ROGER WAYNE ASAY

EARLY WORK

Asay graduated with an MA from UC Berkeley and began his artistic career focused on hard-edge stripe paintings, but quickly moved on to his greater passion of working with 3-dimensional form creating a multitude of work between 1975 and 1984 while living in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.

Discovering the virtues of rawhide as an art medium, Asay developed a unique style of dynamic, visceral forms that hang or stand in poised balance.  Cut and stitched into shape while the rawhide was wet and pliant, the forms were then “inflated” with tamped sand until the rawhide dried and hardened at which point the sand was removed.   The hand stitching that joins the rawhide shapes together creates linear patterns on the surface of the sculpture that complement and contrast with the convex sculptural forms.   Arranged in groups, these forms create a visual dialogue among the parts, and a positive-negative interaction with the surrounding space.

Some of Asay’s sculptures have included wood pole constructions.  As he took interest in mortise-and-tenon joining methods his work moved into assembled sculpture using just sanded poles and sticks.  First came ladder-like leaning forms, then a number of free-standing poles with shapes attached, followed by complicated structures with multiple poles and sticks attached to walls or panels.  As with the rawhide sculptures, the focus is on the natural material as the subject of the artwork.  In Asay’s wood sculpture, carefully selected curving or undulating sticks interact with and through space creating a concert of lines.

Golden Gate Youth Camp, Golden, Colorado, Outdoor site-specific wood sculpture, 1981
U.S. National Parks Service, Rawhide sculpture, permanent traveling exhibit, 1976