Thomas Houseago

Thomas Houseago in seinem Studio in Los Angeles. Bron: Die Welt, foto: Brian van der Brug)

Thomas Houseago in his studio in Los Angeles.

Thomas Houseago's studio.

Work in progress: a reclining figure.

"At Thomas Houseago’s studio building in east Los Angeles, which spans a full city block beside the giant concrete trench known as the LA River, the road is closed to traffic. The mechanical arm of a refuse truck is lifting metal dumpsters and tipping their contents into its hopper. White plaster dust billows across the street. Houseago’s team is cleaning up. Once a week, the piles of plaster, hessian, clay, broken sculptures and cracked casts that accumulate in the studio are swept together and cleared out. Houseago used to do this himself; then, when it began to take two days out of each week, he delegated it to assistants. Now he employs a staff of 20, and has five foundries in the US working to cast his prolific output of sculptures in high-strength Tuf-Cal casting plaster or clay into dark bronze or pale, silvery aluminium.
....

The building is divided into offices, a drawing studio, an outdoor yard and two sculpture studios – one messy and one for finished (or nearly finished) works. The latter, a barrel-vaulted hangar that used to be a shooting range, is filled with heads on plinths and masks on walls, columns, cats, owls, disembodied limbs, wall reliefs and statuesque bodies. Everything is larger than life. Some pieces, such as a pointing plaster finger as tall as a man, are almost comically huge. Another, an 8ft seated woman, was inspired by a photograph of the singer Rihanna, spotted by Houseago on the cover of Esquire magazine. In many sculptures, the iron rebar that undergirds their construction can be seen hanging out of their untidy backs. Others retain the pencil lines of Houseago’s drawings, imprinted into smooth white plaster.
...." (bron: Financial Times Magazine)


Thomas Houseago's studio in Frogtown, near the Los Angeles River. (bron: Los Angeles Times, foto: Brian van der Brug)


Reclining Figure (For Rome), 2013, installation at Thomas Houseago’s studio. (bron: damiensaatdjian)