Jewelry After receiving his MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Paley worked with metal as a jewelry designer. He became well known for his style and scale. His jewelry was often big and unique, described by Paley himself for “a certain kind of personality that could carry it...for a strong woman rather than someone who was repressed”. Despite his movement toward forging iron and away from jewelry in the 70's, Paley still continued to make jewelry during the beginning of his career in metalworking. Much of his jewelry was made for private commissions, keeping the pieces solely between him and his clients. He eventually stopped making jewelry completely, collecting any pieces in the possession of galleries, and selling all his tools. Since 1965, Paley's jewelry and metal work have been in over one hundred and fifty national and international exhibitions. |338x338px
Gates & Functional Objects During his last year in the Philadelphia area, Paley began experimenting with metal again, specifically forging iron. He and Lechtzin pulled together a small workshop for forging in the garage of Lechtzin's home, and spent the summer of 1969 reading about forging and learning how to work with different tools. In order to build the gates, Paley found a space to rent and filled it with machinery. He hired a past student, Richard Palmer, as a full-time assistant, and they spent a year creating the famous Portal Gates for the Renwick. After the Portal Gates, Paley's career in
metalworking took off, with a focus in functional design: tables, lamps, and other usable forms of sculpture. Paley had created an array of decorative objects before the Renwick Gates, using his garage-shop. But after the gates were finished for the Renwick, Paley was left with a much larger work-space, in addition to a full-time assistant, supplies, and machinery. Paley already had another museum commission from the
Hunter Museum of American Art in
Tennessee for an 85-foot long ornamental Since then, Paley has done many private commissions for driveway, garden, and fence gates in addition to his numerous public commissions. Some of his gates to note are the Portal Gates for the
New York State Senate Chamber of the State Capitol (1980); the Victoria and Albert Gates for the
Victoria and Albert Museum[http://www.vam.ac.uk/ (1982); and the Animals Always Gateway Sculpture for the
St. Louis Zoo (2006), currently the largest sculpture at any zoo in the U.S.
Large-Scale Sculpture Paley's first major public sculpture was his Sculpture for the
Strong Museum in 1982. It was his first piece that showed a transition from smaller-scale work to his monumental sizes. Paley did several other large-scale sculptures in the 80's which share similarities in their simplicity of form with basic elements. Over time, his sculptures have moved away from simple forms, increasing in both complexity and color. In the summer of 2013, Paley was the featured artist on
Park Avenue. Thirteen sculptures were installed for exhibition between 52nd and 67th Streets in
New York City. This collection of sculptures was one of Paley's larger projects for one exhibition.
Craft in America featured Paley as the final Forge artist in Season 5, aired on
PBS. Paley's career move from Goldsmith to Metal Sculptor is well explained in an interesting interview by Cathleen McCarthy.
Glass & Steel In 1998, Paley was invited to the
Pilchuck Glass Schoolfor a summer residency. While there, Paley created a mass of glass elements that would be used in later sculptures in
Rochester. Paley did another glass residency in 2014 with the
Corning Museum of Glass[http://www.cmog.org/ located in
Corning, New York. He worked there for a year, where he practiced furnace-working and cast Corning Code 7056, a specific type of
glass that can form bonds with a metal alloy called
Kovar. Paley chose this specific glass blend because of its similar properties to that of Kovar, which allowed him to create pieces that fused the glass and metal with each other. The first exhibition to focus on Paley's combining of glass and steel,
Complementary Contrasts: The Glass and Steel Sculptures of Albert Paley at Museum of Glass will take place during the 2017 - 2018 season, and will display a collection of pieces spanning Paley's work with glass.
Major Architectural Commissions Listed below are some of Albert Paley's major architectural commissions during his career. • 2013:
Park Avenue Sculpture Series • 2009: Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences,
Charleston, West Virginia. entrance sculpture • 2006:
St. Louis Zoological Park, St. Louis, Missouri. Animals Always Sculpture, exterior plaza sculpture • 2003:
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. Sentinel exterior sculpture • 2000:
Naples Museum of Art, Naples, Florida. Portal Gates • 1996:
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Culver Studios, Culver City, California. Primordial Reflections, exterior sculpture • 1990:
Birmingham Museum of Art,
Birmingham, Alabama. Confluence, exterior sculpture • 1987:
Wortham Center for the Performing Arts,
Houston, Texas. Eight stairway sculptures • 1981: Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Corporation, Washington, D.C. Tree Grates & Benches for
Pennsylvania Avenue • 1974: Smithsonian Institution,
Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.Portal Gates == Awards ==