Copyright 2007 Eric Strauss
Media Relations - Toren Anderson, In the Loop Atlanta 770-928-2892
Georgia Sculptor Builds a Steel Menagerie
Ever since he was a boy, Eric Strauss has found his passions in expressing the natural beauty of his native Georgia hill country. How he’s gone about it has changed over the years, but his connection to the elements of his environment are woven through his art like a glancing ribbon of steel around and through the form of one of his signature horses.
The sculpted steeds transform Strauss’ Ellijay, GA, barn studio into a stable of life-size, flowing, metal beasts, each frozen in a state of natural expression, yet the brushed metal sparks to life with the changing light which imbues each one with a unique, animate character. It wasn’t hard for him to dream up his pieces; after all, his years living on a horse farm gave him a true comprehension and love of these soulful creatures.
“They’re just like friends to me,” Eric says of his equine charges. “All of them have their own personalities and minds just like dogs. And you can hug these huge animals around the neck and they’ll put their heads on your back to hug you, and you know they could crush you with a single step. But they have to trust me, too, to feed them and bring them in from the cold. That’s why I make my horses in very living, intelligent poses and expressions, because I want people so see not what they are, but who they are.”
But the horses are simply the latest step in the evolution of Strauss’ craft. As his horses have changed from whimsical, fantastic forms to more life-like, subtle representations, so have the media he uses have changed over the years. Strauss’ first artistic stirrings were awoken with photography since his dad shared a farm with the owner of a large photography supply chain. He started college as a business student, but since one fateful day, he has worked as a sculptor in metals.
“One day, an art professor I had opened up the doors to the old foundry and asked me to help him clean up a little,” reminisces Strauss. “We went in, and everything was covered in dust and looked like it hadn’t been used in years, but it was like heaven to me. I took one look at all that metal and fire and I just got sucked in.”
His craft led him to Italy where he studied the apocryphal methods of classical bronze casting and stone carving under master sculptors. After finding himself back in Georgia a newly minted graduate, he become more interested in welding and constructing metal sculpture than the negative space-oriented methods of casting and carving. He began working near a relative’s scrapyard where he could help himself to anything in the yard for his sculptures, now dictated only by his imagination and the odd shapes of scrap metal he found.
As time went on, the themes of Strauss’ steel sculptures evolved from the industrial forms necessitated by his raw materials. He has moved through depictions of celestial bodies to botanical pieces centering on depictions of Southern flora, until he settled on the horses of his boyhood as the focus of his art.
After dozens of exhibitions and having his art featured in galleries and museums across the country, Strauss has become one of the brightest new starts of sculpture in the South. His work graces the collections of the likes of Sir Elton John and Brenau University, and he hopes for his exhibition at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, GA, to become permanent. Keep an eye on him; the next step in the evolution of his work is sure to be as dramatic and beautiful as each one before.
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