Man of Wire
New York-based wire sculpture and performance artist Skye Ferrante has made waves, headlines and the occasional spectacle for his provocative and truly distinct body of work. We sit down and get uterly candid with the Man of Wire to learn more about his mind- and wire-bending process and his fascination with the nude form, with a welcome dose of his signature wit to match.
By: Kevin Daniel Dwyer
Paysage Normand (Normandy Landscape); Honfleur, Normandie, 2016 | Photography: Tony Notarberardino
Sky Ferrante, Man of Wire | Photography: Tony Notarberardino
You’ve developed quite a following and garnered attention for your work in recent years. How did you get to this point and moment?
SF: Well I didn’t fly, and certainly not first class. As a boy until my early twenties I was a ballet dancer; there weren’t many of us—but I got comfortable being the only boy in a room, in most rooms, until I went to School of American Ballet where there were enough boys to have a class of boys. It wasn’t easy in the Eighties, pre Billy Elliot, being a boy ballet dancer, but I was happy, and in time I was able to do it well—or good enough sometimes to be the best in a room, which is a feeling I think all children should have, at least once, about something, anything—just to know, ‘I’m really good at this.’ That feeling which came for me with ballet has informed everything I’ve done since. My sculpture is ballet.
When did you first become interested in making art?
“My spools of wire begin as static mediums; if I get the portrait right, it moves.”
SF: My parents were in the arts, commercial, advertising in the golden age, they were encouraging, and for me to choose dance was economical; at the time nearly all boys in ballet were on scholarship. My father taught me to draw, somewhat, though I didn’t go to art school. My first and favorite subject to draw was volcanos, and once I even performed the “Fall of Pompei” on stage for the entire school; I built a volcano, and played all the parts, the dying Pompeians, as well as the volcano—Vesuvius. As you can see, I’ve moved on from volcanos.
Now that volcanoes have blown over – so to speak – how did you land on the human form and the medium of wire?
SF: There’s no landscape I love more, and I view the body as a landscape—when the portrait works it is a landscape and not a portrait; although I do love landscapes too. Before I took to wire, I would paint with oil pastels on Hampstead Heath in London, and I loved the movement of trees. It’s what I saw and loved in the Impressionists: Abstraction in the figurative. Blur. My spools of wire begin as static mediums; if I get the portrait right, it moves—and becomes a landscape, see?
I chose wire after apprenticing for a bronze sculptor whose studio was in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. John the Devine. I lacked the patience for bronze casting; I wanted to sculpt as fast as a painter paints, and so I removed the process down to the armature wire beneath the clay and found that I could ‘paint’ with that. I was aware of Calder and his ‘Circus’ at the Whitney, in the old lobby, but wasn’t influenced, technically, at least; I always work with one continuous piece.
Portrait fo Amelie; Chelsea Hotel, NYC, 2019 | Photography: Tony Notarberardino
When did you get your first big break?
SF: (Large Orson-Wellian Belly Laugh) Oh that would have to be Joe Smegegge. Yeah, it was Smegegge who gave me the big break. Been on easy street ever since.
Tell us about some of your most notable clients and collaborations.
SF: Of late, Ferrari. They seem to like me and there’s only a few letters different in our name. Our work together is performance sculpture, they fly me to Pebble Beach and I live-sculpt a 1959 250 Testa Rossa off a big aluminum spool over a three-hour event. It adds color and authenticity, I suppose—although, Ferrari doesn’t need me for more color or authenticity. Artistic parsley, I guess—or Parmesan.
I’ve done some large-scale spectacle pieces captured on time-lapse, too. I actually love doing corporate work; unlike most galleries, they pay up, often in advance, meet their agreements, including post-sculpture massage—it’s in my rider—and I don’t have to sue them in the end to get my work back. Presumably they just destroy it. I’m just kidding. But they might.
Describe a memorable exhibition for us.
Portrait of Isabella; Chelsea Hotel, NYC, 2019 Photography: Tony Notarberardino
SF: I can think of one I’d like to forget. Imagine an exhibition of two dozen nude portraits sculpted in Paris, New York, London, Athens and Moscow; each portrait has a corresponding portrait story, written on a typewriter, about the model and our portrait sitting—imagine that, except the exhibition was in a basement, in a nightclub, in the dark. The whole unseen show was taken down, and what wasn’t damaged by the rich ended up in a garage in Islington with a leaky roof for six months.
What is a dream client/subject for you?
SF: Thank you for asking. If I may dream: She will arrange for a never-ending portrait on a never-ending spool, on a never-ending monthly retainer. I’ll cancel all other clients, suspend exhibitions permanently, make a thoughtful bend when I feel like it, and when not working you can find me through binoculars in Central Park, on the Boating Pond with my daughter. She’s old enough to row.
Where does this dry, witty sense of humor originate?
SF: New York of course, and its seasons. We have all of them: Good to bad to worse to Hudson Yards. Have you ever walked on East Broome Street by the open vegetable and fish markets in high Summer? Do that, and stop a moment to close your eyes, and sniff.
We’ll pass on that one. Where do you look for inspiration in the “Art world?”
“I wanted to sculpt as fast as a painter paints”
SF: I go to the MoMA once a week, but only for the children’s butter pasta—it’s half the price of the adult pasta and it comes with a free cookie.
Joking aside, what do you aim to evoke with your work? What are you trying to communicate to audiences?
SF: I like that you say, ‘audiences.’ In art, unless it’s performance art, we are removed from our audience in the making of it, and when we show, the artwork is performing, not the artist. But this is why I work with models—friends, mostly, and performers I admire—for the company, and for the immediate applause, frankly, when the piece is done. As a child of the stage, the sound of a standing O is hard to forget. Working with the model is a dance and a collaboration, a pas de deux and a performance for the two of us—typically, unless it’s three. We are on stage and in the audience for each other all at once throughout the sitting experience; It is this that I am trying to communicate, that the artwork alone cannot. Hence, the portrait stories. The sculpture is secondary to the story, and sometimes the excuse to write. In short, I make sculptures to read.
How do you want our readers to experience your work?
SF: Whether a portrait sitting, commissioned from life as an experience, a proper landscape or architectural or their 50 million-dollar 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, the sculpture is continuous. They can follow every bend I make, from the beginning until the end, in chronological time.
Where can we catch you performing/sculpting next? What’s ahead for you?
SF: I’m going back to Los Angeles to do a residency at Petit Ermitage—to escape the New York winter. Of course by the time that this is published, I’ll be on to something else. Perhaps, a private never-ending floral commission in the Bay Area? G
Sky Ferrante
Instagram: @Manofwire