Peter Kirkiles creates large-scale sculpture of everyday things, reminding us of an earlier time, and demonstrating the value of his labor as a craftsman.
Peter Kirkiles routinely navigates two worlds. As co-owner of Twenty-One Bridge Design in West Cornwall, he is an expert fabricator of highly crafted metal structures. As an artist, he works in his studio in South Kent, creating sculpture and prints. His dual occupations enhance each other, lending artful expression to commissioned utilitarian projects, and technical solutions to aesthetic challenges.
Kirkiles spent 1989 to 1992 working at New Haven Fabricators with Peter Versteeg, formerly of Lippincott, Inc., the legendary fine art foundry. During his tenure, Kirkiles assisted in the realization of sculpture by Modernist masters, such as Tom Wesselmann, Nancy Holt, Beverly Pepper and Scott Burton. As a mentee to Versteeg, and as a witness to many artists’s working process, Kirkiles acquired the fundamental skills for making things – precision, proportion, and persistence. These abilities in combination with his profound appreciation of history are evident in his art. Now, in the proverbial full circle, 21 Bridge Design fabricates for Lippincott and recently produced work for the estate of Tony Smith. 21 Bridge Design also makes commissioned objects for architects, and recently completed a large project with Nicolas Grimshaw Architects for Duke University’s West Union renovation.
Though his fabrication business requires collaboration, Kirkiles’ art is a solitary endeavor. His large scale sculpture exists in a place of aesthetic neutrality. It is not a metaphor for lofty theories, or a vehicle for ironic commentary, nor an homage to the masters. It resides in a space he carefully hones between the anonymity of minimalism and the deeply personal act of making. He determines the dimensions of each sculpture in relation to the human form, inviting the viewer to consider ordinary objects that share our environment as equivalent presences.
When he renders everyday things monumental, they acquire a potency that was lost when they were relegated to the junk drawer. An articulated ruler, a pocket knife, a giant level or a pencil is reaffirmed as a physical entity in our world. It is as though Kirkiles imposes a democratization of the material world onto the human arena, where we are often oblivious to the meaning and history of ordinary objects.
Kirkiles has an affinity for the cerebral objectives of conceptualism and minimalism, but he balances that intellectual weight with his reverence for hard work and fine craft. His sculpture is an unpretentious invitation to see the material world with more clarity. Though he strives to create work that is devoid of emotional references, he inadvertently conveys his affection for things that traverse history to arrive in our midst, unassuming, but resonating with accumulated meanings. We can appreciate the oversized harmonica as a benign presence, or as a scrutinized record of the past. When we look at these finely fashioned works, we see the things themselves more clearly.
In recent years, Kirkiles has been making copper intaglio prints and etchings on a press in his studio. They are two dimensional responses to the sculpture, rather than preparatory studies. Soft and atmospheric, in tones of grey and ochre, they are as subtle as his sculpture is emphatic. They seem like ghostly commentaries on the sculpture he so meticulously renders large.
There is an uncommon measure of care and tenacity imbued in each of Kirkiles’ sculptures. It stems from his appreciation of New England history and the self-reliance of an earlier time. The value of the labor — both his own and that of the craftsman who came long before him—transfers naturally into his art.
Kirkiles received his BFA from Tufts University with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA in metalsmithing from The Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work has been included in thirty exhibitions since 2008. Sculpture by Kirkiles has been acquired by the New Britain Museum of American Art, and by numerous private collectors.
