Using sculpture to blend industrial objects into the natural world
Photo:Paul Grossinger
One of sculptor Larry Heintjes' creations
By Paul Grossinger December 21, 2011
Sculptor Larry Heintjes picks his lighter up off the table and flicks on the flame. The object of his destructive intent is an old, clear plastic milk bottle crisscrossed by a design made up of penned ink lines. It is the first step in Heintjes’ attempt to turn a simple, manufactured object into a fanciful representation of nature.
That is Larry Heintjes’ art style: transformation. His art is meant to reflect his desire to mold the natural, the industrial and the imaginary into a unique creation.
“You can see what an artist is thinking and envisioning, when you look at their creations,” he says. “I have an affinity with nature so when I look at these industrial objects I like to work to take them back to my fantasized version of nature.” He pauses and then holds the lighter’s flame up to a select point on the bottle and watches the plastic meld into his desired shape.
Heintjes’ pieces reflect the multilayered dimensions of his life’s experience: starting in the industrial suburbs of New Jersey, extending through the explorative, fantasy-driven realm of art school at New York City’s Pratt Institute, and ending in his sculpture studio in the transforming neighborhood of Fort Greene-Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
Now 54, Heintjes has been creating art for more than three decades, stretching back to high school. “I was told I was an artist and I didn’t even know what the word was,” he says, taking a moment to put down his lighter and pick up his newest, unfinished piece, a green insect that looks like a cross between a small dragon and a praying mantis. He befriended his high school art teachers, went to Pratt to hone his craft, and then moved into a carriage house three blocks away after graduation. That carriage house, still sitting directly behind the larger home he bought from his long-time sculpting mentor, John Pai, housed three artists splitting $350 a month in rent, one of whom became his wife. Today, he works out of the same house and splits his time between custom door building to pay the bills and the more creative pieces that are his true passion.
“Larry is a true artist but he has never been fully recognized for his genius by the more mainstream art community,” says Harvey Wilson, a longtime client of both Heintjes’ art and woodworking.
When Hientjes first started, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he primarily used wood that he carved, sculpted, and refined into delicate, almost industrially precise designs. One piece on his shelf is an intricate boat carved from a single piece of wood. At that time, the neighborhood was, in Heintjes’ estimation “an exciting but dangerous place,” which alternately encouraged artists to venture out to gather inspiration and then hunker down in their relatively safe studios. That early style evolved into his interest in more industrial materials than wood, including plastic, resin and glue, and a new emphasis on creating fantastical versions of natural objects.
“I’ve always been good at building with my hands and I’ve always loved to invent things,” says Heintjes, pausing to pick up his partly melted milk bottle and lighter to resume work. “Gradually, I learned to meld those skills and blended them with my psyche’s desire to build things that bridge the gap between the industrial and natural worlds in transformative ways.”
Of all his art, Heintjes is most proud of what he calls his “embedments.” He combined industrial glue and polyester resin with a conglomeration of naturally found objects including animal fossils and preserved parts and then encased them permanently in a hard plastic. He considers his most impressive creation a creature that might be found in Greek mythology: one with a pigeon’s head, cat’s tail, dragon fly’s wings and crab’s claws.
His newer pieces, made largely from burning and melding conventional plastic objects into the shapes of natural creatures and then painting them, are simpler to make than his embedments but reflect the same artistic inspiration to blend the industrial and the natural and transform the mix into something entirely new.
“I am both a creator and a spectator,” he says. “When you create your own creatures, you can build them any way you like,” Heintjes says, as he walks toward his studio door, still clutching the flickering lighter. “Its combinations can reflect your own fantastic take on reality. I will always like that freedom.”
