The unifying theme in sculptor and Milwaukee native Richard Edelman’s life can be summed up in one word: metal.
“My dad was part owner of a scrap business, I worked in the scrap industry at several different companies when I was younger and then I got into the generalized steel business,” he said. “So I spent my whole life around scrap yards, steel mills, foundries and shipyards.”
Now retired from a 20-plus year career in the metal trading business that involved a daily commute to the Chicago suburbs, he is focusing on his creative pursuits. In addition to his sculpture, Edelman maintains a blog and rarely goes anywhere without a sketchbook.
His sculptures range in size from small enough to fit on a tabletop to bigger than a bull elephant. Some of that large-scale work is outside of local Jewish community buildings.
“Shofar,” a stainless-steel shofar with hand-tooled markings approximately 12 feet long, is in front of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills. Outside of Congregation Shalom in Fox Point stands “Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire.”
And this past August, Chai Point Senior Living in Milwaukee dedicated “To Life,” commissioned in honor of its 18th anniversary.
In an interview with The Chronicle shortly after the sculpture was dedicated, Edelman talked about the process of bringing a commissioned piece from conception to completion.
Upon leaving his initial meeting at Chai Point, Edelman told the committee with which he was meeting three things. One was where the final sculpture would be placed; another was that he wanted to use chai, the Hebrew word for life that also has the numerical value 18 in Jewish numerology.
The third was that he would create a model and, upon completion, present it. If acceptable, he would move forward with a full-scale piece. If not, he would return to the drawing board.
“I only had one idea from the beginning,” he said. “I wanted to use the chai, which is traditional, and to use a Hebrew character in a Jewish work of art.”
Pondering the symbol through the prisms of its meaning and its appearance that combined old and new, he realized something important.
“The chai symbol looked like part of a DNA molecule,” he said. “And DNA is the molecule of life.”
Next was figuring out how to transform that realization into something tangible and beautiful. His original idea — using 18 chai symbols to create a double helix — didn’t work.
But the idea did. The final sculpture is a double helix comprised of 14 chai words.
“So the whole piece is constructed out of that design unit,” Edelman said. “The old is the Hebrew characters and the new is the material, which is stainless steel, a very contemporary material, and the molecule and concept of the molecule having to do with life.”
But Edelman’s commitment to welding old and new was not confined to materials and outcome. The way he chose to bring his creation to life was — in a word — biblical.
He credits that decision, in part, to local Jewish educator Jody Hirsh, who invited Edelman to be part of the Milwaukee Jewish Artists’ Laboratory, a project Hirsch started in collaboration with the Covenant Foundation.
Edelman and 13 other Jewish artists spent a year engaging in Torah study, and examining and creating works around the theme of wandering. This past June, the artists exhibited their works at the Jewish Community Center.
Edelman created bronze sculptures around the story of “The Binding of Isaac.” That process of creating, he said, was totally different.
“When you make things out of bronze, you don’t heat it up and pound. You make it out of clay and plaster and model it. Then you go to a foundry and make a mold and they heat it up and pour it,” he said.
The process he used to create “To Life” was very different.
“It’s all blacksmithing, a very ancient method of metalworking,” he said. “The only tools used were a cutting torch, heating torch, and hammer and tongs. So the material was heated to red-hot and beaten and shaped, which is the only metalworking method that’s mentioned in the Torah.”
Edelman cited the Bible verse about beating spears into ploughshares and swords into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). The biblical metalworkers heated the swords and spears and pounded on them until they became something new; in creating “To Life,” Edelman consciously tried to walk in their footsteps.
It is also likely that those ancient metalworkers made multiple attempts to get their finished works to match the visions of what they were aiming for in their minds. Edelman certainly did, as he strove to create a work of art that realized his vision in terms of height, scale and width.
He also developed a unique method to infuse the coloration in the sculpture, which includes colors one does not generally associate with stainless steel. There is warm copper, silver that shoots reflective flares of light when the sun hits it, hammered, matte-finished silver that seems to absorb light and other colors too, depending on the time of day and mood of the sky.
Edelman achieved this effect by heating the metal to specific temperatures and blowing gases at the material in order to change the chemistry of the metal to a certain depth. In practical terms, what it means is that, unlike statues in which metal eventually changes color, the patina of “To Life” is impervious to weather and time.
Life, however, does change over time, something Edelman experienced in some unexpected ways between his first meeting with Chai Point officials and the sculpture’s August dedication. For one thing, Edelman had never spent significant time in a community like Chai Point.
“My whole engagement there was really amazing, meeting people and hearing their ideas about art and having them there when the piece was installed,” he said. “It was kind of a warm summer, so people would sit outside in their chairs watching me.”
Winter has come. The residents are spending more time indoors. Edelman, however, is still making regular visits to Chai Point. But it’s not to see the sculpture, which is placed and lit so that at night, its shadow against the building reflects a large double helix constructed of Chai symbols.
He goes there to visit his mother-in-law, Doris, who moved in shortly before “To Life” was installed.
Edelman’s father, Sam, was part owner of Miller Compressing Company.
Although active in the anti-war and underground press movements during his college years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Edelman also double-majored in engineering and philosophy.
In addition to journalism, he wrote poetry. He married, and he and Nina — the first librarian at the Milwaukee Jewish Day School — raised their four now-grown children in Fox Point.
To see “To Life” and other work by Richard Edelman, visit his web site at www.edelmansculpture.com
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
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