INTERIOR DESIGN 52 MAY 2 0 1 7 outdoor venues nationwide, but some live in galleries or collectors’ homes. Selections of his work will appear in this month’s seventh annual Long Island City Arts Open (LICAO), running May 17 to 21. “Watch out for that,” Howard-Potter says, laughing, as I almost collide with the elongated hand of a giant dancer in the middle of the room, too distracted by the kaleidoscope of sculptures I’ve entered. “That happens a lot,” the artist admits, brushing his dark hair away from his forehead as he inspects his work. Howard-Potter has a kind face and artist hands, worn from years of manipulating steel. He sports a T-shirt with a bike on it — a hobby of his, and primary mode of transportation commuting daily from his home in Manhattan to the western Queens studio. This piece is “Dancer 11.” For more than 20 years, Howard-Potter has been creating and recreating this dancer theme with his larger sculptures — all of them balancing on one leg in slightly varied poses, titled “Dancer 1, 2, 3,” and so on. “Dancer 11” stands about 11 feet tall with her right leg bent in the air in front of her and arms stretched out in an “L” shape. The repeated sequences of steel rod running up her legs and around her torso resemble muscle and athletic movement in an effortless way. “I like playing with the idea of this heavy, hard, immovable material, but making it light and airy and motion-filled,” says Howard-Potter on working with steel. “That eventually came around to dancers, because dancers have this amazing constant motion that very rarely gets frozen. They’re incredibly graceful and then also really athletic, and I really liked that mix of grace, power, movement, and then this beautiful stillness.” When completed, “Dancer 11” is going to live on the campus of Union College, the artist’s alma matter, where he first fell in love with steel. “I did my first weld in college and I instantly knew that this was the medium I wanted to peruse and refine,” says Howard Potter. “If I were a painter and made paintings on canvas, they wouldn’t last forever. But if I work in steel, it’s going to hang around a heck of a lot longer. There was this primordial everlasting quality to it that I was totally drawn to.” However, he recalls feeling that “something was missing” from his early steel pieces. Some of this work hangs in the back of his studio, and it’s clear what he
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