ART SPACE
DANIEL
MANDELBAUM
The Bushwick-based artist Daniel Mandelbaum goes to his studio
with no plan of what he is going to create. “A lot of times
the goal in mind is to take the lifeless material, clay, and turn
it into something animated, like something quasi-animal,” he
says about his process. “I like to think that I'm using the clay to
generate my ideas instead of pencil and paper, like drawing in
three-dimensional space.”
When finished, the small sculptures take different, unexpected
forms. Often, the vagaries of the material or problems in the
creation determine the result. “Sometimes I have to compromise,
and then glazing the work is always sort of a dice roll,”
he adds. “I've gotten into the habit of just letting it go, the
sculpture will be whatever it wants to be.”
Mandelbaum, who shows his work at the artist-run gallery
Marvin Gardens in Ridgewood, Queens, lets chance determine
creation. “It's a give and take relationship with the material,”
he says. “The harder I force something to be a certain way the
more unnatural it feels.” —Craig Hubert
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Photos courtesy Daniel Mandelbaum.