From our friends at BmoreArt, today we bring you an interview with artist Sterling Wells. Although the exhibition discussed took place in July at Metropolitan Structures, author Jan Razauskas notes “…the ideas within the work, as well as the new existence of the gallery, are relevant and worthy of consideration.” This article was originally published on October 17, 2015.

Sterling Wells. Broken Window, 2015; installation view, Metropolitan Structures, Baltimore, MD.

Well above the tree line, inside a snug, modernist apartment, Sterling Wells’s “Broken Window” installation occupies the empty living room space. The work is composed of reclaimed auto-body parts mounted on a wooden armature, to the approximate scale of an automobile. “Broken Window” is set on the diagonal against a row of picture windows, with the car front facing the view and tilting downward. Except for a few shards of glass and debris on the floor, the work is a self-contained unit poised between assembly and unmaking, a cataloging of parts and relics held in suspended motion. I talked with artist Sterling Wells about his process and the impetus behind the project.

Jan Razauskas: Much of your work comes out of interactions with the natural environment, in pieces that position nature and the built environment within the same framework. How did this work evolve out of that interest?

Sterling Wells: Yes, the work evolved out of my interest in framing nature. The aim was to use the car to forge a link between the apartment and the landscape beyond. The apartment is dominated by two enormous picture windows that frame the landscape. Instead of viewing the landscape through two rectangles, I wanted viewers to see the landscape through the glass-shard perimeter of a broken car window. 

Read the full article here.