THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 TAG: 9411300028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 169 lines
THE IVY VINES, thick and lush, climb the brick wall and tumble over the top, part way down the other side.
But wait! The beautiful vines are made of brick, the same brick as the wall. Holy Toledo, the vines are part of the wall.
Seeing the vines, any human with an ounce of curiosity exclaims, ``How did they do that?''
Very well, thank you.
The artist is Sue Landerman, 57, of Portsmouth, former saleswoman, rising star in the recently resurrected art of brick sculpture. Her motto is ``Breathing life into brick.''
She can do family portraits in brick bas-relief, or seascapes with foam, or flowers or birds or the family dog or abstract art or. . . if she can see it in her mind's eye, she can carve it in brick. And she has an active mind's eye. ``I won't live long enough,'' she said, ``to do every piece I have imagined.''
West Point recently commissioned her to do the West Point seal on a wall there. She did a large wall for Busch Gardens. Her work appears in several states above fireplaces, on walls, wrapped around brick mailboxes. She was the only artist invited last summer to the World Ceramic Congress in Florence, Italy. Several national builders' magazines have featured her work.
This is how she does it.
For each sculpture, she drives her van to the factory making the brick she'll be using. She's gone as far as Nebraska to work.
She stacks freshly cut wet bricks into a wall at the factory. The unfired bricks, she said, are about the consistency of hard-frozen ice cream - softer than stone but no piece of cake.
She etches a design in the brick with a stylus. She has no plan on paper, just in her head.
Using all manner of knives and carving tools, she begins to remove clay around the etching till the statue emerges.
Like stone sculpting, which Landerman also does, brick sculpting is a take-away art. A piece, once removed, cannot be put back. Its removal may be regretted but not reversed.
After Landerman has finished carving a brick sculpture, she does something simple but crucial: She numbers the bricks.
Then the wall is disassembled. The bricks are dried several days, then fired like any other bricks, at about 2000 degrees, for about 30 hours.
Later, a brick mason will reassemble the sculpture by the number, under her guidance, at the buyer's location. Landerman may stain and carve the mortar, so the natural flow of the sculpture's lines are unbroken, so the viewer exclaims, ``How did they do that?''
BRICK SCULPTING DATES TO BABYLONIAN times but was a dead art most of this century, said Norman Farley, marketing director for the Brick Institute of America in Reston, Va., the brick manufacturers trade organization.
``It was almost nonexistent,'' he said, ``before the Anatole Hotel was built in Dallas about a dozen years ago.'' The hotel contains seven large brick sculptures, showing fruit and all manner of items no one had seen done in brick for decades.
Recognizing that brick sculpture uses brick walls, Farley and the brick institute began promoting the art. About 7 billion bricks are manufactured each year in America, but the brick institute figures you can never have too many.
The brick institute keeps a list of accomplished brick sculptors in the country, and architects refer to it. Landerman is one of 36 names on the list. The two closest brick sculptors besides her are in North Carolina, and one lives near the Virginia-West Virginia line.
Landerman, who has lived in Portsmouth most of her life, came late to brick sculpture.
She had always been creative. ``I tried everything,'' she said, ``from coat hanger baskets to antiquing furniture.'' She painted. She wrote poetry. She tried photography.
Six years ago, following the death of a daughter, she discovered and took solace in stone sculpture. ``I picked up the hammer and chisel,'' she said, ``and just went bananas.'' Under the tutelage of noted local sculptor Marvin Goldfarb, she exhibited in art galleries and sold some pieces, though nowhere near enough to make a living.
Three years ago, her day job was pitching memberships in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. At a Portsmouth brick company, the manager remembered seeing her and her work at an art show. He showed her a photograph of brick sculpture. She eyed it the way lost travelers in the desert eye water.
One week later she drove almost two hours to the Brick & Tile Corporation of Lawrenceville, Va., where she picked up a load of bricks.
A week after that, she displayed her first brick sculpture in Richmond at a state convention of architects.
A week after that, she announced to the world and herself that she was a brick sculptor full time. She quit her day job.
``I had looked at everything like it was hard,'' she said. ``This is easy for me, even though it is so physical.''
With brick clay, she could work fast. ``With stone,'' she said, ``you work for hours to get petals fluted properly and thin. With a brick, you can do a leaf in a matter of minutes instead of hours. You can do more large-paying jobs.''
The going rate for a brick sculptor is $75 a square foot. For a 4-by-6 foot sculpture, she makes about $1,800, and the bricks and installation cost the buyer about $500 - $2,300 altogether. ``That's cheap,'' she said, ``for a piece of art 4 by 6 feet.''
She was blessed with a stone sculptor's eye and the perfect background for a self-supporting artist: 15 years in sales.
She said, ``You know the old sales saying, `Make it happen'? That's me. If there's something I want, I get it. Excuses, are just excuses. I have tried them all.
``I had to get out there and ding-dong everybody.'' (She doesn't telephone people; she ding-dongs them.)
Whenever she creates a piece, she photographs it and uses the photograph as a postcard.
``Off it goes,'' she said, ``to architects, to everybody in the whole free world.''
She estimates she has mailed more than 10,000 such postcards in three years. Her photograph-developing bill last year was $3,300, she said.
To build clientele, she demonstrates her craft wherever architects or builders gather. With brick clay, she can do a small piece in a day.
``I had to blow my own horn big time,'' she recalled.
``She is certainly one of the most energetic and promotion-minded of all the brick sculptors I've come across,'' said Farley, the brick institute marketing director. ``The thing that makes her stand out more than anybody else is she has done a better job of marketing herself.''
``When spring comes, honey,'' said Landerman, ``I am jamming.'' That's when the most homes are being built, but she is staying busy year round, earning a better living than she ever did in sales. ``This past year,'' she said, ``I have been knocking them dead.''
One architect who uses her work is Richard Rivin with LIFE Inc. in Chesapeake.
``She is a sculptress,'' he said, ``and she becomes part of every project. She leaves a little bit of herself in every project, which is what makes her work so special.''
One of her favorite local brick masons is Ken Channell of Chesapeake. ``She's real fussy,'' he said. ``She wants her work to be perfect, and she near-about gets that.''
A veteran of 40 years of bricklaying, he had never heard of brick sculpture until several years ago. ``It's really coming on,'' he said. ``People are looking at it now.''
``On large projects,'' Landerman said, ``I have worked up to 16 hours a day. I sleep in the van at the factory. I can't tell you how many nights I have spent at factories. If I wake up in the night, I work some more. It's a passion, once you start. People look a lifetime and never find their niche. I am fortunate I found mine late in life.''
While putting in vine-covered steps for a doctor in Norfolk, she said, it suddenly dawned on her that one of her greatest pleasures as a girl 6 or 7 years old was painting pictures on brick steps with water, using a watercolor brush.
A part of her wishes she had discovered brick sculpture when she was 25 years younger, but she said, ``I wasn't smart enough then. You have got to get smart. It takes a lot of pain.''
The deepest pain, which she has attempted to turn into beauty, came six years ago, when her daughter, Trina, died.
``She was too fragile for this world,'' Landerman said, ``and she made a decision it was too hard for her. The Chinese would say it was an honorable thing she did, but they are Chinese; I am not. It was a terrible loss. She is really an inspiration in my work. Somewhere in every piece I do is a butterfly, and that's Trina.'' MEMO: For more information about brick sculpture, call Landerman at 397-9110.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
Six years ago, after the death of her daughter, Sue Landerman of
Portsmouth took solace in stone sculpture. Her motto is ``Breathing
life into brick.''
Staff photo by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
One of the many stone sculptures Sue Landerman has created over
eight years.
by CNB