Guy Hughes

Though initially drawn to bronze and steel, for the past twenty years Guy Hughes has pursued copper as a key working material, often used in conjunction with wood and bronze. For him, copper tubing and plumbing fittings can carry the luminous and rich signatures of bronze into the age of democratic mass production, linking The Home Depot, say, with the statues and decorative work of early Greece.

Hughes has recently explored the very restrictive vocabulary of forty-five and ninety degree plumbing elbows of varying diameters - from 3/4s of an inch to one and a half inches. With them he fashions very compact, intricate infinity loops that express dense, organic energies. Though markedly smaller than his earlier works, these pieces convey great weight, presence, and depth. They have "gravitas", and just a bit of glory.

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