|
His love of wood stems from his exposure to African carving and carpentry traditions while a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone in the mid-1960s. He often combines different woods in a single sculpture, as in number 12 from the series Boy's Toys (1985), enjoying the interplay of textures and colors and the responsiveness of the woods to various carving and shaping techniques. Puryear's works on view inside the museum and in the Garden share similar elongated, usually cone-shaped forms tapering off from a broad base. However, their various approaches to scale, materials, and relationship to the viewer produce a range of responses. The two columns in Ampersand (1987-1988), flanking the main entrance to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, are a simplified version of the square-to-circular transition found in the Boy's Toy piece; but their massive scale and the brute quality of the granite make this work stand in sharp contrast to the delicately sensual smaller sculpture. |