Albert Paley - Metal Scuptor
In late spring, the slightly overgrown and unremarkable corner of Hampton and Wells (where, coming north from Highway 40, you’d turn left to go to the zoo) will become the setting for a tour-de-force steel sculpture by Albert Paley. Larger than any sculpture in St. Louis except the Arch, “Animals Always” will be at least 120 feet long and 30 feet high, incorporating some 60 animals and birds from jungle, ocean and savannah. The medium is self-healing, weather-resistant steel—2 inches thick for the 17-foot giraffe, a mere three-sixteenths of an inch for the delicate twining flowers. Public TV is filming a documentary on Paley, whose work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the White House and the Smithsonian Institution. The Saint Louis Zoo commission came about when St. Louisan Thelma Zalk saw Paley’s conceptual sketches for the Central Park Zoo in New York. She pointed and said, “I want to buy that.” “My drawings aren’t for sale,” Paley responded. “No,” she said, “I want the sculpture.” Zalk donated $1 million to make it happen; the Steve Schankman family donated $1 million to create a plaza for the sculpture.
This may be the fastest commission on record. Did you hesitate at all?
Oh no. It’s a very exciting, complex project. You can’t just build something like this and put it in your back yard. To conceive of something at this scale and keep it unified is a challenge—and I’m rather competitive.
How long did it take?
Development and drawing took about a year, then we spent two years in the design phase before we even touched the metal.
Walk us through the process with one animal.
OK, the giraffe: The major silhouette was cut out, then we shaped and formed the legs and head. I’d figure that out in small scale in cardboard, then make it 7 feet high in heavier cardboard and resolve it—cutting and changing the cardboard. Each piece was taken down, unbent, laid out and drawn. Then the pieces were redrawn, scanned into the computer, laser-cut out of steel, articulated and welded together.
Isn’t metal a cold, hard medium for a subject this organic?
Usually people think of metal in its industrial state—bars and rods and plates—but metal is very plastic. It can be formed and shaped into anything: cold, through hydraulic bending, or by heating it to a yellow state. People are amazed at how fluid the steel is in my work, how alive it seems. On one side these tendril ribbon shapes are woven through the structure to indicate water, and I had to make solid steel seem translucent.
You’ve worked consistently with metal, but first as an art jeweler. Did you dream of working at this scale?
No, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. If 40 years ago I had wanted to do this, I would have been frustrated. Art is exploration; one piece leads you somewhere, and the next picks up at that point. The scale evolved.
What was the toughest technical problem?
Steel doesn’t have color variance, so how do you show the stripes on a zebra or the quilted pattern of a giraffe? With the zebra, each individual stripe was a band. With animals that had fur, like the gorilla, instead of pattern I thought about the play of light and shade. That shadow area would then be cut out of the plate.
What animal challenged you?
The rhinoceros. It took me months before I had a breakthrough. That’s when I started thinking of the play of light and shade creating the creases in the animal’s skin.
Are St. Louis’ beloved penguins present?
Oh yes. There’s—do you call penguins a flock? There are 10 or 12 penguins in an ocean scene with stylized waves, and you can actually walk within part of it.
Did you come away with a deeper understanding of animals?
Drawing is very intimate. You focus all your energy on seeing something and understanding every element; it’s kind of a hyperrealization. A zebra has stripes, but how do the stripes change, how do they subdivide and relate to the main and connect with the hooves? Every day I was thinking of animals.
Did working on this sculpture change you?
Everything changes you. It made me think about what a zoo is, how we engage with nature, how we relate to other species. Ecologically, what’s happening with the planet is a disaster. I think it’s one of the major issues of our time: how we deal with life in all its forms.
You used elaborate scanning and plasma technology—but you regularly use sophisticated technology. Was anything different this time?
All my other work is abstract, nonliteral. This time I was using technology to create a visual, literal vocabulary. You cut a piece of steel and it has an edge, but if you cut it a certain way, it can look like fur or feathers. Serpentine forms become a snake weaving through a jungle or a fish swimming in the ocean.
Why should people bother to engage with steel animals when the real ones are waiting right inside the gates?
Because the sculpture is quite different from the actual animals. My intent was not to do a naturalistic rendition. Then you just cast an animal. With this, there was an interpretive quality as well. [Pauses.] Why should people experience anything? Why do we do what we do? Those questions are important.
