Abstract Environments
Sculptor Randy Gachet comments on the natural world through his use of industrial materials.
By Lee Steely Photos courtesy of Randy Gachet
You may have already seen sculptor Randy Gachet’s materials, but outside the context of artwork. Lost and shredded tire rubber, rusting steel, fragmented concrete and other locally found industrial materials wind and funnel their way into Gachet’s dynamic sculpture. Despite their origins, in his hands these materials follow natural forms. There are wire crows, tires worked into turtle shells, reptilian bodies and craters. Each sculpture suggests a living environment that its abandoned industrial parts may call into question, deny or perhaps reclaim.
Gachet has been part of Birmingham’s arts landscape for years, having completed his bachelor of fine arts with a concentration in sculpture at Birmingham- Southern College in 1987, and, in 2002, moved on to teaching sculpture at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where he remains. His work is also in the collections of the Southern Environmental Center at BSC and the Huntsville Museum of Art.
“Bricolab,” a solo show at Samford University open through Feb. 26, is a play on bricolage, or using whatever materials are handy, and the notion of using gallery space for experimentation. It was spurred in part by a grant to assist teachers of the arts in the continued evolution of their work. Where the overall look of Gachet’s previous sculpture calls to mind Southern gothic imagery and natural history dioramas, Gachet says that the new show moves in a “more intuitive and spontaneous” direction. The previous natural color palette of gray and brown is replaced by bright (yet still industrial) colors, and new use of light to form “scenes and vignettes” with structural sculpture. Gachet’s previously favored tire and wire is also mostly absent, as he explores the more temporal and idiosyncratic feel of styrofoam, polystyrene sheets of pink and blue, and PVC pipe.
Still very much a local scavenger, Gachet’s work embodies a shifting view of the South, moving from the home-grown Southern idyllic to an over-grown urban question. To see more of Gachet's sculpture, visit randygachet.com.
