Vince Skelly grew up in Claremont, California — at the very eastern edge of Los Angeles — and it’s where the artist lives and works today. It’s an unusual suburb — on the surface it’s quintessentially American, with broad avenues and boulevards lined with lush trees and garlanded by flowers, and homes hewn from local stone. “Claremont is the last town in LA before you get into the Inland Empire”, he says … “the place has been a huge influence on who I am and the work I make…”
The city has a creative, dynamic layer that belies this outward appearance of suburbia. It has an incredibly rich heritage in mid-century design and has long been a magnet for all manner of artists, from painters and sculptors to woodworkers and ceramicists. It was that heritage which drew Vince’s parents, who met at art school and later worked as art teachers, to Claremont and it would go on to have a huge influence on Vince’s artistic career.
As a child he was never forced to create but there were always art supplies lying around and with no mobile phones or endless tv watching options, Vince and his siblings would entertain themselves by painting and drawing, and building tree houses and forts outside, kickstarting a love of working with his hands and using natural materials.
Vince lives in a simple, beautiful mid-century modern house built in 1949 nestled among the more rustic ‘craftsman’ houses at the edge of a quiet cul-de-sac — and that austere, straight-lined aesthetic somehow gels perfectly with the primitive structures he creates in his artistic practice. It’s a contradiction that is dynamic and intuitive and one he likens to the synergy between the classic cartoons The Flintstones and The Jetsons made by Hanna-Barbera, which depict two very different eras but share a complementary design ethos.
“I've always been fascinated with the aesthetic of The Flintstones and The Jetsons,” he says. “And they once made an episode where the two shows actually crossed over, in a time machine. It was the perfect mash up of these two styles. Big stone structures but with slick modern space age design. I'm very much influenced by mid-century design, but in a way that a caveman would have made it.”
Vince is not the type of person you immediately associate with chainsaws — but this, he says, is the most important, enjoyable aspect of the process. In the heat of the Californian sun amid the chainsaw hum, he carves out these gargantuan, organic shapes that seem to find a deep psychic resonance with whoever encounters them. “I feel like I’m sketching with the chainsaw, just making these broad strokes, he says… ”I can feel the vibration and the wood is spitting out all these shavings... it’s actually really meditative…”
He makes most of his work from salvaged timber — he has his favorite types of wood, especially White Oak “as the grain is really beautiful” — but he usually works with whatever shows up on his radar — from fallen trees destroyed in storms, to random lumps of wood discarded on local highways. There is something pleasingly organic about this practice. He doesn’t shout about this aspect of the work, though does concede that one of his favorite things about working with wood is that it's a natural, sustainable resource.
Sculpting in wood, Vince makes beautifully considered, textured work that draws influence from ancient dolmens and henge-like figures, most notably Stonehenge, which made a profound impression on him. “There's something powerful about those simple shapes,” says Vince. “Triangles, pyramids, squares, circles…they're the basic building blocks of life and they’ve been evident in human civilization for thousands of years, just reoccurring through time.”
The pieces Vince produces are totemic in the true sense of the word — they stand for something and are infused with meaning in a way that is both natural and profound. These simple forms, made from natural materials are designed to suffer the slings and arrows of time, while gaining texture and patina along the way.