Where Art Meets Science: In the Studio with Gabriel Warren
"I consider myself a landscape sculptor – by which I do not mean that I bounce about on bulldozers: there are scars enough on the land. Rather, the forms and patterns that I find in my travels, especially in ice, give me an armature for my intellectual, emotional, visual explorations and probings in metal, as well as glass, stone, and other materials." -Gabriel Warren
Gabriel Warren calls himself a “landscape sculptor.” The Charlestown, RI-based artist’s pieces are a reflection of the landscapes around him and a reaction to mankind’s impact on them. In 1999, he became the first sculptor from any continent to be invited to work and study in Antarctica. That experience continues to inform his “Piesterion” series of sculptures, which are loosely based on the ice cores scientists drill out of frozen landscapes to study the history contained within them. Column 1, which is taken from this series, has been standing proudly at the corner of Fountain and Dorrance Streets in Downtown Providence since spring 2016; this summer we will swap it out for another in the same series, Column 6.