Lin Emery
(American/Louisiana, 1926-2021)

"Spiral"

polished aluminum kinetic sculpture
on a thin support base.
h. 79", span 84"

Provenance: Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana; private collection.

Exhibited: Lin Emery: in Motion, New Orleans Museum of Art, November 10, 2013-January 12, 2014.

Notes: "Sculpture is living, it's vital, it's changeable. Even when you walk around it, it can be something different. Drawing is a reflection and coordinating eye and hand, but sculpture is your mind and an idea." --Lin Emery.


An internationally renowned artist, Lin Emery's kinetic sculptures have an elegance of movement which masks an intricate and precise working. The components slowly sway and undulate, pushing and pulling each other in a seemingly endless dance, incorporating the very air around them. Using highly polished aluminum, a material she found readily available in the port city of New Orleans, Emery created abstracted forms reminiscent of the natural elements which inspired them. As the artist once admitted, "I love the natural movement of the trees on the levees, the river, and anything in nature." Emery spent her youth traveling between New York and Florida, before enrolling in Columbia University at the precocious age of 16. She traveled from university to university before arriving at the Sorbonne in Paris. While in Paris, she became interested in the work of Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967) whose studio was near her lodgings. Zadkine accepted her as a student, intrigued by the artistic potential of the curious and creative young woman. Emery eventually returned to New York to study welding at the New York Sculpture Center, one of the few schools to accept women into such a program. Upon completion of her studies, she settled in New Orleans where she turned a portion of her French Quarter apartment into a studio. While her first sculptures were figural, Emery soon found herself more intrigued by the internal structural armatures than the finished work. She began to experiment with abstract welded sculptures, eventually incorporating natural elements - water, magnets, air - into her works to create motion. Her process was time-consuming and exact, requiring precision and with a seemingly intuitive understanding of how the elements would interact with each other.

Emery was the recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards, most significantly the Laszlo Aranyi Award of Honor for Public Art, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Louisiana Women of Achievement Award, the Osawa, Japan Grand Prix for Public Sculpture, and an Opus Award from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. She exhibited widely including: the National Academy of Design, New York; the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans; Kouros Gallery, New York; and the Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia.

Overall good condition with scattered nick, small losses at edges and areas of rubbing and abrading. All consistent with material and outdoor usage.

79 x 79 in