If you have been to Eataly at NorthPark Center recently, you may have noticed a new work of art installed as you descend from the second level into the Caffè Lavazza seating area. Two metal sculptures dance with each other, speaking a language that is at once familiar without a need for reply. This new artwork by Nathan Carter, Due Ellissi Garden Floral & Formation Sound & Color, is part of Eataly Dallas’ Patronage of the Arts theme.
The commissioned artwork echoes Eataly’s mission: to gather under one roof high-quality food at sustainable and reasonable prices for all, celebrate Italian biodiversity, and create an informal, natural, and simple place to eat, shop, and learn. However, the artist was not born in Italy as one may assume. In fact, Nathan Carter is a Dallas native living in Brooklyn, New York. The suspended sculpture presents the opportunity for shoppers to stop and look, slow down, and investigate the work and the Dallas native behind it.
For the sculpture, Carter used a repurposed radar dish blown off the roof in a storm that he later reassembled. He then added several abstract hand-cut forms made of brass and painted those with colors that might pull something out of the viewer. In the work, pink lines are made of painted welded steel channel. Shapes made of brass cut by hand and hung by wire, are painted on both sides.
PATRON spoke with Carter about his process, his memories of Dallas, and how his environment shapes his work.
PATRON (P): You’ve once described your drawings as stories, and that you’re making up a narrative as you go along. How does this process relate to your sculptures?
Nathan Carter (NC): When I was a child, I was involved with world-building, always about making up stories with what I drew or made. So often it was combining different materials, toys, bits of string, wood, coins, and making worlds out of them and making up stories about those places.
When I’m making something, I am imagining that the object I’m making has a use, a purpose. With this sculpture (Due Ellissi Reflector Garden Floral & Formation Sound & Color, on display at Eataly Dallas), it’s transmitting or receiving music and messages.
P: Are you a storyteller first and an artist second, or are those processes even separate to you?
NC: I have always gravitated towards art forms that tell stories. I love being entertained and looking at photographs, films, even listening to music is an enormous part of my working process. It’s important to me to tell stories. Making things with my hands and transforming materials in such a way that it expresses a story is my goal.
P: As a multi-media artist is there a certain medium that you relate to most?
NC: There’s an attitude about the way that I work where the materials I use can never feel precious so that I feel free to transform them, use them, and have my way with them. Any material that can give me that is what I gravitate toward. I work with lots of different materials; there’s no hierarchy.
P: You have often used found objects and materials that are considered craft (like manilla paper). Is there a personal value to these objects and materials?
NC: In the Northeast, when we have a long winter with a lot of snow, there are all of these objects that I call “street treasures,” or “pocket shrapnel” that I find after the snow has receded. I take these back to my studio and they’re like gems that I find value in. There’s something about found materials that I gravitate towards.
P: As a Dallas Native, do you have any memories of NorthPark Center? If so, how does it now feel to have your work as part of the wonderful collection at NorthPark and Eataly in particular?
NC: In 2010, I got a tour of NorthPark Center from Nancy Nasher, and while I was on the tour it became clear to me that I was inside a midcentury modern moment, one of the first American shopping malls. It reminded me of what it’s like to visit the big American automotive campuses in Detroit. The mix of high-end shopping and museum treatment of sculptures and art is something that I feel can only exist in Texas. After that visit, it’s exciting to be included in the collection at NorthPark Center.
P: How does your environment influence your work? Is there a part of Texas or Dallas that you embed into your work?
NC: In 2018, I made and exhibited a hand-operated puppet film at the Nasher Sculpture Center. The title of the film was called The Dramastics are Loud and the film starts with a group of four punk-rock women who start a band and they attend the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Texas. Showing that film in Dallas and speaking with students at that high school meant a lot to me.
We have attached the video from the Nasher Sculpture Center where Carter addresses Booker T. Washington students on his life, career, and The Dramastics here.