Friday Harbor WA 98250
(360) 378-8831
micajah@orcasonline.com
Micajah Bienvenu has been making metal sculptures for the last 22 years. He was born on the east coast, and lived in Missouri until he moved to the Pacific Northwest to attend Whitman College. An avid fly fisherman, he began his artistic career as a teenager, creating steelhead trout and salmon from scrap copper and stainless steel, and later expanded his focus to include a variety of other subjects.
During the last five years, Micajah has abandoned his representational work to focus on creating large, non-objective works, with the artistic goal of translating emotions into three-dimensional forms, conveying a sense of elegance, wonder, and joy to the viewer. To accomplish this, Micajah uses metalworking techniques that are both high-tech (e.g., Computer Numeric Control plasma cutter, Windows-based 3-D NURBS modeling program) and low-tech (hammers and grinders). The holographic surface textures of his stainless steel works are created using artificial diamond sandpaper and interwoven calligraphy-like patterns that introduce spatial depth and reflect the colors of the earth and sky around them, giving viewers a sense of motionas their viewpoints change.
Micajah is represented by galleries around the country and his work has been collected nationally and internationally for many years.
La
Conner Arts Commission, La Conner WA
Westcott Bay Institute, San Juan Island, WA
Freed Gallery, Lincoln City, OR
Sunburst Gallery, Wenatchee, WA
Artique Limited, Anchorage, AK
Highline Gallery, Aspen, CO
Gail Severen Gallery, Sun Valley, ID
Scanlon Gallery, Ketchikan, AK
Gallery Mack, Seattle, WA
The
Lawrence Gallery, Portland, OR
Virginia Brier Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Signature Gallery, San Diego, CA
Matzke Runnings, Seattle, WA
Board of directors
Westcott
Bay Institute www.wbay.org
Teaching
Public Commissions
Corporate Collections
Ray’s
Boathouse,
The
Callison Partnership,
MacDonald’s
Corporate Headquarters,
Nordstrom
Corporate Headquarters,
Boeing
Commercial Airplanes,
Red
Dot Corporation,
Niko
Japanese Restaurant, Westin Hotel,
Salty’s
on Alki,
Salty’s
at the Falls,
Spears
Plastics,
Pieces by the artist are
also represented in numerous private
collections.
Artist’s
Statement
by Micajah Bienvenu
While my monumental sculptures are included in many private collections, I am committed to creating successful public sculpture. I believe that public art is the most important art in the world because all sorts of people get to enjoy the experience. A good piece of public art gets people’s attention and makes them focus on something that has nothing to do with them. I am interested in producing inspiring art that affects people positively, bringing pleasure and joy into their daily lives. In my work as a board member of the Westcott Bay Institute and co-curator of its 19 acre sculpture park, I enjoy seeing young children running among the sculptures, squealing, banging and climbing, pronouncing opinions upon their arrival at every piece. They get it.
I’ve always been obsessed by sculpture and have spent most of my life making art. My favorite part of creating my sculptures is when I take the jigsaw puzzle of flat metal parts and start to weld them together, and then watch as the solid form of this sculpture starts to emerge, as if guided by some unseen force. I belong to new breed of metal sculptors who have embraced the digital revolution. My favorite tool is a piece of software called Rhino3d, which allows me to conceptualize, scale and model my sculptures in a 3d space that seamlessly interfaces with the fabrication industry’s CAD/CAM technology. I begin each sculpture by opening my notebook computer and sketching curves in space. As I work through a series of shapes, I surround the curves with cross sections that I sweep along their length, creating solids. These drawings are saved incrementally and provide a basis for constant evolution in a series. Some of the patterns that emerge in my work involve spirals, interacting helixes and twisted forms that have roots in the natural world. The abstracted human form is another topic which I continue to explore with these techniques.
My favorite materials are stainless steel and bronze. Bronze has the ability to take a variety of patinas, and stainless is very durable, easy to maintain and structurally very strong. When I fabricate stainless steel sculptures, I use a large disk sander that I run up and down the sculpture, interweaving the marks and interpreting the shape with a controlled frenzy of patterns. This yields a burnished texture that gives the surface a holographic appearance that lends spatial depth and a human energy to the finish. This effect breaks up the intensity of polished stainless steel, yet continues to reflect the colors of the environment, providing an endlessly changing variety of tones and colors. When I am working with stainless steel, I know that what I am making will be around for a long time.
I think a piece has really turned out well when the finished sculpture embodies the feeling that I intended when I was developing the concept, whether it be one of unbridled exuberance or quiet repose. It pleases me when shapes are fluid and smooth from every angle and every weld is invisible. I believe a successful sculpture reveals a variety of forms from different vantage points, and each view offers unique shapes that invite the mind to follow their energy through space. The thing I like best about what I do is that I am able to make the things that I feel need to be made, put them out in the public view, and see people be touched by them in a positive way.