Sculptor Turry Lindstrom creates contorted fanciful metal dreams
This month, one of Chattanooga’s best and brightest young sculptors is moving away to pursue his career in Los Angeles, and we will miss him.
Turry Lindstrom’s H.R. Giger-esque non-objective sculptures are visions of alien forms, conceived by the unconscious. The contorted metal of these haunting works writhes and dances like robotic creatures from sci-fi movies, inhabiting their bases with an uncanny balance.
Turry was born and raised into art by his father, portrait artist Bart Lindstrom. “We would always go to museums—I have been to over 50 museums during my childhood,” he says, reminiscing about his youth and when his father would travel around the country painting family portraits. “I’ve grown up absorbing and being saturated by art. You could say art is in my genes because my father is an artist.”
His sister followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming a portrait artist as well and thus intimidating Turry by his family’s creative prowess.
“I grew up feeling like I was never good at drawing, like I could never do what they did.” Turry says. “They could do such great imagery, and I didn’t feel like I had a natural knack for it.”
He did, however, have an eye for it—a subtle understanding of art.
“My sister has always loved my opinions about her art,” he explains. “She would ask me about it, and I would look at it, and give her an answer, and I would see her adjust to my answer.”
He was surprised by her reactions, which served to inspire him. Her words of encouragement gave him confidence. She told him that had more creativity in one of his fingertips than she had in her whole body, but he just didn’t know it yet.
He didn’t find a medium that he was comfortable with until his early twenties, when he started a career working on hydro turbines inside of dams, giving him his introduction to metalworking.
“We would have to re-shape the big fins where all of the water flows through the metal tunnels for the turbines to spin,” Turry reminisces. “That is where I learned how to shape, mold, and really understand the element of metal. After a few years of doing that, I remember walking up to a huge metal sculpture in a park, and I looked at it and was able to figure out exactly how they did it.”
He was incredulous. “That’s all you did?” he thought to himself. He felt a stirring in his heart, and realized that if he had a chance to do sculpture, he would be good at it. “I could just feel it,” he explains. “I just understood it, I could see how they created it—as opposed to when I’m looking at somebody’s paintings, and I look in close, and see a hundred tiny strokes that create a shadow area—I can’t even understand how to do that.”
When Turry saw metal sculptures, he could dissect them, and understand them. That was his first bit of “seeing it.” He became frustrated with working day jobs, and decided to be a metal artist. He built up the courage to ask his stepfather Tony Roland, a patron of the arts, for some help.
Tony set him up with equipment, materials, and helped him to turn his garage into a studio, giving him the push to get into sculptural metal working.
That became a deep diving into himself, to figure out what it is to be an artist—to find the boldness to create something, and call it his own.
“I remembered this pattern that I used to draw as a little kid. I could never draw, but if I drew this pattern, it would make cool shapes and designs,” he says. “I drew this pattern on the metal, and cut it out, and I noticed that the metal stayed together no matter how I drew it.”
That pattern became the basis for his sculptural style, which is as distinctive as it is relatable. As his style started to grow, he began to identify with Pollock and Basquiat, to let himself go and allow his unconscious to take over.
“Every time I did that, it had a feel of balance to it,” Turry elaborates. “Let it go, feel it, balance, feel the flow.”
In a few short weeks, Turry is moving out west to sculpt full time, making a new body of work that is designed to hang on walls. “I never want to feel like I have arrived somewhere in my work,” he says. “I want to keep growing, ebbing and flowing, and see how far my creativity can take me.”