South Plaza Sculpture Exhibit 2006

H e a d
(Mahogany)
(2005)
Size: 65x65x65 inches

Artist
Aaron Baldwin

Aaron Baldwin is foremost a formalist. He is driven by aesthetics and the formal qualities of his surroundings. Those surroundings include coastal McClellanville, S.C., where he was born and lives. It includes tools, forests, fish, chickens and people, including Ted, David, Mose and other folks with whom he used to work in construction or architectural restoration.
That boat shapes appear frequently in Baldwin’s work is no surprise. Nor are the nails, wire or tools, including the open-ended wrench or the plaster knife doubling as human bodies in K4 and David In High Places. GI Joe’s head, sanded down to dull its features, is the model for the heads made from putty in Baldwin’s three-dimensional wall pieces. Hard Ted’s body is modeled after a turtle exclusion device, an underwater cage used to spare turtles while catching shrimp. Wood, in all shorts and shapes, pure or processed, is a staple of Baldwin’s art. “I look for shapes and materials close to home.”
Baldwin seldom depicts what’s close to home literally. The work reflects how he relates to his environment, both physically and mentally. Sometimes merely as a mental exercise, he puts together everyday elements in ways that change their purpose. The door hinge that gives Icarus a body and wings is conceptually related to Picasso’s handlebar-turned-bullhorns. Baldwin also reduces nature to its essential shapes in sculptures informed by the clean, understated stylings of Constantin Brancusi or Martin Puryear. Sculptures such as Dolphin and Fish Trap suggest, in Puryear fashion, a heaviness that, hollow as they are, isn’t there, even though they have gravitas.
In his Tower sculptures, Baldwin uses branches, twigs and scrap wood for construction and architectural purposes. In his Developend Landscape and Undeveloped Landscape series, Baldwin exercises his recent “compulsion to impose a sense of order on nature and daily life.” Those three-dimensional paintings, inspired in part by early Christian relief paintings, underscore that Baldwin is above all a sculptor. His two-dimensional Hand paintings in essence depict sculptures of hands.
“I like the formal part of my work to have a lot of value,” Baldwin says, “because then it doesn’t matter whether it means something.” Still, the painted hands are a tribute to “working with your hands.” A lot of his work deals with ego, Baldwin says, about people, including himself, taking themselves too seriously. The tiny heads on a seven-feet-plus support system in his Tower sculptures are somewhat absurd. A head as heavenly body or on top of a pyramid or tilted to suggest crucifixion are merely a spoof, not attempts at new age or religious communication. The same is true for a body pierced with nails, St. Sebastian-style.
“There’s nothing more deep behind it. I am making fun of myself and other people, for instance of our notion that we sacrifice so much. To me it’s sort of humorous. But it’s disturbing to some people, and I can see that. I gravitate toward Romantic art in art history, and some of that stuff can be sort of dark. But I don’t try to make my art dark. I enjoy life and generally am optimistic.”

Aaron Baldwin (b. 1963)
Aaron Baldwin was born in McClellenville, S.C. After receiving his MFA in painting at Clemson University in 1991 and living several years in Charlotte, N.C., he returned to his hometown. He teaches at Charleston Southern University in Charleston, S.C. In the late 1990s, as a carpenter, Baldwin worked in 18th and 19th century woodworking techniques. He also applied modern methods toward the preservation and restoration of historical structures. Since the early 1990s, Baldwin’s work has been shown in galleries in New York City, Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, S.C., Greenville, S.C., and elsewhere. He has exhibited in the Greenville (S.C.) County Museum of Art, Charleston’s Gibbes Museum, and the Chattahoochie Valley Art Museum in LaGrange, Ga. His work was selected for several Spoleto and Piccolo Spoleto exhibitions in Charleston and for the 1992 South Carolina Triennial.

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