Artist: Thaddeus Mosley

Title: Touching the Earth

Location: City Hall Park

Installed by: Public Art Fund through Nov. 16

Bio: Thaddeus G. Mosley (born 1926 — he is 98) is an American sculptor who works mostly in wood and is based in Pittsburgh. He was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, where both sides of his family were farmers and miners. After college, he took a job with the U.S. Postal Service and also worked as a freelance journalist and photographer in the 1950s. He “was inspired to take up wood carving” after viewing a Scandinavian furniture display at a local department store that included wood carvings of birds and fish. Rather than pay $75 apiece for the animals, Mosley decided to make his own. This was the beginning of his lifelong passion for wood carving and his participation and activism in the Pittsburgh art scene, which would continue for the rest of his life.

The video from the Seattle Art Museum below is great.

Background: This is Mosley’s first solo outdoor exhibition in New York City. There are eight bronze sculptures cast from his original wood carvings made between 1996 and 2021, focusing on his lifelong investigation of sculptural form and material. Each bronze preserves the organic knots and grain found in the timber. A skilled craftsman in wood, Mosley has long studied its properties, thoughtfully selecting different varietals including hickory, walnut and bass for their distinct structural and aesthetic qualities. His profound material knowledge, coupled with a practice of “listening to wood,” informs the sculptures’ biomorphic forms.

“I channel my energies into a narrow sculptural focus: materials, form, rhythm, surface, relation to earth, capacity to soar,” Mosley says. “Wood, especially fallen trees, offers its own direction. I carve in response to what I find in it, not what I want it to be.”

The exhibition’s title is drawn from an essay by bell hooks, whose reflections on the spiritual and cultural value of nature in Black life connect directly with Mosley’s practice. Mosley sees a return to nature not as retreat, but as reverence to a grounding force. For the artist, sculpting is a 1:1 relationship with his body and his tools, timber, and time — all moving together in rhythm. His sculptures, often compared to jazz improvisation, strike a balance between formal structure and intuitive flow, weight and lift, theme and variations.

“Thaddeus Mosley is a lifelong sculptor, an expert in his material world,” says Jenée-Daria Strand, Assistant Curator at Public Art Fund. “His ability to transform logs into dynamic forms is derived from decades of studying African diasporic practices across genres, coupled with his intrinsic sensibilities. This exhibition honors his decades-long mastery and offers new audiences a powerful introduction to his practice.”