Runners, roller-bladers, bikers, and walkers passing near Chicago’s Buckingham Fountain on Lake Michigan this summer will come upon a sculpture created by Fisher Stolz, a professor of art at Bradley University.
Professor Stolz incorporated 2.25″ OD and 3″ OD stainless steel tubing both with a 0.065 wall thickness curved to various outside radii: 4′, 6′, 11′ and 12′.
Fisher’s sculpture uses the curved stainless steel tubing to deal with patterns derived from spherical and circular ideals of balance and symmetry. Mathematical yet abstract forms invite the viewer to participate in the geometric appeal. His work invites contemplation, slowly revealing its content, where some viewers might see them as meditation objects. A lively dancing energy moves within each piece and flows out to the viewer.
I have seen more of his work and he always uses curved steel shapes of polished stainless steel tubing. I would say his work is geometric abstract art, and he uses curved tubing to make geometric forms sometimes placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective compositions. Fisher said “I regularly work in steel; its tensile strength and the additive nature of working in this material appeal to me. Bronze, aluminum and iron are metals I use for their colors and casting qualities”.
To me it looks like a helmet a gladiator would wear in the coliseum. What does it look like to you?
