Albert Paley (born 1944) is an American modernist metal

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

. Initially starting out as a jeweler, Paley has become one of the most distinguished and influential metalsmiths in the world. Within each of his works, three foundational elements stay true: the natural environment, the built environment, and the human presence. Paley is the first metal sculptor to have received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...

. He lives and works in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

with his wife, Frances.

Early life and education

He was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. While his father fought in the Burma Campaign, Albert and his mother lived with his maternal grandparents. Most of Paley's free-time in his young years became occupied by model-kits and the outdoors. At around age 8, Paley joined the

Boy Scouts of America The Boy Scouts of America (BSA, colloquially the Boy Scouts) is one of the largest scouting organizations and one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with about 1.2 million youth participants. The BSA was founded i ...

, and even became a face for a billboard for the Boy Scouts. At 16, he dropped out of school with no intention of going to college — he planned to work jobs and support his mother after his father developed

arthritis Arthritis is a term often used to mean any disorder that affects joints. Symptoms generally include joint pain and stiffness. Other symptoms may include redness, warmth, swelling, and decreased range of motion of the affected joints. In som ...

It wasn't until a girlfriend took him to the

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is based at Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate students in a wid ...

that Paley found a blossoming passion for the arts. After excelling in a first semester at Tyler, Albert was accepted into the selective honors program where he had a free selection of classes. During his second year at Tyler, Paley became interested in jewelry-making. He became a studio assistant in the school's metal-shop under the supervision of

Stanley Lechtzin Stanley Lechtzin (born 1936) is an American artist, jeweler, metalsmith and educator. He is noted for his work in electroforming and computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacture (CAM). He has taught at Temple University in the Tyler Sc ...

, who was a strong influence for Paley. Paley earned his

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students for pursuing a professional education in the visual, fine or performing arts. It is also called Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) in some cases. Background The Bachelor ...

in sculpting with a minor in

metalsmithing A metalsmith or simply smith is a craftsperson fashioning useful items (for example, tools, kitchenware, tableware, jewelry, armor and weapons) out of various metals. Smithing is one of the oldest metalworking occupations. Shaping metal with a ...

in 1966. After receiving his BFA, Paley was torn between sculpting and metalwork for a master's degree, but eventually settled and earned his

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

goldsmithing A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and serviceable ...

. Paley taught full-time while a graduate student, and had stopped experimenting in sculpture, focusing all his time and energy into jewelry work. He received both diplomas from the

, a part of

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

, in Philadelphia. He moved to

Rochester Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent ** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area ** History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

in 1969 to teach at the

Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in the town of Henrietta, New York, Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degree ...

, where he now holds an endowed chair. He taught

until 1972, when he decided to focus solely on his own work.

Career

Jewelry

After receiving his MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Paley worked with metal as a jewelry designer. He became well known for his style and scale. His jewelry was often big and unique, described by Paley himself for “a certain kind of personality that could carry it...for a strong woman rather than someone who was repressed”. Despite his movement toward forging iron and away from jewelry in the 70's, Paley still continued to make jewelry during the beginning of his career in metalworking. Much of his jewelry was made for private commissions, keeping the pieces solely between him and his clients. He eventually stopped making jewelry completely, collecting any pieces in the possession of galleries, and selling all his tools. Since 1965, Paley's jewelry and metal work have been in over one hundred and fifty national and international exhibitions.

Gates & Functional Objects

During his last year in the Philadelphia area, Paley began experimenting with metal again, specifically forging iron. He and Lechtzin pulled together a small workshop for forging in the garage of Lechtzin's home, and spent the summer of 1969 reading about forging and learning how to work with different tools. Paley's big breakthrough was in 1973, when he was awarded a commission from the Smithsonian to design the portal gates for the

Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Susan Stamberg (July 22, 2014)
With Swirls Of Steel, These Sculptures Mark The Passage Of People And Time
''

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

''. In order to build the gates, Paley found a space to rent and filled it with machinery. He hired a past student, Richard Palmer, as a full-time assistant, and they spent a year creating the famou
Portal Gates
for the Renwick. After the Portal Gates, Paley's career in

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale ...

took off, with a focus in functional design: tables, lamps, and other usable forms of sculpture. Paley had created an array of decorative objects before the Renwick Gates, using his garage-shop. But after the gates were finished for the Renwick, Paley was left with a much larger work-space, in addition to a full-time assistant, supplies, and machinery. Paley already had another museum commission from the

Hunter Museum of American Art The Hunter Museum of American Art is an art museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The museum's collections include works representing the Hudson River School, 19th century genre painting, American Impressionism, the Ashcan School, early modernism, re ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

for an 85-foot long ornamenta

Since then, Paley has done many private commissions for driveway, garden, and fence gates in addition to his numerous public commissions. Some of his gates to note are the Portal Gates for the

New York State Senate The New York State Senate is the upper house of the New York State Legislature; the New York State Assembly is its lower house. Its members are elected to two-year terms; there are no term limits. There are 63 seats in the Senate. Partisan com ...

Chamber of the State Capitol (1980); the Victoria and Albert Gates for the Victoria and Albert Museum

(1982); and the Animals Always Gateway Sculpture for the

St. Louis Zoo The Saint Louis Zoo, officially known as the Saint Louis Zoological Park, is a zoo in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri. It is recognized as a leading zoo in animal management, research, conservation, and education. The zoo is accredited by the A ...

(2006), currently the largest sculpture at any zoo in the U.S.

Large-Scale Sculpture

Paley's first major public sculpture was his Sculpture for the Strong Museum in 1982. It was his first piece that showed a transition from smaller-scale work to his monumental sizes. Paley did several other large-scale sculptures in the 80's which share similarities in their simplicity of form with basic elements. Over time, his sculptures have moved away from simple forms, increasing in both complexity and color. In the summer of 2013, Paley was the featured artist on

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenu ...

. Thirteen sculptures were installed for exhibition between 52nd and 67th Streets in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. This collection of sculptures was one of Paley's larger projects for one exhibition.

Craft in America Craft in America, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Carol Sauvion in 2003, and based in Los Angeles, California. Its mission is to document and advance contemporary American craft and traditional craft practices through educ ...

featured Paley as th
final Forge artist in Season 5
aired on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

. Paley's career move from Goldsmith to Metal Sculptor is well explained in an interesting interview by Cathleen McCarthy.

Glass & Steel

In 1998, Paley was invited to the Pilchuck Glass School

for a summer residency. While there, Paley created a mass of glass elements that would be used in later sculptures in

. Paley did another glass residency in 2014 with the Corning Museum of Glass

located in

Corning, New York Corning is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States, on the Chemung River. The population was 10,551 at the 2020 census. It is named for Erastus Corning, an Albany financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company t ...

. He worked there for a year, where he practiced furnace-working and cast Corning Code 7056, a specific type of

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

that can form bonds with a metal alloy called

Kovar Kovar (trademark of CRS Holdings, inc., Delaware) is a nickel–cobalt ferrous alloy compositionally identical to Fernico 1, designed to have substantially the same thermal expansion characteristics as borosilicate glass (~5 × 10−6 /K between ...

. Paley chose this specific glass blend because of its similar properties to that of Kovar, which allowed him to create pieces that fused the glass and metal with each other. The first exhibition to focus on Paley's combining of glass and steel, ''Complementary Contrasts: The Glass and Steel Sculptures of Albert Paley'' at Museum of Glass will take place during the 2017 - 2018 season, and will display a collection of pieces spanning Paley's work with glass.

Major Architectural Commissions

Listed below are some of Albert Paley's major architectural commissions during his career. * 2013:

Sculptur
Series
* 2009
Clay Center
for the Arts and Sciences,

Charleston, West Virginia Charleston is the capital and List of cities in West Virginia, most populous city of West Virginia. Located at the confluence of the Elk River (West Virginia), Elk and Kanawha River, Kanawha rivers, the city had a population of 48,864 at the 20 ...

. entrance sculpture * 2006:

St. Louis Zoological Park The Saint Louis Zoo, officially known as the Saint Louis Zoological Park, is a zoo in Forest Park (St. Louis), Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri. It is recognized as a leading zoo in animal management, research, conservation, and education. The z ...

, St. Louis, Missouri. Animals Always Sculpture, exterior plaza sculpture * 2003:

, Rochester, New York. Sentinel exterior sculpture * 2000:

Naples Museum of Art The Baker Museum (formerly the Naples Museum of Art) is part of Artis–Naples, a multidisciplinary organization that also is the home of the Naples Philharmonic, located at 5833 Pelican Bay Boulevard, Naples, Florida. The museum, opened in 2000, h ...

, Naples, Florida. Portal Gates * 1996:

Sony Pictures Entertainment Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Sony Pictures or SPE, and formerly known as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc.) is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, ac ...

, Culver Studios, Culver City, California. Primordial Reflections, exterior sculpture * 1990:

Birmingham Museum of Art The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. It has one of the most extensive collections of artwork in the Southeastern United States, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts repres ...

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

. Confluence, exterior sculpture * 1987: Wortham Center for the Performing Arts,

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

. Eight stairway sculptures * 1981: Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Corporation, Washington, D.C. Tree Grates & Benches for

Pennsylvania Avenue Pennsylvania Avenue is a diagonal street in Washington, D.C., and Prince George's County, Maryland, that connects the White House and the United States Capitol and then crosses the city to Maryland. In Maryland it is also Maryland Route 4 (MD 4) ...

* 1974: Smithsonian Institution,

, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.
Portal Gates

Awards

* 2010: American Craft Council Gold Medal Award for consummate craftsmanship * 1998: received the Artist of the Year Award of the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. * 1997: Smithsonian Institution, Masters of the Medium Award, Washington, D.C. * 1995: American Institute of Architects (AIA), Institute Honors Recipient, Lifetime Achievement Award
National Association of Schools of Art and Design, Citation for Distinguished Service in the Visual Arts * 1994:

American Craft Council The American Craft Council (ACC) is a national non-profit organization that champions craft based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1943 by Aileen Osborn Webb, the council hosts national craft shows and conferences, publishes a quarterly maga ...

, Inducted to the College of Fellows * 1982: American Institute of Architects (AIA), Award of Excellence

References

Bibliography

* Kuspit, Donald Burton (2006). ''Albert Paley, Sculpture''. Milan, Italy: Skira. * Lucie-Smith, Edward (1996). ''The Art of Albert Paley, Iron, Bronze, Steel''. New York: H.N. Abrams. * Norton, Deborah L. (1991) ''Albert Paley, Sculptural Adornment''. Washington, D.C.: Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art,

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

in association with the

University of Washington Press The University of Washington Press is an American academic publishing house. The organization is a division of the University of Washington, based in Seattle. Although the division functions autonomously, they have worked to assist the universit ...

External links

* , his official website
WXXI, Rochester"s PBS station page for the web series Paley on Park Avenue 2013

The Renwick Gallery
* Wortham Center for the Art
official websiteAn interview of Albert Paley conducted 1982 Dec. 2, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
*