MW : Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

JL : I’m a Chicago-based artist and educator working primarily in sculpture.

I approach making as a way of studying material: its behavior, its histories, and the processes that shape it. Over the past several years, I’ve become especially fixated on metal: steel, iron, bronze, and aluminum. I can go on and on about why metal, but what draws me to it most is its resistance and its ability to record action. Working with metal requires extreme heat, tools, and physical effort, so each action becomes a negotiation between my intention and the material’s response.

That gap is where my recent work lives, in a kind of shared authorship between me, the tools, the process, and the material itself.

I’m also drawn to the community around metalworking. Through teaching foundry classes, working in an instructional metal shop, and attending conferences and residencies, I’m in constant conversation with other people who are committed to these materials and processes. That exchange matters a lot to me. Metalworking carries deep bodies of knowledge, and I value being part of a community where those skills, experiences, and ways of thinking are actively shared. There’s so much to learn and so many people to meet.

MW : What systems or structures are you most influenced by? How does our interaction with these constructs influence the way you approach making?

JL : Right now I’m most influenced by gating and sprue systems. In metal casting, these are the channels that guide molten metal into a mold cavity. After the casting is complete, they’re usually cut away and their evidence is erased. Designing them involves a lot of consideration- pressure, heat distribution, shrinkage, concealment, and a range of other variables-but until the pour actually happens, much of it feels like an educated guess. That’s part of what draws me to them, and it connects directly to the gap I mentioned earlier between intention and result.

In my Gating System series, I use the logic of these systems as the work itself.

The series consists of fabricated steel structures that guide molten aluminum through a network of channels before allowing it to spill, pool, and accumulate. The aluminum moves under gravity and pressure, mechanically bonding to the steel as it cools and shrinks. The steel remains as the armature that holds this interaction in space. The structures are carefully planned, but the final form still depends on how the material actually moves through them. What interests me is that they hold control and release at the same time. They’re built to direct material, but they also create the conditions for that control to give way.

That tension feels central to how I think about sculpture.

MW : What does function mean in your sculptures? Are they referencing process, utility, symbolic or imagined systems of use?

JL : Function operates on a few levels in my work. On the most basic level, the sculptures have to physically work.

They have to stand, hang, or hold their own weight, and I put a lot of thought into that. I’m interested in how a piece is supported and how that support becomes part of the form rather than something hidden. I’ve spent hours on texture, finish, or the overall shape of a piece, only to realize the most dynamic moment is the way it hangs on the wall, like that alone could have been the work.

In other works, especially the gating system pieces, function is also generative. The structure has a job to do. It guides molten material, contains it for a moment, then lets it escape. Some elements carry multiple functions at once. A pour cup might also become a hanging device or mounting point, and the system itself becomes both the mechanism and the armature.

MW : How do you balance a work’s logic with intuition or aesthetic impulses in your process?

JL : Usually the logic comes first. I’ll begin with a structural problem, a process, or a set of conditions I want to work through. But once I’m inside the making, intuition takes over in a different way. I’m constantly responding to proportion, tension, weight, and the way parts relate to each other. So even when the work begins from a practical logic, it doesn’t always abide by it.

In my most recent work, I’m reluctant to make any decorative additions, so the decisions I make
need to earn their place through function. That doesn’t make the work any less intuitive, but it does change where intuition operates. Instead of adding something for visual interest, I’m paying closer attention to what the structure, the process, or the material is already doing, and letting those decisions shape the form.

I don’t really see logic and intuition as opposites. For me they push on each other. Logic gives the work a framework, but intuition keeps it from becoming dull or overly resolved. Some of the most important decisions happen when I stop forcing a piece to follow the original plan and instead pay attention to what it’s already doing.

MW : How has your understanding of built structures shifted over time as your technical skills have evolved?

JL : The more I’ve learned technically, the more I’ve come to understand built structures as negotiations rather than fixed solutions. Earlier on, I think I saw structure mainly as something stable that could hold a form together. Now I see it as something more active. Structure doesn’t just support form, it shapes it. The way something is joined, braced, counterweighted, or distributed affects what it can become.

That shift has happened both in the structures I build and the ones I move through every day.

It’s a little like getting a new car and suddenly seeing that same car everywhere. Once I started learning how things are actually made, I began noticing built structures differently. I pay more attention to how forces are carried, where stress collects, how something is reinforced, and why a particular solution was chosen.

That way of seeing has fed back into the studio.

As my technical skills have grown, I’ve also become more comfortable letting those structural realities stay visible in my work. I want the armature, the connection, and the point of stress to
remain legible because those decisions carry a lot of meaning.

MW : How do you balance material control with elements of chance, when structural necessity starts to dictate form?

JL : I try to set up conditions rather than dictate every outcome. Some parts of the work have to be controlled, because if they fail, the whole thing fails. But within that structure, I’m always looking for space where the material can still act on its own terms. That’s especially true when I’m pouring metal. I can design the path, the support, and the containment, but I can’t fully script how the aluminum will move, spill, cool, or settle.

When structural necessity starts to dictate form, that just becomes part of the negotiation.

I’m interested in figuring out how much control the work actually needs, and where I can leave room for the material to do something unexpected.

MW : Are there particular material failures, mistakes, or inefficiencies that you’ve come to value as a generative form within your process?

JL : Definitely. There are so many things that can and do go wrong in metalworking, especially in foundry: cracks, shrinkage, inclusions, cold shuts, spills, and more. Those moments are often more revealing than the parts that behave as intended. They show the limits of the system and the force of the material at the same time.

A large part of why the Gating System series exists comes from my experience working in a commercial foundry, where we would sometimes see a mold break during a pour and metal spill out. I’ve spent hours cutting away beautiful solidified bronze and aluminum spills from furniture castings.

In that context, it was a failure.

But for me, those moments were incredibly generative.

You could see the metal behaving more directly, outside the intended form, and that made its movement, pressure, and volatility much more visible. That’s what I’ve come to value in mistakes and inefficiencies. They reveal the material’s characteristics more clearly and make the conditions of the process legible.

A lot of my ideas come from those moments, and I’m currently trying to create more opportunities for them to happen.

MW : Do you begin with a logic in mind, or does the function or utility within a piece emerge as you work through material and process?

JL : I usually begin with a loose logic in mind, but that logic almost always evolves through the process of making. There’s usually some starting structure or question in place, whether that’s how a piece will hold itself, how material will move through it, or what kind of physical relationship I want to establish. But once I start working, the material, scale, weight, and construction all begin to shift away from that original idea.

For example, I might begin with a system that seems very clear in a drawing or small model, but once it’s fabricated and has actual mass, new problems and possibilities show up. A support might become the most important formal element, or a part that was only meant to guide a process might end up becoming the piece itself.

So I’d say the work starts with a logic, but its function or utility often becomes clearer, and sometimes more complicated, through material and process.

MW : Are there particular types of metal, tools, joints, or fabrication methods that feel conceptually loaded for you?

JL : Yes, definitely.

Casting is a big one for me because it deals so directly with transformation.

You’re taking something fluid, hot, and unstable and forcing it into relation with a system of containment. It’s a process built around timing, pressure, gravity, and release, so it already holds a lot of the questions I care about.

Mechanical connections also feel important. I’m drawn to joints, fasteners, hooks, channels, and systems that visibly hold things together. I like when a connection feels honest and specific, when it shows how forces are being transferred or resisted. Welding matters to me too, but I’m often most interested in moments where parts are connected without being fully fused, where the relationship between elements stays more conditional or tense.


MW : How has your relationship to metal as a material changed the kinds of questions you’re asking in the work?

JL : Working with metal has made the work more physical and less image-based. It’s pushed me to think less about composing a form and more about setting up relationships between force, structure, and behavior.

It’s also made me more aware of time.

Not just in the sense of labor, but in the way processes unfold: heating, pouring, cooling, oxidizing, failing, holding.

Metal has shifted my attention toward cause and effect. The work has become less about representing an idea and more about building conditions where something can happen and be recorded.

MW : What does your current workspace look like, and what is essential for you to have in your studio?

JL : My workspace is split across a few places right now. A lot of the heavier fabrication and casting happens through the shops I have access to through my teaching and shop work.

My personal studio is more limited, though I’m slowly building up the tools and equipment I need to make more happen on my own terms. I have a wax-working room, and I’ve got a small furnace setup that I can use outdoors, so parts of the process are starting to become more accessible.

What feels most essential in my studio is having my own work around me. I need to be able to sit with it, study it, and see how pieces relate across time. That’s where a lot of understanding comes from for me.

MW : What questions are you currently wrestling with in the studio that don’t yet have a visual form?

JL : I’ve been thinking a lot about how pieces function together as a group, especially in the context of a solo exhibition. I’m interested in what happens when the works start to speak to each other more directly, not just as individual objects, but as parts of a larger system or environment.

I’ve also been thinking about how the work operates outdoors, and how actual weathering affects different metals over time. That feels important to me because so much of the work is already about exposure, pressure, and material response. I’m interested in what happens when those conditions continue beyond the studio and become part of the piece’s life.

I’m always questioning when to stop.

A lot of the work comes down to how far I should stretch my control, how many layers of structure I want to build in, and when that structure starts to work against the thing I’m actually trying to hold onto.