Spirit

This steel sculpture was created for Melvyn and Sara Smith by Cranbrook Academy of Art alumni Gary Kulak. Kulak was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Cranbrook in 1975. His thesis work included a large play structure for Brookside School, titled Alamo, as well as several works incorporating empty chairs salvaged from Brookside classrooms. Kulak returned to Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools as a teacher in 2005 where his art classes used the same bronze foundry that he had used as an Academy student.

The form of the chair became an important motif in Kulak’s iterative process. Through a body of work that addressed concepts of death and rebirth, the empty chair became a way of communicating presence through the absence of a sitter. This low adaptation of the form, titled Spirit, was built in Kulak’s Birmingham home studio. Kulak and the Smiths found a connection through the topic of spirituality, expressed in this work by a sweeping arc of steel and the tabernacle form of the sculpture's base. Melvyn Smith and the artist carefully selected its position close to the corner window of Myhaven's living room, where the mild steel was protected from the elements but easily viewed from inside the house.

Nina Blomfield
2021-2023 Decorative Arts Trust Marie Zimmermann Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
June 2023