatures, embedded springs, and curlicue embellishments, the wire pieces are dainty yet industrial, biomorphic yet mechanistic. Chutes, wheels, and oscillating rods called pitmans, all powered by a tiny electric motor, collect and convey marbles to a series of swooping tracks. They make a racket: mechanical clicks, random chimes, the rumble of marbles speeding down the wire tracks, and the occasional thud of a ball hitting the floor intermingle with squawks from the artist’s parrot.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Lawrence early on demonstrated a gift for fashioning fanciful mechanisms and miniature worlds. As a child, he constructed toothpick towers, took apart a piano, and blew the fuses in his school classroom by plugging in contraptions rescued from Dumpsters. He began hopping freight trains in his teens and developed a fascination for trolley lines and cable cars, boardwalks with carnival amusements, the Pacific Northwest rain forest (ferns are a favorite motif), and belching Rust Belt factories.

After moving to New York in the mid 1960s, he and his partner Paul Feasel developed a successful business selling elaborate miniature carousels, musical cable cars, hot-air balloons, and other gift items to department stores and specialty music-box stores. They briefly relocated to San Francisco and then returned to New York, before purchasing an 1867 house on the green in Woodstock a decade ago. Lawrence started building his rolling ball machines five years ago and, more recently, miniature tableaux of stoneware figures in working man’s poses. An exhibition of Lawrence’s work will open at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum on May 9 and continue through June 7. (845) 679-2940; www.larrylawrenceart.com.

LARRY LAWRENCE ON HIS WORK

Early Inspiration
I can remember finding an apple crate when I was five years old. TV had just come in and we used to go over to [visit] some neighbors who had a set and watch the Rose Bowl. The TV seemed really cool. So I built a TV studio out of the crate. I had to do the lights and control panel. I had a fascination not with what’s going on out front but with the set, light panels, controls, and fly space [the tower above the stage enabling stage hands to move lights and other elements quickly onto the set]. That was the first distinctive thing I recall building.

I was always the kid getting all the other children in trouble for going out someplace and constructing some sort of village or city out of mud or whatever was available. Of course, they’d go home all dirty. Once I found a neon transformer on the way to school and brought it into shop class. I made most of the class uncomfortable showing how many things I could do with the sparks.