The quiet simplicity of Rusty Wolfe's art masks his inventiveness, essential to bring(ing) his sculpture to fruition.

At the Elizabeth Edwards Gallery, Wolfe engineers a series of colorful wall sculptures based on cubist illusions made with multiple sculptural elements.

Wolfe's skills are many, and ultimately, they filter into his hand fabricated, lacquer-coated metal or wood forms. The artist creates a sculptural whole from the redundant individual dimensional parts, largely the cube.

With meticulous concern for each six-sided object - its sides, corners, surfaces, and edges, as well as the wall upon which it resides, as an integral component in the work - Wolfe fabricates forms such as "White Fabric Boxes." It is a horizontal design, a series of seven cubes across, and five cubes down, identical rectangular solids, evenly spaced. The white wall separates each box… which reverberates against the white wall.

Wolfe is intrigued with precision, edge, and design possibilities of geometric forms. To ensure precision, Wolfe secures each form with a bracket he has devised to ensure under most conditions, the individual pieces do not shift. He also continually experiments and has developed a unique method of casting lacquer to coat each metallic form. Based on the principle that a coat of lacquer, unlike dry paint, reheats the lacquer coat beneath it, Wolfe had coats each piece a minimum of 14 to 16 times. He then dips a cloth with a distinct color and dabs the five exposed sides of each box. Sometimes using white on black, or black on white, or a combination of pastel colors. The cloth marks echo down the layers of warm lacquer, softening the hard-edge geometry of the form, and endowing the cold metal with a colorful, warm, and spontaneous persona.

Three-dimensionality of sculptural form naturally emits shadows. When Wolfe places individual geometric forms in series, incorporating the white wall as integral element, inevitably shadows result. "Falling" is a series of four rectangular lengths of a delicious green colored metal. The upper solid is erect and perpendicular to the floor, while the other three forms, placed on the wall at increasing angles, gives the illusion of falling even while securely mounted. The angularity of the work projects an interplay of lights and darks that endows the simple wall sculpture with energy, rendering four rectangular solids far more complex than they would be individually. The whole is greater than its parts.

The artists' engineering skill is at its best when Wolfe creates the illusion of a curved form on a straight wall. By meticulously altering the angles of each cube, works such as "Crest," a series of black painted cubes, offset by one yellow cube, appears to move before our very eyes. Upon closer inspection, one sees how methodically Wolfe has crafted each cube with perspective angularity that turns a mathematical design into a beguiling experience.

Wolfe moved to Nashville as a successful musician and songwriter for singers such as Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn. Now he puts his colorful past behind and is a full-time artist - a woodworker, designer, and self-taught artist. His current work, which includes two-dimensional renderings that augment his sculptural explorations, gives dimensionality to the painterly ideas of Piet Mondrian and the Color Field school. Wolfe's art incorporates a broad range of hues and spatial configurations to achieve an increased sense of precision, edge, and design of geometric three-dimensional form.

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Though first and foremost a painter, Rusty Wolfe could be called, perhaps more aptly, a modern-day Renaissance man.

Not only an artist, furniture maker, songwriter, singer and businessman, Wolfe has also become a scientist, engineer and inventor while perfecting his use of an unconventional art medium. The synthesis of his diverse skills and talents is vibrantly reflected in "Centered," Wolfe's contribution to The Tennessean 2000 Collection.

"The "Centered" piece is a form of spin painting, which has been around for many years." Wolfe points out. "What's new is the use of lacquer, learning to manipulate and master the volatile medium, which is highly sensitive to climate conditions and which dries very quickly, leaving little room for error.

Through his research, he has perfected the application of lacquer to several surfaces, including metal, fabric, glass, paper and wood. Much like a potter works with clay on a spinning wheel, Wolfe created "Centered" by applying layered lacquer on a piece of Plexiglas spun on his own custom-crafted machine.

"I work very hard to maintain control of the lacquer to create visuals that are much more refined than just paint splashed onto a board," he says.

Even with planning, preparation and experience, however, Wolfe must often make many attempts to produce the effect he wants. He estimates, for instance, that he started 60 to 70 "drafts" of "Centered" before he was satisfied with the final version.

"Centered," he describes, depicts a universal image. "You can look into the piece and feel that you are being drawn into the center of life itself. It also has explosive qualities, sending everything outward, almost like a sun. And it reflects a natural phenomenon, as a gift we see in a flower.

"Centered" offers an image of yesterday, tomorrow and now."

Wolfe has achieved his many accomplishments despite a difficulty which has plagued him since childhood.

"I'm dyslexic and can't read, so I can't obtain knowledge simply by picking up a book," he says wryly. "From a young age, I had to use my hands to learn things, and in doing so, I discovered many innovations. So, actually, I feel that my dyslexia was a gift. I feel truly humbled by it all, and I feel fortunate."

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"All lacquered up: Wolfe pours attention toward revolutionary painting medium"
Alan Bostick, Tennessean
Sunday, September 6, 1998
Nashville, Tennessee

Enter Rusty Wolfe, a Nashville artist, sculptor and furniture designer who doesn't hesitate to declare that he has discovered an application that could revolutionize painting as we know it. …It's not the substance that's new - this fast-drying commercial coating frequently used in the cabinet business has been around a long time. It's how Wolfe, a pioneer of sorts, is using it.

In general, what Wolfe has "discovered" is that lacquer - when applied in various ways to such surfaces as plywood, paper, Masonite and Plexiglas - allows him to create colorful and often spontaneous images of great clarity.

"Every door I open in his medium produces results and effects both visually and physically," said the Ithaca, NY native, an inventor's son who arrived here …in 1968. "I can do things with this medium that have never been done before."

His gradual and evolving discovery of new uses for lacquer started quite by chance.

While at work one day in the late '80s in his furniture studio, Wolfe noticed that a wooden board tossed in the trash had received multiple coats of lacquer overspray. The visual effects were dramatic, even fascinating, and Wolfe…found himself inspired. He has eventually found that lacquer - which has occasionally been sued in art as a coating but apparently rarely or never as a full-blown creative tool - has unexpected qualities. For instance, combing different viscosities of variously colored lacquers allows for intricate abstract forms. He explained that he might apply a thick lacquer, then add a thinner lacquer in a separate color, allowing the latter, almost like lava, to trace currents through the former. For a single work, he might choose as many as 10 colors and five viscosities, allowing for a variety of combinations.

As for the spontaneity of the procedure, Wolfe says his "only control is to put colors in place so they can interact." The colors, in effect, take it from there. Self-expression becomes secondary. "I feel I have a responsibility here, I feel like a tool of this new medium," he said. "It's so different (from) anything I've ever seen or come in contact with."

To apply the substance, which Wolfe describes as "very volatile" with toxic fumes, the artist has had to develop his own tools and methods. For example, lacquer dries so quickly (sometimes in 60 seconds,) that Wolfe can't use a traditional brush. Instead, he sprays, pours and uses metal tools he has created just for this purpose.

Still, Wolfe doesn't align his new technique with Jackson Pollock's notorious drip-and-splash style that also leaves much to chance. Avoiding Pollock's more frenetic application, Wolfe says he lets only gravity dictate the course of the paint. He even finds an advantage to his technique over Pollock's; the lacquer dries with impossible clarity and luminosity, while the enamels and metallic paint Pollock often used, viewed closely, can dry cloudy or dulled.

Wolfe has also created three-dimensional works that feature finished lacquer surfaces attached to sculpted armatures. After discovering a way to create solid, temporarily malleable sheets of lacquer, he has even fashioned "ties."

Lois Rigins-Ezzell, director of the Tennessee State Museum, is one admirer. "Rusty Wolfe has perfected a totally new art form," she wrote in prefatory remarks to Wolfe's recently published book, Introducing Lacquer. "His work is intensely expressive and visually strong. His masterful use of color catches and seemingly bends the light."

Working 80 - 90 hours a week … Wolfe comes across as a man entranced with a vision that just continues to unfold.

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Rusty Wolfe's installation of boldly colored, lacquered wood pieces easily caught my eye. The installation is divided into three sections, the first of which, titled "Out of Bounds," consists of 10 separate pieces of wood that practically hug the wall due to a special hanging method Wolfe invented. On their own, most of these pieces would have no power, but hung together, they form a maze that is fun to explore. From a distance, the pieces appear to touch each other. But upon closer inspection, they intersect without connecting. The forms create an area of negative space that makes me think of a city plan, of children's fat, block letters, Legos and cookie cut-outs. The pieces themselves read like Morse code.

I found the piece titled "Mahogany," fascinating. Full of tension, it repeats the considered playfulness of "Out of Bounds," both in the pieces themselves and in their spatial relationships. …Placed in line, each piece projects from the wall about one foot. Hung about two feet apart, they appear as if they might fall like a set of dominoes. A more careful inspection reveals that the blocks don't form an arch, but instead are placed on an almost slanted and only slightly curving line. The far left block hangs on a perfect vertical and has a triangular cut-out shape in its underbelly. To its right, another piece begins to fall away. This one is shaped like a backwards "F." Although it's cut with sharp lines, the next block reminds me of a curtain swag or animal belly, perhaps because it's starting the tension of the fall. A piece with a slanted rectangular cut-out hangs to its right. Almost underneath this block is a shape with a cut-out that reminds me of a keyhole. Because I viewed the installation a few hours before dusk, the falling light made a perfect complement tot he keyhole, which competed the idea of entering another space. Finally, the last piece, with an interior cut-out shape that looks like a bridge, hangs horizontally.

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Nashville's Rusty Wolfe will be …the feature(d) artist at SOFA Chicago, the world's largest exposition of three-dimensional art. …Wolfe will travel to Chicago with his recently published book "Introducing Lacquer," a sixty-page comprehensive overview of his work.

If you've ever wondered what prolific artists like Rusty Wolfe do while the rest of us sleep, the answer is revealed in this exhibition of his latest sculptures and paintings in lacquer.

Wolfe is one of those multi-taskers - creating four or five bodies of work at any give time and in a variety of media. His works in lacquer are demanding because lacquer paint has an explosive, reactive nature that resists the artist's attempts to control and manipulate it. After years of working with lacquer, though, Wolfe is indeed this medium's master, and his abstract paintings are beautifully refined.

An added bonus to the show is the opening of Wolfe's new private studio and gallery which patrons can visit by appointment.

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In December and January, Wolfe's sculptures were featured in solo and group shows at the Elizabeth Edwards Gallery in California and Elaine Baker Gallery in Florida. Representation by a major Santa Fe art gallery is in the offing.

Wolfe is entirely self-taught, and his career as an artist … has taken some unusual turns over the course of three decades. …Wolfe admits he discovered lacquer's potential as an artistic medium by accident 10 years ago. Wolfe began to develop lacquer-coated sculptures and to experiment with paintings using the volatile substance. "I started with a series of tree paintings and eventually developed 12 different series that I continue to work on every year," he says. Among Wolfe's other series are his lacquered necktie sculptures and his Spin series of circular abstract designs on Plexiglas. Works from the Spin series are included in the current show, as are examples from his Window series on masonite and his precisely engineered, grid-oriented wall sculptures of wood and lacquer.

The paintings and sculptures represent the yin and yang of Wolfe's creativity. If the paintings are spontaneous and organic, the sculptures are logical and geometric. Both require precision planning and execution. "It's almost like the work of a glassblower," he says. "I have everything very well marked out and I follow my notes carefully. So even though it looks spontaneous, this isn't something I just get lucky with."

The process behind the works in his Spin series is especially complex. Not only do the circular motifs evoke a sense of spinning, the method of achieving them involves actual rotation as well. "Each one has as many as 25 different colors and 25 different viscosities of lacquer," says Wolfe. "And I actually put the Plexiglas on a wheel and spin it." Gravity and centrifugal force - painstakingly manipulated by the artist with specially designed tools - create the intricate striated patterns.

The works in his Window series require a different approach. "These are done very much like screen printing," says Wolfe. "All the colors are applied at the same time - the reds, yellows, blues are all wet. Then the work is sprayed with a coat of black and two coats of white. I take a knife and pull it across the painting." The action scrapes away the layers of lacquer and reveals designs of surprising clarity and dimension.

While Wolfe admits he finds painting most rewarding artistically, it is his sculptures that are grabbing national attention. These are generally comprised of multiple cubes coated with 16 layers of lacquer arranged in precise grids. Within that overall concept, Wolfe finds room for endless variation. In "Mold, Negative and Positive," for example, he arranges 162 gleaming white cubes in a 6 x 13 x 13 foot grid on the wall. Concave and convex surfaces on certain cubes break the rigidity of the grid and add a sense of motion to the all-white work. Similarly, the surface of the 50 silver cubes of "Open Book" curve upward near the center of the grid to approximate the shape of the title.

Wolfe's accomplishments as an artist and entrepreneur seem all the more impressive when one learns that Wolfe was diagnosed with severe dyslexia as a child. "…To me it's been a gift, because art is really one problem-solving event after another."