Jeremy Holmes: The lure of lumber

Imagine the largest-ever unspooling of Christmas ribbon candy made of hard yet pliable maple. Or a flexibly reedy roller coaster fashioned from walnut and coiling through the expanse of a white gallery. Or a three-dimensional, 1,400-foot-long line drawing made of pine, floating in space.

The reality of these imaginings can be found at Drexel's Leonard Pearlstein Gallery starting Wednesday, when abstract installation artist Jeremy Holmes' site-specific exhibition "Convergence" opens, marking his Philadelphia debut and also his longest bentwood installation yet. (He previously topped out at a quarter-mile - 1,320 feet.)

He calls his works "drawings in space."

"I hope 'Convergence' challenges audiences to think about how experiencing art and gallery-going can be more than rectangular shapes on white walls," says Marnie Lersch, the gallery assistant at the Pearlstein's URBN Annex who brought Holmes' work to Drexel. "That it makes viewers question how they interact with art and what they need from the gallery experience.

"This installation requires you to experience the gallery with new eyes and, I hope, leave it looking at their world with those new eyes still on."

Holmes, 31, wants the same thing when it comes to experiencing the gallery differently, yet there's so much more to his desires - something beatific, organic, and lit from within.

"I want people to feel a connection to the material," he said last week, "to seek out different perspectives within the work, to feel a part of the work, and to evoke a new curiosity in such a traditional material as wood, to challenge how space can be used with this material."

Both Holmes' and Lersch's objectives are fulfilled when a viewer encounters one of Holmes' enormous, stroll-through installations. The Cooperstown, N.Y., native graduated graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2007 with a BFA in sculpture and a vision: To make abstract wood sculptures that aggressively emphasize materiality and engagement among the viewer, the site, and his wide, winding bentwood sculptures and hanging mobiles.

He uses traditional woodworking techniques - soaking materials in water, using free-form bending methods - in "unexpected and new ways" to create pliable constructions that contrast with the geometric galleries they occupy. The idea is to make everyone aware of the breadth of the space and all that's in it.

"I've been drawn to open space and how it makes us feel, to take advantage of everything a room and space had to offer," he says. "Installations were interesting to explore - that use of existing architecture, to take advantage of a whole room, for viewers to see a space for its entirety."

Holmes' work - indoor, outdoor, small, large, very large - has been shown extensively in New York State as well as in Asia and Europe. He made wood (often white ash because of its straight grain, strength, availability, affordability and bendability) his material of choice for reasons of beauty, history and accessibility.

"Everyone's familiar with wood. For that reason, I can influence what that material means to people. To show it in a new way can change their perception of what it can do and be."

The Drexel opportunity - to fill, and engage, the entire gallery - led Holmes to choose five varieties of wood found throughout southeastern Pennsylvania: walnut, cherry, hard maple, red oak and ash. Each is a different color, and they are installed and jointed together from darkest to lightest.

"This gives the piece depth and perspective," says curator Lersch. "Aesthetically, Jeremy needed to have freedom with the materials to react to how the wood wanted to react to the space."

Holmes says he used different varieties to make the viewer feel changes in color and type, as well as for each one's reference point to the region. "It's common for someone's kitchen to be made of cherry or their floors out of red oak. I find it interesting to live every day with something, then see it expanded out in a different, abstract way."

Walnut was the most difficult "because it has brittle qualities, and also [is] hard to find with straight grain. This work uses the natural bend of the wood, meaning you have to make it thin enough to bend freely without moisture or steam. There are tensions when installing, the material has limits, and 'Convergence' is created by holding within those limits, so that it doesn't snap and break, but the wood is thin enough to have a lot of flexibility."

Both Holmes' and Lersch's objectives - eye-opening experience, connection with the material - are fulfilled when a viewer enters one of the artist's enormous, stroll-through installations.

Lersch calls it a conversation between the wood's spirals and the gallery's white walls as they brush against each other to create beautiful, elegant tension.

"There's no correct viewing point from which to respond to 'Convergence,' " she says. "Jeremy's work asks viewers to choose their own path through the installation, enveloping and confronting the viewer at each turn with its loops, offering an ever-changing view of the piece."

Convergence

Wednesday through Sept. 28 at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, 3401 Filbert St.

11 a.m.-6 p.m. EndText