Eric Boyer

I have been involved in creating, artistically and otherwise, since my childhood. My work in wire mesh is a result of over twenty years of fascination with a material I discovered quite by accident, searching for a medium that I could best express myself with. Working by hand with leftover scraps of material at a blacksmith shop, I gradually came to know the expressive power of a medium most people had never heard of. Thus began a refinement and synthesis of all my art and design experiences; years of life drawing, carving in wood and clay—as well as the newly discovered mystique of metal work itself. I learned the skills to work with a material that is at once supple as clay, demanding and hard as steel, yet finite and woven, literally a fabric of wire.

These playful experiments eventually led to my first exhibition, in 1989. While the figurative works share my fascination with the human form, and the human history of image-making in and around that form, the “vessel” pieces are almost purely about the material itself as expression. Occasionally the figures have a story to tell: The Icon. A visual pun. An excuse for an obscure literary or musical reference. A new interpretation of Greek mythology. Yet the wire mesh itself is a material with no foreseeable limits as an artistic medium. My figurative work represents one narrow avenue of expression within a vast potential territory, which now has expanded into the purely geometrical, colorful vessels and can yet include architectural installations, furnishings, two-dimensional work, and kinetic sculpture.

website