Art Of The Helmet

[Via SEE Magazine]

Edmonton artist Ryan McCourt makes some pretty fancy things
to put on your head (Published December 10, 2009 by Mari Sasano in Arts Feature)

Portrait Helmets
Common Sense Gallery, 10546 115 St.
By appointment, until December 20th.

These aren’t your usual helmets, folks. Not the hockey variety, and certainly not football. These helmets are art.

“The first helmet I made, the Elvish King, started out as an abstract sculpture. I was using a piece of brass in the shape of a face, cut in half.”

Ryan McCourt is best known for making massive steel sculptures. He has taken part in four exhibitions and has commissions for large, outdoor public art. But with “Portrait Helmets,” he turns to a smaller, literally more human scale: wearable art, in the form of brass helmets.

Each helmet is created as a character, such as the Helm of the Grieving Gardener, the Helm of the Critic, or the Helm of the African Queen. Working on this scale means that McCourt is able to add more detail into each piece, but ultimately it isn’t much different than his larger work.

“The large works, those are made of steel,” he says.

“There’s a general shape vocabulary in steel, with pipes and round shapes. Whereas in brass, the range of shapes you could start with are much broader. There are some of the same structural things, but also you can also have dishes and bows and decorative stuff, and menageries of animals.”

And then of course , there are other advantages, many decorative elements are available pre-made, in the form of brass ornaments.

“With the Helm of the Gorgon, I knew I needed a bunch of snakes. It’s hard to find brass snakes, so I had to improvise using long-necked birds. So I shopped all the Goodwills to buy them up. I started to get recognized at the Value Village, too. They’re quite kitschy.”

The bird butts were recycled into Lisa Simpson-like hair spikes for the African Queen.

McCourt sees each object as a projection of a character, but at the same time, they have the possibility of transforming the wearer.

“I suppose it’s imaginative,” McCourt says.

“In reality, they are pretty uncomfortable, but in each piece there is the idea of transformation. A lot of people call them masks. And they are a kind of disguise.

“Many have face pieces, and they take on a theatrical role. The African Queen, for example, is based on traditional masks used for ceremonies.”

McCourt connects his work to a larger cultural tradition.

“I think it’s very rich, culturally. At a sculptural level, each helmet stands in for the head. The personality is in the head wear. It’s a riddle, you pick out the details to tell the story. And it’s a personal thing, everyone sees something different.”

He even has a helmet for me.

“The Helm of the Critic has a globe, a ring of keys and a flower on the brow. And there are magnifying lenses where the eyes are, so you can see all the fine details, drawer pulls as hair, and a moving chin piece so it can talk.”

It’s a perfect likeness, metaphorically speaking.