By Phoebe Dey

To say Ryan McCourt and Andrew French are into heavy metal would not be an exaggeration.

The pair recently finished graduate studies in the university’s fine arts program. Both sculptors work mainly with steel and create the type of pieces that just won’t fit into a briefcase. But that’s where the similarities end.

Most of McCourt’s sculptures take on a weathered, bronze tone with refined lines and curves. His detail and craftsmanship often give the pieces a soft look, and it can be surprising to learn they are made out of steel.

They range in size from hand-held abstract works to 675-kilogram paradigms of musical instruments and furniture.

“Some don’t refer to anything other than what your imagination brings to it,” said McCourt. “My only philosophy is that I subscribe to the idea it’s quality that’s important, and that what you are making is a visual thing. If someone doesn’t think it’s a piano–that’s okay. I just want them to enjoy it.”

When McCourt was in his second year of anthropology, he took a fine arts class just to fil his timetable. Now he hopes to make a living at it.

McCourt said naming a favorite piece is like asking a mother to name her favorite child. But spectators picked a clear-cut winner at the opening reception. “Pine,” the only piece o the collection sold so far, drew rave reviews from viewers, said McCourt.

People were lumbering on the sleek, contemporary, ash-colored chaise-lounge and caressed its smooth surface.

How McCourt comes up with his pieces remains a mystery to him.

“Part of me is deciding I want to make a thing look like a throne or a piano, and part is finding a great piece of material in the scrap yard and going from there,” he said.

French echoes those comments.

“It’s not as simple as writing down a shopping list,” said French. “Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of a sculpture and think I would like a part to go in that area so I’ll look for something specific but will stumble upon something entirely different.”

French describes his pieces as “more industrial and slightly bolder” than McCourt’s, works which are “more intimate” than his own. French’s pieces mark a transition through his learning process, whereas it is difficult to detect an emotional shift in McCourt’s sculptures.

An abstract, colorful piece, “Still Life,” is one of French’s latest works.

“It grew quickly and boisterously,” he said. “As I went along I got more involved with the intimacy of it. When I look at it, it actually surprises me, and I find it hard to believe I made it. It’s almost like I don’t remember doing it. It was much more spontaneous than usual.”

Several of his works portray different types of “human” containers such as a cage, altar and an actual bathtub. “I was interested in the way it cradles the person,” he said.

He does have a favorite piece: a 3,600-kilogram earthy structure called “Pillar” for its resemblance to a Greek column.

“It’s the most resolved of my work,” he said. “So many of the other pieces I consider a stepping stone.”

French will take his new-found knowledge home to England when he returns in just about a month. Three years after graduating from the Kent Institute of Art and Design in England in 1994, he arrived in Alberta on a Study Abroad Studentship.

Since he can’t take his massive sculptures back to England, he hopes they’ll find homes in Edmonton.

“Perhaps one will be displayed on the university campus. If the others aren’t sold, they will be put in storage or discarded,” he said. “But I’m please in the way things have developed.”

And to think it all started with some heavy metal.