Newman's own

John Newman is a materials guy.

His small, quirky sculptures mix different materials in strange ways that create particular little worlds. Things that don't ordinarily go together - like heavy bronze and Japanese paper - somehow play nicely.

Over a dozen of Newman's sculptures are on display in a show at the New York Studio School gallery.

From a distance the room looks like a high-end toy store, with bold colors and strange forms. Up close, each work reveals itself slowly in the materials.

One work, "bamboo from sail to plow," uses bamboo in a way that compliments and supplants nature.

We know how bamboo grows, but Newman cuts it and reassembles its sections in a related way to natural bamboo sectioning, as if twisted while growing.

It's this eye for the natural behavior of materials that lets Newman pull this kind of cheeky behavior. It's not about accumulation of different objects, or the pastiche of unlikely partners.

Newman sees the properties in different forms and materials and respecting them enough to see a conversation with other materials. In the end, there is an organic whole not because of the materials but because of something else that's embedded in them.

In a video produced for the show, Newman says "All the sculptures have disparate things in them. It's kind of how believable - if that's the right word - is it that these foreign materials have been captured in this complete structure."

brass braid and yellow sketch, 2007