« Features
John Carroll Long: Time Maker
By Andrea Clark Brown
From John Carroll Long’s vast repertoire of mixed-media sculptures emerges a notable collection of sophisticated assemblages that are paradoxically more human natured than most humans. Long is a seasoned observer of human nature. He has an unfettered ability to capture life-giving essences from each of his found objects. By merging and distilling these essences into entirely believable three-dimensional anima, his narratives-made-physical exude and reveal subconscious human traits found mostly in our dreams. These chimeras appear to be transformed into the visceral and real by his unique hand.
What Long so often reveals, through his melding of otherwise inanimate objects with anthropomorphic elements, is the potential of his enlivened objects to jettison toward an ineffable future that has been within them all along and merely awaits the moment to go forward.
John Carroll Long, Balance, 2012, mixed media, 34" H x 10" W x 16" D
Long’s futuristic vision is illustrated through his oft-repeated use of wheels, tricycles, unicycles, rotors, tanks and other forms of conveyance including birds and a variety of animals. Immanent in these iconic vehicular modes is their potential to “depart,” to move forward, to take one to another (better, egalitarian, peaceful) place in the future. The artist’s view is forwardly aimed to a more intelligent reality that should be, could be, and can exist, but we are just not there yet.
Long wonders if we were offered the chance to travel through time and take one item with us, what would it be? And he offers his answer as he proposes that many would take their first vehicle, the tricycle or bicycle. For him, these are the elements that introduce every child to the opportunity to increase their range. This experience is one over which a child takes control, expanding the size of their world. The tricycle or bicycle is the first vehicle of empowerment and self-propulsion into a broad unexplored territory. Thus in Long’s artwork, the wheel is a sign of forward movement and reach, defying former static limitations.
John Carroll Long, Time Keeper, 2012, mixed media, 44" L x 17" W x 25" H.
Birds are found to rest on many of Long’s vehicles. These birds are placed and act as guardians to the imagined child’s first ventures into an unknown frontier. They co-pilot the journey and are witness to it.
Theirs is to run the race. “With some fans, if there’s a car going around the track, they’ll sit in a monsoon to watch it. buy cialis First, you have to find where it is needed http://foea.org/6-revision-v1/ pfizer viagra samples most. Apart from that the pill has long lasting and best effects and that is the reason why people tend to buy viagra online in canada more and not any other problem. This capsule is ideal for stopping semen leakage and nightfall problem. usa viagra no prescription
On many occasions Long overtly situates the female figure or female head amidst, within or upon his vehicles such that she is totally united with the transport and appears to be steering it with her silent intuitions, creativity and imagination. The female’s mere presence as a source and initiator transforms and undoubtedly elevates her existence from the merely conventionally perceived object of desire (sexually) to an unchallenged and stabile visionary with the mission of bringing the world along with her to a better place. This nearly androgynous yet clearly sensuous prescient figure skillfully launches the sculptures’ narratives into realms of physics, evolutionary science and spirituality as well as critiques of war, prejudice and inequality.
There is poignancy and regret for worldly errors exposed in much of Long’s sculptural works. His consistent presentation of visual and formal narratives subtly or overtly offer editorial comment and critique over past, current or seemingly inevitable future breaches of common sense. In studying the ways of Man, Long intentionally exposes his view of the unfortunate and plentiful foibles of humankind.
John Carroll Long, Time Traveller, 2011, mixed media, 36" L x 17" W x 25" H. / Evo, 2013, mixed media, 31" H x 15" W x 16" D. / Homage to Eve, mixed media, 20" H x 16" W x 4" D.
Such is the case when the artist crosses a line into a speculative remodeling of the story of Adam and Eve. Numerous artworks in Long’s collection subtly pose the question of what would the world be like if Eve had been conceived as an equal. Could she have walked side by side with Adam as an unbridled and self-aware persona, choosing her role rather than merely accepting it?
His critical narratives aside, what is regularly summoned by Long’s intelligent and sentient assemblages is also beauty, promise, celebration and wonder. Deep though this artist’s messages may be, there is also evoked a kind of childlike simplicity that resonates in a down-to-earth, “I get it” manner. What resounds here is that Long’s breadth of subject matter is both universal and personal. His artistic language is accessible to the man on the street as well as the art savvy, both of whom see artifacts of their own lives skillfully blended and captured in the artwork’s parts and pieces. Long’s audience relates to his work and, in many cases believes, or wants to believe, in the illusive destination that is offered through his sculpture’s futuristic guidance.
John Carroll Long is represented by UP ART AND DESIGN GALLERY-Contemporary. 340 8th Street South, Naples, FL. 34102 / Phone: 239 641 3898
www.johnlongart.com / www.upartanddesign.com
Andrea Clark Brown is an arts writer based in Naples.
