The Curator's Eye

Elegance and Danger | Mike Rathbun, sculptor

selected by Beth Sellars, curator, Suyama Space

Photo by Eduardo Calderon

“He is one of the most passionately obsessive artists I’ve met in a long time,” says Beth Sellars, “driven to do the work, regardless.” He disregards money. “I’ve never sold a piece of art in my life,” says Rathbun. He avoids galleries and prefers museums, colleges and sculpture parks from California to New York. Disdaining art collectors, he’s a collector himself. “I collect dirt from the Cave of the Apocalypse on Patmos Island [source of the Bible’s book of Revelation]. I take all these strange trips, try to create these situations where I have epiphanies, then translate them into a physical form.” The thorns in the piece above are giant versions of thorns he saw while sailing the Sea of Cortés. “I liked the beauty and elegance and danger of thorns — they could injure you.”

“His craftsmanship is impeccable, his use of materials authentic,” says Sellars. “And when the project/artwork has been shown, he burns it.”

“I have trouble with the idea of the object as a commodity,” says Rathbun. “At one point, I burned all my journals, drawings and paintings. I like to think I can start from absolute zero.”

“It’s about the making, the investigations and the process,” says Sellars. “Once it’s completed he’s on to new ideas. I find that kind of obsessive sincerity very appealing. It’s the trait I look for when considering artists for proposals.”

“I want to get to where the things I am don’t get in the way of the things I dream,” says Rathbun. “I suppose I’m sort of a romantic. I like to be as pure about it as I can. I shoot myself in the foot.”

Says Sellars, “It’s a bewildering mystery to me that he has not been picked up by more curators and art venues in our region.” 

Art: N47° 36.878’ W 122° 20.788’: Installation by Mike Rathbun, Suyama Space, 2007, wood, paint, installation, 20 x 21 x 37 feet