Perpetual motion: Kirk Newman's frantic figures reflect his artistic theory of evolution

Art Business News, May, 2004 by Jenny Sherman

As the tides push and suck at the shores, glaciers gnaw at mountains and rivers scour gaping canyons out of gullies, one sees plain evidence of the earth's state of continual transition. It's a condition from which human beings are not exempt, though on a biological rather than geological scale. Our species has evolved from nomadic hunter/gatherers to agrarian herders, and again from rural farmers to urban entrepreneurs. The constancy of change has brought us iron tools, alphabets, the Industrial Revolution, microwaves and 24-hour banking.

This is heavy stuff, and more in the realm of evolutionists. But it's also very much on the mind of artist Kirk Newman, who depicts the modern human animal amid this persistent change in his prints and bronze sculptures.

"In college, I took way more classes than I needed to in religion and philosophy, and had a big interest in evolution," the forthright, yet modest, 78-year-old Newman said from his home in Kalamazoo, Mich. "I bring that background to the figures that I make. What my work is really about is man on earth at this time in this time frame."

The cultures of the past recorded their reflections of daily life, whether they were figures of Pharaohs strutting across a wall of hieroglyphics or scenes of Russian peasant women sheaving wheat. Newman enters the anthropological record with impatient businessmen rushing to meetings, women speeding pell-mell to appointments and an iconic use of the business suit, briefcase, computer and cell phone.

"Speed is such a huge part of the environment we live in," said Newman, who himself doesn't own a cell phone. "But the greater reality is the speed of change. The figures I make are reflecting that."

These symbols of perpetual motion developed from Newman's own experience in the business world working for a lighter company in the late 1970s. His brief time there was enough for him to learn that industry was not what he wanted to do for a living. But working with the heads of companies also gave him fodder for future artistic projects. "The c.e.o. is a person who cannot show a lot of emotion but gets news that can be good or terrible," Newman said. "He can't jump up and down. But his nerve endings go all over. He's affected totally. That's the thing I want to express in an image."

Before his foray into the business world, Newman studied drawing, printmaking, ceramics and painting at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, and later completed graduate work at the University of Iowa, obtaining degrees in art education and ceramics in 1951. Besides working as an educator at the University of Architecture & Design in Kalamazoo, Mich., and, later, at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, where he was also associate director, Newman was busy setting up foundries in three different communities as well as creating a solid body of artwork. He dabbled in various media and spent an entire summer during the 1960s in Communist-ruled Yugoslavia experimenting with carving marble.

The variety in his professional life has been paralleled by the variety in his artistic output. Newman has not only worked with a sculptural format, but he has also produced prints and drawings, many of which are in the permanent collection of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. He still makes graphics as an art form unto themselves and also employs his drawing skills to create his sculptures.

He begins that process by sketching an image that he intends to turn into a 3-D piece of art. He then traces it onto a sheet of wax measuring 2 or 3 feet square and 1/8 inch thick. Next, he cuts the figure out and attaches it to an armature. With a hot iron, he shapes the wax to imply the hectic movement he desires.

Newman wants his sculptures to be slim. His goal is to suggest an angular, exaggerated shadow. A shadow, he said, can stretch in different directions--similar to how we are stretched so thin today in our busy lives. His reasons are also more practical: "In the age we live in, there's not going to be room for big, heavy round sculptures," he noted. "Also, it's easier when shipping."

He hands off the actual casting of the pieces to the Alchemist-Tye Studio in Kalamazoo. Here, into molds of frantic modern man, artisans pour a material that humans have manipulated since ancient times: bronze.

"I've seen people make things out of Styrofoam and polyester and computer art," said Newman. "There are things that can be done with new materials and ideas. But we still have a connection to where we came from. When you look at history and sculptures, it seems that bronze is an appropriate material; it is flexible, but also really old. I'd rather have bronze than Styrofoam. When you pick it up, there's a substance there. You feel there's something in your hands.... I use bronze because it's rarely thrown out, and it's also the most expensive and hardest to work with."

Limited editions of Newman's sculptures will also be made from bronze. His current agreement with publisher Visionnaire Art to offer limited editions of his sculptures isn't his first foray into the field of multiples. The accomplished artist has experimented with graphics in the past, and hopes to produce etchings and even stone lithographs in the future. "I haven't really pushed trying to sell prints," he said, "but I have enjoyed the process.... It's fun to see the image come off the press."