There’s a tangle of rusted metal beside the door to sculptor Polly Whitcomb’s studio. An old spouted oil can, a heavy 50’s bike rim, bed springs and other familiar junk in flaking shades of rust, all remnants of an era past, provoke twinges of nostalgia. Pulling a small barrel from the heap, she admires it, “I love this surface.” Running her hand over the pits and corrosion, her gesture indicates, barely discernable, the familiar Texaco star.

Finds like these might only be possible in desert climates like New Mexico’s. There is just enough snow and moisture here to rust metal without eating it entirely away and though the barrel is dinged and bent, it is intact and recognizable after 60 years in a neighbor’s backyard dump.

These are the materials and heart of Whitcomb’s assemblages. Combining rusted scrap with clay elements of her own fabrication, she constructs beautifully composed sculptures, mature and succinctly designed. At 69, Whitcomb is a woman who knows herself.  She is pragmatic and focused, grounded, with an unerring eye for design

Her rustic home and studio in a rural New Mexico village, is a long stone’s throw from the Pecos River. The studio is a former schoolhouse, then dance hall and car repair garage. In the dance hall days it was called La Sala and a primitive sign above the door announces it still. It is a place frozen in time, always quiet, always slow.  

Whitcomb uses stoneware to create simple, voluminous forms and glazes them inmuted tones to complement the aged surfaces of the found materials. Her vocabulary of shapes is deliberately small; spheroids, pods, and disks are sufficient for her purpose. So direct and unembellished, they entice touch while providing dimension and contrast to the found elements she combines. And just as she works with a small selection of forms, she designs within a select, limited palette of color: shades of ochre, grey, and blue.

Whitcomb has never previously shown her sculpture with any gallery and seems surprised by the enthusiastic reception it has received. Surprised, but not surprised. Given the short time she has been making this work and its high level of development, one senses it had been evolving even before she began.

Whitcomb has supported herself with production pottery, selling tableware and tiles in one or two small galleries, for many years. She has a degree in painting but hasn’t really painted since leaving college. Nonetheless, she has lived and worked among artists all her life. 

Whitcomb has been creating these assemblages for almost 4 years but observes that in the past year, since the start of her relationship with Patina, she has been making more of them and they comprise a larger share of her work than before.  She brings twenty five new wall pieces to this exhibit.

Ivan Barnett, gallery director at Patina, is very excited about the discovery of this new artist. “Polly has such a brilliant design sense and she’s so sensitive to the nuance of surfaces. Her work has wit, humor and sophistication in the tradition of Calder.