William Brayton: Biography

My first memories of art making come from drawing boats and buildings with my father. As a modernist architect, he introduced me to the buildings of Louis Kahn and Eero Saarinen. He also passed on his fascination with grandeur in decay. I combined studies in the visual arts at Northfield Mount Hermon School, the University of New Hampshire, Alfred University, Harvard University, Haystack School of Crafts and Claremont Graduate University with apprenticeships in Japanese wood fired ceramics (Malcolm Wright,) wooden boatbuilding (Paul Rollins,), and fine cabinetry (Joseph Michael). As an undergraduate student, the Japanese philosopher Soetsu Yanagi was a primary influence on my ideas about beauty, art and craft. In addition, meeting Buckminster Fuller and studying his work had a huge impact on my understanding of structures in tension. In graduate school Paul Soldner introduced me to the abstract expressionist approach to clay that he and Peter Voulkos pioneered in the 1960s. Denzil Hurley opened me up to ideas from the New York School, Russian Constructivism, Minimalism and Post Minimalism. And, Connie Zehr taught me about installation art. Throughout my education, making has been my way into meaning.

I have been teaching at Hampshire College in Amherst MA since 1988 when I was hired to create the sculpture program. In addition to teaching and administrative work, I continue to conduct research in art history, architecture, botany, astrophysics, psychology and the marine world to fuel my studio practice. Sculpture is not medium specific and everything can be thought of as sculptural. Lee Bontecou and Alexander Calder influence the ways that I orchestrate line, plane and volumetric form within sculpture that is about space over surface. I’ve used historically loaded sculpture and drawing materials as well more ephemeral ones. I’ve explored computer modeling and animation in a digital world free of gravity and the structural limitations of materials. I invented a lightweight cementitious compound, (Braytoncrete,) that can be carved, cast and modeled; wet material can be joined to dry; and it can withstand the elements.

In the most current work I am colliding structural systems in nature and the built environment. Steam bent white oak, acrylic sheet, and bronze rod joined with copper rivets and stainless steel bolts are physically and conceptually entwined with hollow cast Braytoncrete spheres. Several recent pieces allow the viewer to interact by moving sculptural elements within tight limits, an in an abacus. My work continues to arc across two and three-dimensions. Sculpture and drawing run parallel and sometimes overlap, but neither is dominant. Abstraction acts as a filter for references to plant forms, wind patterns, Polynesian stick charts, boat building methods and other imagery that I have seen and stored. Found objects introduce the element of chance. A recent reduction in this visual syntax has led to an absurd, epic battle between the cube and the sphere, the right angle and the curve. Humor, confrontation, surprise, and pathos are choreographed through the interaction of spheres, discs, arcs, angles and cubes.