John Brickels is a stoneware sculptor from Akron, Ohio and for the last 35 years he has been creating art work based on the hidden beauty he sees in entropy. All of his sculptures are made from the same type of clay and are built using the same techniques. This helps to connect all his of work together and make it all recognizable to his audience. Also, all of Brickel's work fits into one of four categories: building, claymobile, robot or machine.
Currently, Frog Hollow on Church St. is showing some of his work. I went down there to see is because i find his work very interesting and different from any other sculptor's i have seen. I really enjoy what he chooses as subjects and the extreme detail and craftsmanship he puts into all of his work is amazing.


My favorite piece by Brickels is called "Vermont Cottage", and is on display at Frog Hollow. Brickel's vision of a Vermont cottage is very different than most people's, and probably more true to reality. In this sculpture, the cottage is a tiny run down trailer on top of a steep rocky cliff. There is trash everywhere and a dumpy car parked out front. Even though i love Brickel's idea here, my favorite part is the detail he put into everything. My eye just seems to go from one place to the other looking at all the tiny features he included. I love how real the rocky cliff looks while contrasted with the cartoony feel of the rest of it. This piece stays true to what a real sculpture should do, it really needs to be viewed from every angle because each side has something new that adds to the piece as a whole.

Another piece I saw on display that i liked was "Bot in a Box". This robot is almost life size and while it is hard to see in the picture There is a ton of detail in this sculpture as well. You can look at the robot for a long time and seem to keep finding different things you didn't see before, like how the right shoulder looks torn and how the left knee is disconnected. It is amazing how Brickels was able to make the surfaces and lines so perfect using huge slabs of clay, and make it all look like a real old rusty robot. Brickels uses more than one medium in a lot of his sculptures like he did in this one, which i think makes then a lot more appealing. Making the box out of wood definitely makes this piece look a lot better than it would have looked if the whole thing was made out of clay.

As far as the quartet of traditions, i don't think that all of his work falls into just one category, in fact i think he covers all of them. his "Vermont Cottage" sculpture" if anything is instrumental because of how it shows what a true Vermont cottage probably looks like. I would classify the robots as mimetic because they look just like what a real robot might look like. As for the "Green Mountain Barn" and really all of the barns, i think they are formalist because of how he took regular old barns, and warped them into unrealistic figures.




www.Brickels.com



B. "John Brickels." Web log post. Blogspot. 7 Oct. 2009. Web. 2 Nov. 2009. .

Brickels, John. "Biography of." John Brickels, Architectural Sculpture and Claymobiles, Essex Jct, Vermont. 2000. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. .