TRUE NORTH
Oversize sculptures populate Heights Boulevard in public art project
Anthony Suber’s neighbors weren’t sure what to make of the racket coming from his garage. Saws and sanders stirred recently in the evenings, their piercing whines escaping the space as Suber precisely cut panels of wood to fit a 10-foot rebar frame in the shape of a large head.
Suber found himself thinking about time, sacred geometry and birds, which yielded a glimmering cardinal head about a dozen feet high that is part of a piece called “Ancestors.”
Suber’s usual studio workspace is in Third Ward, but this oversize project came to be at his home on a Missouri City cul de sac. A neighbor walking her dog stops and regards the piece with wonder.
“I didn’t know you were an artist!” He says most of the neighbors know him as a teacher. But Suber’s work extends well beyond the classroom and, often, beyond the terrestrial. Sitting in his backyard, Suber would see cardinals arrive, perch, then depart.
“They’re so bright and beautiful,” he says. “And they got me thinking about the spirit as a larger energy, about the conser
vation of energy. I thought of my ancestors following me as cardinals. With an abstract, almost robotic sculpture, it’s like they’re time-traveling ancestors watching us through this lens.”
“Ancestors” is one of the largescale sculptures that arrived this month as part of the annual True North project. Now in its eighth year, True North commissions eight local or regional artists to create oversized pieces that populate the esplanade along Heights Boulevard between Fourth and 18th streets.
The metallic paints Suber chose lend “Ancestors” a bracing effect in daylight, as the sun’s rays explode off its panels. But it’s also a deeply felt piece. One wall in his workspace has a wood sign that reads “Man Cave.” Suber put
“Hu” in front of it. A graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and the University of Houston, Suber says his art lands in his own space of Afrofuturism, which he refers to as “ancient future.” The rebar he designed for a fabricator is built from a three-dimensional matrix of triangles, reflecting his interest in sacred geometry.
Suber created a second part of the sculpture to accompany the cardinal. A 7-foot human figure stands behind the bird’s head, created from intricately assembled pieces of wood that he distressed and painted.
“It sits in the African American diaspora,” Suber says. “Looking back and looking ahead at circumstances navigating our culture as a Black man.”
Art in the open
With this year’s pieces, 64 artists have produced works for True North. The works show great breadth in imagination, tone and materials. Last year, Bill Davenport’s “Big Cabbage” was an eye-catcher. “It’s a cabbage,” he said at the time. “But bigger.” His description proved apt.
Some of the sculptures are whimsical. Others wish to say something about our time and place.
The project launched in 2014, a vision executed by Redbud Gallery owner Gus Kopriva and Houston artist Chris Silkwood. True North is a celebration of both art and space. The catalog for the original exhibit referenced the Heights’ status as an artistfriendly area. And last year’s catalog offered a page of history about Heights Boulevard, a space with roots that go back to 1892. The Heights Esplanade — patterned after Boston’s Commonwealth Garden — is both scenic and heavily trafficked by drivers and pedestrians. It was a prime space for “the great gift of public art,” as Silkwood calls it, “this space where anybody can come and interact with the art.”
No surprise, then, that True North quickly became a beloved part of Heights culture, as new sculptures arrived on the esplanade like alien gifts in March and remained through November.
“The community comes to expect these,” says Linda Eyles. She is one of the project’s four curators, along with Silkwood, Kelly Simmons and Simon Eyles. “As soon as they come down, they want to know what’s coming next.”
There’s no quantifying the effect of the pieces, but during a 2020 when galleries were largely shut down, True North offered an opportunity to view pieces like Leticia Bajuyo’s “Forces of Nature,” moundlike circles of blue PEX tubing that looked like spores from some other planet. Bob “Daddy-O” Wade’s “El Gallo Monument” was a bittersweet addition: The sculptor died in late 2019. His work featured four brightly colored fiberglass pigs around a large rooster, inspired by his affinity for old-school roadside attractions.
There also was that 5,000 pound cabbage made of reinforced polymer concrete.
What started as a Houstoncentric project has expanded over the years to include artists from Texas, which “creates some diversity,” Simmons says. “We try to get both some well-known artists and a few up-and-coming artists.”
Among the former showing in True North 2021 is David Adickes, certainly one of the most visible sculptors in Houston, thanks to his presidential heads, his Sam Houston statue in Huntsville and the 36-foot-tall cellist “Virtuoso” downtown. The 93-year-old Adickes this year offers “Friendly Trees,” a trio of radiant coralshaped trees that appear in an embrace. Danville Chadbourne offers a different vibe with the same number of figures in “Surrogate Echo Growth.” Cary Reeder’s “Treeodesic Dome” offers orange and red panels in a framed dome that should offer very different experiences when viewed during the day and night. Jamie Spinello’s “Allochory” almost looks like a metallic husk shed by last year’s cabbage, a gorgeously arcing set of petal-like pieces. William Cannings’ “Stacked Pillows” — three connected pillow-shaped figures that spring upward — feels like an invitation to dream. Julia Ousley cut little human figures into tall pieces of metal, a piece informed by hope.
Sometimes the curators find an outlier in the proposals they receive.
“We knew Bill Peck through the decorative arts,” Silkwood says. “We knew him as an ironworker. He had this entire other career, but he’d taken all these Glassell classes and came up with an interesting proposal.”
Looking for balance
To reach the far back corner of Peck & Co., one must walk beneath scores of dark metal light fixtures. Iron gates and bed frames abound, as do monolithic pieces of machinery: a 200-yearold anvil, mill sanders, lathes, sheet metal rollers and various hydraulic implements best left to the experts. The sound of metal on metal is prominent as various metal smiths go about their trade. Past all those sights and sounds and smells, in a little corner of the business he started 35 years ago and sold two years ago, Bill Peck puts his thick, calloused fingers to work on a large metal sculpture about the American family.
“The balance of life,” Peck says, his eyes widening just a little. “You have the family struggling to find that balance a little here. Balancing life and technology, work and home …”
Peck tells his story with a mammoth seesaw tottering upon a red house that serves as the fulcrum. “Searching for Balance” involves two parents on each end, a kid and a dog, all struggling to find a comfortable equilibrium in a chaotic piece full of implied motion.
Peck worked as a welder in the oil fields before starting Peck & Co. He says he lost count of the number of classes he’s taken at the Glassell School. He sketched out his concept for True North and earned a commission.
Peck sends a square of sheet metal on the bias into a roller and out it comes in an asymmetrical spiral shape, giving his piece’s father figure a torso. Welded into place, it looks crude but full of possibility. Once painted a rich blue, the figure springs to life and gives “Searching for Balance” great contrast: a serious familial crisis presented in the colors of a child’s toy.
“I’m not making Pietá or a Rodin,” he says. “But (Alexander) Calder did some toy-like stuff. Picasso, too. I’m not comparing myself to any of those guys. But I think there are balances that can be found out there.”
Amid the bed frames and chandeliers and gates at Peck & Co., his sculpture is a visual aberration. But he sees commonality in all the metalwork.
“There’s a craftsmanship in the work that gets done here,” he says. “Whether it’s a table or a bed, hardware, the decorative arts. And I think that sort of craftsmanship can translate to the art world.”