Carving a Niche With Art

BY LISA KESTLER

FT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM

Ft Worth sculptors gain national attention.

            The Fort Worth Gallery’s current exhibit of sculpture is a study in contrasts, to say the least.

            Half the gallery is filled with large, enigmatic, seemingly ancient stoneware pieces by Chris Powell, the other half with Ed Haddaway’s quirky works of welded steel, painted in eye-popping bright colors and imbued with a sense of immediacy.

            But there are some similarities beneath the discrepancies Both artists have ties to Fort Worth and both are starting to attract a good deal of attention from the national art world.

            Chris Powell moved to Fort Worth five years ago, trying to get back to his southern roots…

            Ed Haddaway’s brightly painted steel sculptures are also drawn from vague sources --images from Haddaway’s own dreams. The 36-year-old Fort Worth native now lives and works in Albuquerque. His work, like Powell’s, is included in the Texas Sculpture Association’s Excellence ’87 exhibit. Haddaway’s work is also featured in ArtQuest, a catalogue of juried work sent to museums and galleries across the country.

            Although Haddaway started his art studies in elementary school with special classes at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, he let them lapse until college, when he took up painting only to switch to sculpture.

            “No matter what you do with a painting, it’s always a painting,” Haddaway explained “I like making things, putting new things together.”

            His painted steel sculptures are very sharp edged, concrete representations of dream images. The same shapes show up again and again -- spirals and railroad tracks that could also be ladders. “They can all become symbolic and metaphorical but, I’m not so concerned with specific meanings.” Haddaway said.

            “It’s like dreams. I don’t think you can decipher dreams verbatim. That’s not what they’re about; instead they suggest things and open up possibilities. They cause you to think, and open your eyes.”

            The bright pinks, blues, greens, yellows and reds are another dream-like element. “I think we see in black-and-white during our waking hours. But bright colors intensify things, signifying a supernatural or unreal experience.”

            The titles Haddaway gives his pieces have a surreal nature of their own.” I was a real bad poet at one time.” He explained. “The titles are a way of exercising the literary part of myself. Or exorcising --- maybe that’s the word.”

            Titles like Anne’s Room Before, Windows of Soul is a comma needed here, or is this all one title? Phidias’s Plant, and Pinkie’s should Pinkie’s be italicized? Rabbits are Hiding are poetic rather than descriptive, and usually deal with friends and family members.

            With their bright colors and freewheeling shapes, Haddaway’s sculpture are mostly fun, sometimes vaguely threatening. It’s all part of the artist’s outlook on life. “I believe in celebration -- the good. The bad. And the ugly,” Haddaway said. “We celebrate life, and art should be about that.”

July 22 1987