Sculptor James Cherry’s always playful and sometimes strange lamps set New York's Tiwa Gallery aglow

The Los Angeles–based artist James Cherry is a keen observer of his surroundings. The shapes, structures, and materials he encounters—the silhouette of a starfish, a skyscraper’s form, spindly twigs, local produce, and even dust—often end up in his abstract, sculptural lamps. In fact, the name of his solo show, open at New York’s Tiwa Gallery from 12 December 2024, ‘From Pollen,’ is taken from his fascination with microscopic particles. 'I love the idea of turning this dust around us into something that's structural and holds form,' he says while explaining how he made the textured, papier-mâché armature of a three-foot-tall floor lamp in the exhibition.

‘From Pollen’ is composed of twenty five lamps Cherry created this year during a residency at Salmon Creek Farm, a former Northern California commune built in the 1970s turned creative retreat, and a stint in a temporary studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn. While the coastal redwood forests of the former and industrial environs of the latter have little in common, both influences have converged in objects that are striking and a little bit mysterious, with hints of the natural and man-made worlds within them.

'From Pollen' by James Cherry at Tiwa Gallery

'A lot of this work was inspired by sitting with myself, being alone, and cozying up to that sort of guttural inner self,' Cherry says. At his normal studio in Los Angeles, Cherry often makes his sculptures in dialogue with friends, bouncing ideas off them and sometimes incorporating their feedback. But at Salmon Creek, he had his own cabin and was working mostly in solitude. 'It was simultaneously extremely isolating and so refreshing,' he says of the experience.

Like most of the artists who exhibit at Tiwa, Cherry is obsessive about the materials he uses. In his case, resin, which takes on an organic sensibility in his hands. He typically makes an armature, tightly stretches nylon around it, then coats the material with epoxy resin until it reaches the opacity he desires. Sometimes, he’ll keep the armature inside the lamp, so that the structure creates shadows within, or he’ll remove it so that it appears to be a solid form. 'All of my work is born out of play and seeing what sticks,' Cherry says.

The lamps in ‘From Pollen’—a mixture of table lamps, floor lamps, chandeliers, and pendants— have irregular shapes and textures to them. These works are a departure for Cherry, who is usually drawn to clean, crisp forms. He made the armatures from branches he found around Salmon Creek Farm and was drawn to the silhouettes of abalone shells, starfish, and sea urchins he saw on the beach nearby. 'This was me challenging myself and seeing if I could accomplish something that wants to be more untamed,' he says. 'I wanted to shock myself and see something and say, what is that?' Meanwhile, fruits and vegetables from the gardens at Salmon Creek Farm also made their way into the collection by way of thinly sliced persimmons, apples, and cucumber that comprise book-like wall sconces.

While some of the lamps have biomorphic qualities—a bit like Eva Hesse draped one of her material experiments over a Louise Bourgeois sculpture—others read more industrial, owing to finishing up the collection in New York. The cityscape is reflected in tower-like forms, armatures fabricated from metal dowels, fabric that has hints of a pattern lightly sketched onto it. Cherry works with found materials and scraps, which may have hints of their past lives on them. The array of references, playfulness, and “wild constructions” that are present in Cherry’s newest lamps is part of the reason why Alex Tieghi-Walker, the founder of Tiwa Gallery, was interested in exhibiting this body of work.

'A lot of people who go to Salmon Creek Farm are from cities or urban environments and find the creativity that place offers or encourages really exciting,' says Tieghi-Walker, who has also spent time at the retreat and made friends and found artistic collaborators there. 'That's why I was really fascinated by James’s time there. I’ve been trying to think of ways for Salmon Creek to exist in this city and how to connect Northern California to New York a bit more and how to bring some of the incredible energy that’s been manifested out there over here.'

Fortunately for us, ‘From Pollen’ invites visitors to the gallery into that energy, offering a moment of visual wonder not unlike what Cherry experienced during his residency.

‘From Pollen’ is on view from 12 December until 18 January, 2025 at Tiwa Gallery, 86 Walker Street, New York, NY. tiwa-select.com