Handle With Care (Sculptures)

Come on in and get your heart broken by the talented Shawn Zeiger. As I told him earlier today, I can't get his pieces out of my mind; and thus, it's a good day for his intense heart sculptures made with equal parts passion and skill. Shawn's show opened in February to a packed house during Artwalk at The Firm in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood. Read his description below of how these pieces came to him; and be ready to fill in the blanks with your own history.

"This show is really art therapy for me. It sprang from a specific moment of pain, anger, loss and depression. Out of those feelings an inkling of the idea to make these hearts began. Before I knew it, I had designed three of them in my head and started planning on materials and construction of the first. Each piece represents a dark moment in my life, and the act of making the sculpture is my way of letting it go. This is the reason that all but one are titled by a date rather than a name - the one being a collaboration using remnants from a piece with a similar theme. The reasons behind each piece are deeply personal to me and I would hope that each one speaks to the viewer in a way so that maybe they can see a little of their past or present sorrow in it." by Shawn Zeiger 

Using steel, wood, feathers, glass, rubber, machine works, LED lighting, shale, concrete, steel... he's got no loss of materials at hand to cleverly meld into the familiar shape that's so often used to symbolize love. Don't get me wrong, love is in these, and probably more so since they reflect the reality of living a life fully experienced and deeply felt. A bit of good coming out of the bad.
I'm drawn to the bound, stretched sculptures which to me suggest both locking things in and holding things together, or the ones with machine-works parts keeping us in sync underneath our sheaths, or the exposed coiled rope in the center of the pulled back metal (ouch); yet most especially, I'm drawn to the ones involving medical interventions. Love, loss, repair (if we're lucky). Art to provoke thought, dialogue, or quiet reflection. Give them your meaning.

A happy moment with hottie girlfriend, artist Sharon Arnold . (insert classic love hearts here)
Photos and information used courtesy of Shawn Zeiger; pics taken by Damon Mori, Joe Malinao and Sharon Arnold. They can fight it out and tell me whose is whose... Just know that if you really want to know, I'll work it out for you.