A comfy, heavy-metal sofa/sculpture

In 2004, Riverwest’s Hotcakes Gallery was making folks flip. That includes me. I bought a sculpture from local artist (Bay View based), L. John Andrew, through Hotcakes. It was part and parcel of Hotcakes’ garden party. I took it home to my new condo digs, where it sits to this day, facing northeast, winter, spring, summer and fall from a balcony high above Prospect Avenue.

Andrew doesn’t merely stumble upon an idea and then cobble together a sculpture. He’s an exceptional artist with exceptional concepts based on his love of mid-century modernism. That’s also my bag and why I was drawn to his couch of metal washers welded and melded into a sinuous shape. Yes, you can sit on it, lounge on it and love it. You’d think a couch fabricated from metal washers would lack warmth, but no. To the eye, it suggests goose down, fat pillows, or the lap of a fat grandma inviting you to sit awhile.

In the spring, the first rays of sun that tickle my northeast facing balcony, tickle the shoulder of the couch. In summer, when the lake sparkles like crazy under a full bore blast of sequined light, the couch returns the favor. I sit on it, lounge on it love it. The light shifts around to the other side of the building in the fall, leaving the couch mostly in the shade, where it scatters its image in lacy shadows of subdued light. I don’t have to haul it inside during the winter, so there it sits, draped in snow, another kind of sculpture, a sculpture for winter when winter comes. It’s my personal perfect sundial.

Visit the artist’s website. You’ll learn more about the years he has devoted to his metalsmithing since graduating from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He’s an American artist who makes things folks can actually use.