Artist Leonardo Drew's first bronze sculpture has a permanent home on Miami University's Western Campus. The piece was unveiled during a ceremony Thursday afternoon.
The piece, titled "Number 381," somewhat resembles pieces of painted plywood, and is situated between Hillcrest and Young halls.
"I think it's really an exuberant piece," says Jack Green, director and chief curator of Miami’s art museum. "I think that, as with many of Leo's artworks, it's sometimes beyond interpretation; it doesn't have a title that allows you to think 'I know what this represents.' It's meant to make you think, and I think that's what this sculpture does."
Speaking after the unveiling and seeing the artwork in place for the first time, Drew said he was still digesting the experience of his first outdoor work. He too says the work is about the person who experiences it. That's why the title is a number, not an interpretive name.
"It just means that you, the viewer, you have to complete it," says Drew. "That means that [what] you're saying is just as important as me making it. If I gave you an idea of what this thing meant, you wouldn't take the initiative. So 381 — having not a title, but actually a number — gives you the opportunity to sort of find yourself in the work."
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Green offers his personal interpretation this way:
"My feeling is it's about taking things apart and putting them back together. Again, that's my own personal viewpoint. I think [of] this idea of fragmentation, the idea of expansion and growth. When we were initially thinking about how this artwork might be placed, the idea was to have it so it could be kind of coming out of the ground, like emerging. In a way, there's a kind of organic feel about it, as well. What's amazing about it is that it's actually cast bronze, but the pieces resemble these broken fragments of painted wood. But it's actually made from bronze."
Drew is mainly known for his indoor installations, though his work is found at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., and at Madison Square Park in New York City. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Guggenheim Museum also have his works in their collections.
"He is known for crafting contemplative abstract sculptural works that play upon a tension between chaos and order," according to a statement from the university.
“Leonardo Drew has been doing some quite ambitious work in recent years,” adds Green. "This is a new direction and a new medium for him to work in."
