Martin Puryear
Lever No. 3, 1989

Here with Martin Puryear's Lever No. 3 we have an abstract form that evokes both the man-made and the organic. Created in 1989, the work is essentially a long curved extension attached to a base. It calls to mind an antique hand tool used for woodworking, just as its title would suggest. Yet another association is clearly to an animal form–with a small loop of a head at the end of an elongated neck. The elegance of Lever No. 3 draws in large part from this sweeping appendage, which measures more than seven feet long. It may surprise you to learn that the entire sculpture is constructed from stacked layers of ponderosa pine that have been glued together, cut with a band saw, and then carved and shaved. If you look closely, you can actually see the natural grain of the wood and the sculpture's stratified structure through the thin black paint that covers it.

The hand-made quality of this and much of Puryear's work relates in a fundamental way to the traditions of woodworking. In this specific piece, the reference is to the tribal wooden sculpture of Sierra Leone that Puryear saw while serving there in the Peace Corps in the mid-1960s.