June 2-August 5, 2012
Philadelphia sculptor Leo Sewell (b. 1945) grew up in Annapolis near a naval community dump where he began playing with its found objects before he was ten. With the help of his father and access to his father’s workshop, he began creating assemblages using fasteners and welding. While in college in the 1960s, he studied modern artwriting a Master’s thesis on the Use of the Found Object in Dada and Surrealismand decided to dedicate his life to making sculptures from manufactured objects. Over the subsequent fifty years, he has produced more than 4,000 sculptures. Sewell’s naturalistic creations are composed of recognizable objects of plastic, metal and wood that are selected for their color, shape, texture, durability, and patina. Using nails, bolts and screws, he assembles the sculptures into a variety of subjects and sizes including a house cat and other animals, a life-size lady and other figures, a forty-foot Statue of Liberty hand and torch and other installations. On exhibition will be more than a dozen of his colorful works, all of them green, both whimsical and serious, and the offspring of trash heaps, yard sales and flea markets.
