Seth Minor

Seth Minor’s “Wire Guy” brings welcome interest to the blank city wall on the north side of the plaza this year. This wall became the perfect placement for Minor’s work, which is comprised of a single wire and was designed to be hung on a south-facing wall so as to cast a three-dimensional shadow. Minor’s wire pieces are made from a single wire, and tools are never used in their construction. The shadow is an integral part of the design, becoming a secondary drawing. Similar, but ultimately different from the wire, this secondary drawing transforms throughout the course of the day, and often becomes the main focus, more interesting than the piece itself.

Installation of each wire piece becomes a work of art in and of itself. By their nature, Minor’s pieces must overhand the roof by at least 2 feet to accommodate the all-important three-dimensional shadow. As such, each installation calls for a customized hanging mechanism that uses the available framework of the building while circumventing the always-present obstacles with grace.

Minor’s main influences stem from growing up in a summer community that was deserted each winter. Those winters left him much time to wander, speculate, and fabricate. He developed his imagination by attaching narratives to empty houses and the woods that stood about them. He began his artistic career with a stint in photography, but moved to sculpture as he became dissatisfied with observing and sought a form of participation. Soon, he would begin attaching narratives to his sculptures. As he fashioned sculptures around people, places, or circumstances, real or imagined, it always came down to issues of storytelling, and finding the pieces of truth between the lines of the story. From this point, he incorporated video into his work, which he sees as a way of sculpting images. Soon he was adding music too. Minor is a diversified artist who continues to experiment with combining video, music and sculpture into his installations.

Photo by Tedd Peterson