It's hard to believe that anything as common as a pothole could be inspirational.
But they were for New York artist Talya Baharal, who spotted a few salt-encrusted potholes last month at the corner of Smallman and 21st streets in the city's Strip District.
In early December, Baharal, who hails from a small Hudson Valley town just north of New Paltz, spent some time roaming the streets of The Strip along with a few kids from The Pittsburgh High School for Creative and Performing Arts looking for little bits of steel -- anything from bent wire to rusty washers -- that she and the students could incorporate into sculptures.
That's where, upon finding the potholes, Baharal got the idea to make a sculptural triptych out of paper pulp, a rusty bottle, twisted wire and a few other bits and pieces of metal.
Oh, and of course, lots and lots of salt.
The untitled work is one of nearly 20 pieces in Baharal's one-person show, "Big Steel, Little Steel," which will go on display beginning Friday in the Grant Street "T" station lobby of One Mellon Center, Downtown.
The works, which in all their rusted glory look like the kind of stuff you'd find in the back lot of an old barn once owned by an eccentric farmer, are the direct result of Baharal's one-month stint as the 2004 Artist in Residence at Society for Contemporary Craft where she led workshops for local kids and adults in how to create art out of junk.
Although she lives in rural upstate New York, Baharal insists, "I couldn't be further from a farmer."
"I'm not an outdoorsy sort of person," she says. "I'm a city girl at heart, but I love living in the country and it has impacted my work a lot, but more subconsciously."
That explains why some of the pieces, such as the aforementioned triptych and another nine-unit piece titled "Gesture of Wire," look like the mucky brown backwash of a creek, the kind one usually finds full of flotsam, organic and otherwise.
That murky look is the result of trapping bits of metal detritus in castings of paper pulp. Specifically, she uses either abacca or flax pulp, which she purposefully "overbeats" so that it has extra shrinkage when it dries, allowing the bits of metal Baharal has included to become trapped inside. It's a technique Baharal developed eight years ago after taking a class in sculptural papermaking.
Although the artist admits that the combination of metal and paper is a bit unusual, it's really not that unusual for her, considering that Baharal's sculptures grew out of conceptual explorations that began as jewelry.
For the past 18 years, Baharal has been deeply involved in making jewelry, ever since she founded her own jewelry company in 1986. Within a year afterward, it landed her work in Saks Fifth Avenue stores and later in Elle, Vogue, Bazaar and The New York Times, among other publications.
In recent years, she has been exploring the connection between jewelry and skin, seeing the metal parts of her sculptures as kind of a skeletal structure around which the paper pulp functions as a connective tissue or skin.
"Basically, all of this work is mostly about skeletal structures and this kind of skin that covers it," Baharal says about her recent sculptures. "The fragility and the strength of skin in particular becomes important."
Aside from the connotations to skin the paper affords, Baharal's work also has a primal, almost prehistoric, element to it, as though we are looking at the past of some future civilization. In fact, the artist says she views her work as primal and industrial at the same time.
That explains why one work, which is made up of piano parts strung up and hanging from the ceiling, looks like a spinal chord. Or why another piece, which uses hundreds of paper-coated springs appears to be barnacles encrusted on the hull of a sunken ship deep within the ocean.
Not one for names, Baharal rarely titles her works. However, one work in particular, "Gene's Piece," is a standout. A tunnel-shaped piece built of coiled wire that has bits of paper coming off of it as though they were pieces of torn skin, it is a favorite of her husband, Gene Gnida.
A jewelry maker, Gnida has been Baharal's collaborator since the late 1980s. Together, they create rather primal and industrial looking jewelry of their own, which they have been showing and selling at the Smithsonian Institution's annual craft shows and the American Craft Council juried shows for more than a decade. See www.baharal-gnida.com for more information.
Several of their pieces are on display in the gift shop at the center in the Strip District. And although they look nothing like Baharal's more sculptural works, they offer a wonderful opportunity for comparison. Additional Information:
Details
'Big Steel, Little Steel'What: Works in steel wire and paper pulp by Society for Contemporary Craft's 2004 Artist in Residence, Talya Baharal.
When: Through Feb. 27. Hours: Open 24 hours daily.
Where: Society for Contemporary Craft's One Mellon Center Gallery, Grant Street 'T' station lobby, One Mellon Center, Downtown.
Details: (412) 261-7003 or www.contemporarycraft.org .
