Lot 663: John Bisbee (American, b. 1965), Untitled, 2000, No visible signature., Condition: Intentional oxidation.Provenance: Gift of the artist

John Bisbee (American, b. 1965)

Untitled, 2000
No visible signature.
Welded nail sphere, diameter approximately 6 in. (15.2 cm).
Condition: Intentional oxidation.

Provenance: Gift of the artist, sold to benefit Prize4Life, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

N.B. John Bisbee was interviewed by Josh Gleason for NPR on March 13, 2008, at the time of the artist's exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, and the following is quoted from that story: "It all started when Bisbee was a student in college. He was raiding abandoned houses for found objects to use in his art when he came upon an old bucket of nails. 'I kicked the bucket and it flipped over,' Bisbee recalls, 'and the nails had cohered, oxidized — they'd rusted into the bucket shape. And it was just such an obvious thing of beauty — it was so clearly above anything I had ever envisioned making myself. And I sat down on the bed, and I knew that I needed to get some nails.' Bisbee went to the hardware store and bought $30 worth of brads. He would later move to 1-inch nails, then 2-inch nails, ten-penny nails and 5-inch nails. Over the years, Bisbee has created a surprisingly diverse array of sculptures with the nails — everything from tightly wadded balls of welded brads, to undulating waves of bent nails, to towering brambles of 12-inch spikes." (1.)

1. accessed 8/26/2014.