ArtistStudio
Van Hout’s school of fish hangs in Richardson Orthodontics. Gorham’s sea otter and table were commissioned by fellow Acme artist
Sandy Ihly.
Some of the skill in planning and organization of projects Gorham
says he inherited from his grandfather. “Not necessarily the really
tight mechanical drawings and drafting skills that somebody would
apply in an architectural field,” he says, “but later in life when I went to
design school was where I really tapped into some things along those
lines that previously I hadn’t tried or really been exposed to. I guess
there’s a thread in there.”
As he talks, a cardinal sings in the shrubbery outdoors as Van Hout
swings his hammer tapping out a staccato rhythm.
“The artists here, for whatever reason, gravitate toward one another
over a period of time,” Gorham says. For 12 years, he has been Van
Hout’s neighbor.
Michael Van Hout’s grandfather was a World War I draft dodger
who arrived in Minnesota in 1914. Van Hout’s father became a West
Point graduate, an accolade he wanted for his son.
“I had good grades but I wasn’t very athletic,” Van Hout says. “He
really pushed me that way. This was way before I was an artist and I
didn’t know what was wrong with me. I had no desire to compete. He
was military. I think that’s really typical. It’s a real strong, brainwashing
kind of career. It gave me something really strong to react against.”
He dropped out of North Carolina State University in the 1970s and
was working on the grounds crew when he began pocketing baler wire
used to secure the pine straw. At the end of the work day, he twisted
the wire into a series of figures, blues musicians and Bob Dylans were
favorite subjects. He went back to college at the University of North
Carolina Greensboro to pursue a degree in sculpture.
“For me the sculpture is about volumes, I love the volume of the
head to the body. With these wire sculptures I’m trying to really cap-ture
the essence of an animal. People read that, people can see it, I
think. That’s one of the joys of the work.”
His approach was very logical, based on a right angle formula, he
says. When he became disenchanted with a body of work he pro-duced
for a show in Greensboro he threw the work away when it
didn’t sell.
“My tendency is toward order. My work — especially with
the wire — I got to this point where the pieces became predictable.”
When the Recession hit the Wilmington art community, the bot-tom
fell out of Van Hout’s large-scale commissions — which had been
lined up a year in advance. He returned to sculpting smaller pieces
and printmaking. His daily mantra, he says, was “try new work, try new
work.”
Since that time, he has been inspired by another of Acme Art’s resi-dent
artists, Michelle Connolly, and his work with his students at the
DREAMS Center for Arts Education.
“It’s this kind of childlike approach to work,” he says. “I don’t want
to do her work but I want to apply the principle of being freer. What I
try to do is throw myself off of this predictable approach. When I teach
my kids I try to tell them to find a different approach. Don’t get sucked
into the easiest route. The main thing is to be loose and gestural and
spontaneous.”
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WBM july 2012