About: Artist Evan Lewis

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, B.F.A. 1990

Evan Lewis has spent most of his life engaged in the process of designing and fabricating furniture and sculpture. At the age of ten in Santa Barbara, California, Lewis took a wood working class at school that basically determined the course of his life. A few years later he was already making fine furniture with emphasis on Shaker and early American designs.

After year of college Lewis became interested in sculpture. His focus on outdoor wind powered kinetic pieces led him to shift his craft to metalworking. He found himself drawing inspiration for his designs from the rough beauty of the California mountains, learning about structure from sources as diverse as local flora, highway bridges and radio towers.

For the following ten years Lewis experimented with wind sculpture and developed his own style of work that he exhibited and sold nationally. In 1986 he moved to Chicago, receiving a BFA from the School of the Art Institute four years later.

After years of learning and experimenting, Lewis came full circle by designing and fabricating a new line of furniture inspired by French furniture of the 18th century as well as the architecture and iron work of the modernism style in Barcelona.

Working simultaneously on developing new furniture and sculpture designs, Lewis was commissioned after an extensive search to produce sculpture prominently featured in the Warner Brothers production "Twister." He was also commissioned by the Illinois Arts Commission to design and produce a large-scale kinetic sculpture for the campus of the University of Illinois in DeKalb.

The sculptures I make are kinetic and powered by wind. Because the power source is unpredictable natural phenomenon, the resulting action of the pieces is random. This is what gives these works their greatest quality: dynamic motion that changes all the time and follows no set pattern.

My work as a furniture designer and builder of kinetic sculpture provides vast experience in adapting classical motifs to contemporary design and the practical knowledge of enduring exterior kinetic systems. Depending on the parameters of the site, a kinetic wind sculpture can be designed to reflect and enhance architectural motifs, historical reference and specific wind conditions. The resulting compositions are dynamic with ever changing shape, life-like with fluid and graceful motion, and create a contemplative and serene experience for the viewer.

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