Russell Whiting        



                                  



                                
      
   



                   
     



Fifteen years ago Russell Whiting fell in love with the possibility of carving steel and of transforming it into sculpture. At that time a welder/fitter working offshore for oil companies, he began to envision how that essentially “common” raw material could be transformed into something quite extraordinary.

And so his experiments with carving steel as a new art form began in earnest. It was not long before he realized steel could be carved much the same as wood. Fast-forwarding fifteen years, Whiting then became intensely sensitive to the nature of molten steel and is now able to control its response to gravity by how hot it is. He now knows molten steel can be dripped, sagged, pierced, cut and gouged, all determined by the application of heat and oxygen pressure. Further, there are many surface textures unique to the torch: smooth, rippled, jagged, even pitted and embedded with slag.

What has most influenced the aesthetic direction(s) Whiting’s sculpture takes? According to him, “antiquity,” though his understanding of mythology and history is not academic. He states that: “it started in play and fantasy and has remained casual and unburdened by truth. Even my reference to Chiparus and other Art Deco work is not because I study them; it’s because I ran the streets of the French Quarter as a teen and was endlessly peering into the windows on Royal Street.”
                  


                            



      



                                    



                                  



                                                                              
                







                              
                                                                       
                                                                                     5640 Taylor Road, Naples, Florida, 34109     (239) 514-2773