
DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9711040529

SECTION: HOME                    PAGE: G1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  126 lines

BRICK SCULPTOR FROM PORTSMOUTH TO BE SHOWN ON HGTV

SEVEN HAMPTON ROADS homes adorned with brick sculpture by Portsmouth resident Sue Landerman will be featured on Home & Garden Television this week.

The homes were filmed last spring, when a crew from the cable channel came to Virginia to watch Landerman work. They followed her from carving unfired brick at Lawrenceville Brick and Tile Co. to the installation of the finished works of art.

``I was flabbergasted when the producer called and asked if they could do this,'' Landerman said. ``Of course, I said, `Sure.' Then I asked how they knew about me.''

As it turned out, the producer had been in Houston at the spring conference of the National Association of Home Builders. Landerman was invited to participate in the seminars and exhibits sponsored by the Brick Institute of America. There, the producer saw her demonstrating her procedure.

``They did a good film for television,'' Landerman said.

The show presents a variety of ideas, she said, and really zooms in on things people are doing for their homes.

Brick sculpture is not a new idea. It was around more than 3,000 years ago, and examples of carved brick survive from the early civilizations of China, Egypt and the Middle East, Landerman noted.

``Brick sculpture is the key to catching the vertical ribbons of brick and adding dimension to the grandeur of masonry units, the mainstay of the past,'' she said.

Picking up a favorite quote from William Shakespeare, she added, ``and the bricks are alive this day to testify it.''

In recent times, the notion of using carved bricks was revived by architects and builders who used them for gates on subdivisions and corporate entrances.

``I knew when I started brickwork that all others doing it were doing commercial work,'' said Landerman, who had been painting and sculpting for years but was over 50 when she discovered bricks seven years ago.

``I wasn't 25 with time to spare, so I knew I needed a better mousetrap if I was going to be successful as I needed to be,'' she said. ``I knew I needed to do the home-building market.''

It has paid off, and it has given her some artistic freedom.

``Most people give me an idea of what they want, and then they let me do it,'' she said.

The TV show will include a variety of uses of sculptured brick in private homes: garden walls, sculptures, indoor fireplace surrounds, wall murals, piers on porches, fountains, outdoor fireplaces, stair risers, doorway head panels, perimeter window trim, patio walls and columns, crests on chimneys.

Landerman has sculpted brick for new homes and for old homes.

``The possibilities are unending,'' she says.

Recently she has been thinking about ``the bathroom of the future.''

Using glazed brick, she will create a tub surround with a floral design, flowers around the spouts, a vanity with a similar design, a column for the wall in high relief.

``You could have a basin that is a large lotus blossom,'' Landerman said. ``I just did it in my mind.''

Landerman even has developed ``kits'' for people who do not want to pay for original designs. They include brick fireplace surrounds and kitchen tiles and keystones for arches. Batchelder and Collins in Norfolk is a distributor.

Recently, she came up with an acrylic process that can be imposed on a masonry surface, a less expensive alternative to carved brick.

``It won't last 4,000 years like the brick, maybe just 100 years!'' she said.

But for all her innovations, Landerman's heart is in the creative work she does for individuals who want their bricks made into art or who want her to adorn their homes with stone.

``I just got back from New York, where I picked up some wonderful translucent alabaster,'' she said. ``It's for a surround for a Roman tub with water spouting from one bouquet to the next in a $6 million home in Pittsburgh.''

Brick sculpture costs about $150 a square foot for the brick, the carving and the firing. Shipping and installation are additional.

Landerman travels across the country to create her eye-stopping home decorations, but many of them are in Hampton Roads, as the TV film will show.

She's very proud of the work she has done for a number of institutions, including a brick sculpture of the the U.S. Military Academy seal installed last year at the West Point, N.Y., garrison commander headquarters entrance.

``I don't know how I was chosen for that commission, but I was very honored to do it,'' she said. ``I felt like I was on hallowed ground.''

A piece she has been working on recently to be installed at Taylor Farms, a Virginia Beach horse farm, will be the head of a life-size quarter horse on the exterior of the building and a plumed tail with one foot up on the interior.

To date, Landerman has created about 172 brick sculptures and more than 200 stone pieces.

``I got into this later in life than most people, but I never looked back,'' she said. ``And it's been wonderful.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Sue Landerman's brick sculptures throughout Hampton Roads can be

seen on HGTV this week.

Photo

Courtesy of SUE LANDERMAN

Dr. and Mrs. Louis Jordan's Virginia Beach home has Sue Landerman's

brick sculpture on the front steps, the lamppost and the fireplace.

Graphic

SHOW TIMES

The Sue Landerman film will be shown on Home & Garden Television

(Channel 27 on Cox Cable and Channel 51 in Chesapeake) at these