The Many Faces of Sam Ross
Young Deming artist cracks jokes while creating serious art.
By Donna Clayton Lawder
At just 22 years of age, Sam Ross is clear and firm as to what his life is about. Tall and lean, his intense eyes set in a decidedly friendly face, he walks through Gold Street Gallery—the gallery in Deming he co-owns with his father, artist Don Ross—talking about his work and his life in art. One moment almost pacing, the next relaxing his gangly frame against a wall, he is an engaging paradox of intensity and ease.
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Sam Ross with his "Hive Society." |
"It's one hundred percent art," he says. "That's all I see in my life. I'd eat rocks!" he adds with a huge smile, eyes blazing. "I'd be the 'starving artist' just to do this."
A passionate and sometimes serious young man, Sam Ross also has a playful, humorous side he brings out without warning. Asked where he gets his drive and focus, he doesn't miss a beat.
"Oh, I found it in a box of Cracker Jacks," he replies dryly, then waits for the humor to hit. "No, wait!," he adds, looking to go one better, to throw out a line even more provocative and funny. "I got it in a fortune cookie! Yeah, that's it!"
He laughs at his own absurd joke. Sam Ross is having a good time on the planet.
Ross says all his siblings are talented and creative, owing to their inheriting some artistic DNA and being raised in a creative, nurturing household. All were encouraged by both parents to express themselves artistically, he says, and all forms of art were appreciated and valued. His grown brother in California is a photographer, and his older sister creates the precious tiny bears sold in the Deming gallery. One sister, age 20, is a multi-instrument musician, playing flute, piano, cello, piccolo and clarinet. He calls his eight-year-old sister "a song artist" who also paints. Some of her work hangs in the gallery.
His youngest brother, the three-year-old riding a tricycle in figure eights in another room of the gallery, Ross flat-out calls "a little genius." The tow-headed subject of this month's cover has already taken up painting.
Along with talent ("if you must use that word," he quips), Ross says his father also passed down a good work ethic.
"I wake up in the morning and I paint or weld. I tackle the medium, whatever it is. I'll sometimes work for 12 hours straight and forget to eat," he says, then throws in another joke: "Oh, maybe that's just the fumes."
Ross works in both metal and paint, crafting complex steel sculptures in all sizes and painting with acrylics. His portraits are large, detailed and expressive. Lately he's been focusing on faces, as Gold Street Gallery has recently added commissioned portraits to its business plan.
And when he can't seem to make up his mind whether to paint or weld, Ross has been known to compromise and paint on steel.
He walks around the gallery, pointing out pieces of his work and sharing something of his creative process. Don't ask him to interpret the work, though.
"Each piece has its meaning to me, but I like to leave it up to (the viewers') interpretation," he says. What he is trying to say in his work, if indeed he is trying to say anything, is as varied as the pieces, he says.
He pauses at a metalwork piece, "Hive Society," hanging on the wall. The dark gray hive, several feet high, is a realistic representation of a bald-faced hornets' nest. Fourteen winged stingers are posed all over the creation, a couple tucked into tunnels of the life-like hive. It seems to be constructed of the paper-like material wasps fabricate in real life, by chewing strips of wood and mixing it with their own sticky saliva.
He says that when gallery visitors have asked him how he did it, he'd like to tell them with a straight face that he chewed and spat the steel like a wasp, and then wait for their reaction.
"If I'm reincarnated as a bald-faced hornet, I'm good to go. I have that technique down," he says, then laughs.
Welding the incredibly thin steel was a bit of a challenge, Ross admits. He almost shudders when asked how long it took him to create the sculpture. One move too quick, one careless weld, he says, could have wiped out "hours and hours" of work. At times he had to just make himself walk away from the piece for a bit, even go and work on something else, he remembers.
The huge hive hangs from metal sycamore branches, adorned with shining steel leaves. The wasps themselves are "entomologically correct," he says with obvious pride. A few sycamore seed pods, those spiny spheres kids call "itchy balls," hang here and there, adding to the realism.
"Oh, they were the most fun," Ross says.
Asked where he draws his inspiration for subject matter, he gets that serious look again. "Where does the musician get his note?" he asks metaphorically. "It could be as simple as opening a cereal box. It's all there, in everyday life."
The inspiration for "Hive Society," it turns out, was pretty much cause and effect. "Oh, I got stung by a bee and was having nightmares about it," he says simply.
He moves on to other sculptures. "Eternal Love" is among his most popular with women, he says. The single perfect rose in an ornate locked glass case must capture something of the mystery of love for them, he supposes.
"Last Outpost" is a small metal sculpture that depicts a tiny section of marshy shore. Fine grasses and plants quiver when Ross touches it.
"It's about finding that last wild place, a sane outpost somewhere. You think you're the only one there," he says, then points to a couple of flies at the bottom of the piece, "but the flies are already there. Someone beat you to it."
But this is no case of Ross combining paint and metal. The piece's shining brown, gold and red hues come from oxidation of the metal, he says.
"You can't beat rust for natural color," he says. And this time he's not kidding.
Sam Ross' work is on view at Gold Street Gallery, 112 and 116 Gold St. in Deming, 546-8200, www.goldstreetgallery.com.
Donna Clayton Lawder is senior editor of Desert Exposure.