Artist Statement
I think of my sculptures as a view into my unconscious mind, a landscape of very primitive things, rudimentary elements of life, nature, science, spirituality and passion. For both the maker and viewer, sculpture, like music, carries a beat, a pulsing motion directed to and from the soul that when reveled in takes us into dreamlike states of mind. This state leads to questions and answers, uncovering mysteries, which ultimately give meaning to life’s journey.
The process of creation becomes just as crucial as its end goal, which once reached makes it all the more important from the exertion it took. When I take time to appreciate that grueling, dirty and contemplative process that makes art, I find myself rewarded by a greater understanding. The labor, pain, and love of my efforts not only give me meaning but also make me feel alive. Art brings this journey into focus; the sculpture marks its destination.
— Peter Lundberg
Peter Lundberg by Mark di Suvero
For some sculpture is something that you bump into, something ignored like the back of your hand. Yet others see a vision and passion for life in art, a door you can walk through. Going through that door, you arrive at a landscape as different as dream is from reality or confusion from ideals. So often in the past, sculpture referred to something other than itself or became a pedestal object, inactive and undemanding of interactivity. Yet almost always sculptures stand on the ground as consciousness stands on our own special unconsciousness.
Some sculptures sit on pedestals, lean against walls or reach for the sky, but Lundberg's work searches for something deeper, unknown and ignored, subterranean. Seeking the foundation that all trees and forests know, he digs into the ground and this original process gives us the root force and root forms of his work. His sculptures resemble the unconscious, intricately constructed beyond judgments of beautiful and ugly or good and bad. They rise out of the earth and stand tall enough to include the sky. They haunt our memories.
All work that is great has a jarring quality, such as Lundberg’s piece Euler next to the George Washington Bridge by the bust of Othmar H. Amman, the bridge’s engineer. As you approach the modular repetitive towers of that great catenary bridge, Euler, in all its root-nature splendor, is passed too quickly. Seeing it as you drive by gives way to that same briefness of memory you experience when you have a quick flash of something from early childhood special only to you.
Lundberg’s pieces, with their immense weight and hidden structural intelligence (joining concrete to stainless steel), exemplify pure emotion as they rise majestically in the fields of the Storm King Art Center. There, you have ample time to gaze them and feel their importance. You feel the darkness of roots, the foundation of life, all so clearly writhing as you take them in; you feel their clear emotional power as they stand in that Hudson Valley painter’s landscape.
Mark di Suvero is a globally renowned sculptor. His works are held in numerous museums worldwide.
Mark Di Suvero and Peter Lundberg
About Peter Lundberg
Peter Lundberg and students - Tangled | Private Collection
Children always ask me a lot of questions. “What is it? What does it mean? Why did you make that?” The challenge is to answer in one sentence. I might say, “It’s about my life.” Or “I am happy when I make things.” A quick and positive explanation will keep their attention. Adults ask the same questions. But how to sum up an activity that encompasses all your mental and physical strength, all that is beautiful and hard, all that is life. Many artists will make works that are about one thing in particular. In my case its existence.
Before sculpture making took hold of me, my passions were cello and math. How can one be passionate about mathematics? Like music and sculpture, mathematics is a pure abstract language we use to describe the world and universe we live in. As with any language, there is an alphabet, words and poetry. My interest in mathematics was theoretical. Like with sculpture, mathematics often asks more questions than it solves. Recently mathematicians have discovered a possible fifth force. We are still figuring things out. Sculptures are like that. It’s an attempt to figure things out
When I switched from Music to Math to Art, the transition was completely logical to me. I had just switched languages. It was no different than switching from English to Swedish. The big difference in languages of mathematics and sculpture is in the physical nature of the sculpture making activity. Casting enormous sculptures take every ounce of energy I have. I know that, going into it. I have to make things. That’s why I became a sculptor.
I began taking university level Mathematics courses at age 16, Calculus, Number Theory, Differential Equations, fun stuff like that. I understood the language very well. It came easy. Classes would be akin to listening to a great poet recite her poetry. I have cried during Mathematics lectures. And when one begins to understand the physical world in mathematical terms it gives some clues as to what existence “means”. At 19 I had completed a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Skidmore had just finished building a huge new art department and it was like getting a new swing set as a kid; you just jump right on. I still had to write my senior math thesis, but now art making had taken over. I won the student exhibition my first year. It was a scandal, as I was not yet considered an art student.
After graduation I went to Europe. Off to see Picasso’s Guernica one day, Michelangelo’s Slaves the next. Picasso in Barcelona or Paris. Chillida in San Sebastian or Seville. Rodin in Calais, Paris or Prague. I slept on trains, beaches, castle grounds, hostels and behind train stations. I stayed in Europe more than home for much of the next decade, making art, selling art and somehow getting by. Things seemed easier back then.
In 1995 I returned home and while working as assistant to Mark di Suvero, I discovered my language. It came about in a concrete sculpture I titled ‘One’. One could climb inside the sculpture. The kids loved it; it was hard to keep them out. Everything was right about it. I didn’t even realize in the making that this was the ‘One’. All my languages came together at that moment, and I cried for joy. In that moment I realized my new language, in an instant. What I did not know was that I had really been studying that language my whole life. I had just finally learned how to write. It came from deep within my gut. I had written my first poem.
In 2010, I discovered bronze.
— Peter Lundberg