Conrad Levenson

Biography

Conrad Levenson calls himself an artist, architect, collector and recycler. Trained as an architect, he has described reclamation, the restoring of worn-out buildings and landscapes for present-day use, as the thread connecting his two careers. He has worked in assemblage for more than forty-five years.

His sculptures come from the remnants of agriculture, industry and rural life: old tools, machine parts and weathered utilitarian objects. 'Insight Out', for example, joins two antique ice saws, an automobile leaf spring and a wok. He lets rust and weather do some of the work, often placing pieces outdoors, and speaks of letting the materials 'speak to me, in their own voices and at their own pace.' He links the practice to what he calls the synergy between art and ecology, and to a Zen saying about seeking what the masters sought rather than following their footsteps. His pieces range from small works to installations close to fifteen feet tall.

Levenson's studio sits in rural Stanford, NY, with a workshop and a two-acre sculpture garden. He has shown with the Sculptors Guild, at galleries in Red Hook and Hudson, at Studio 80 + Sculpture Grounds in Old Lyme, Connecticut, at the Ice House on the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, and in the Meredith SculptureWalk in New Hampshire. He belongs to the International Sculpture Center, the Sculptors Guild, Arts Mid-Hudson, the Barrett Art Center and the Red Hook Community Arts Network.

Practice. Assemblage sculpture from reclaimed agricultural, industrial and domestic scrap, often left to weather outdoors; he frames the work as a meeting of art and ecology.