Mike Helbing and Roxane Legenstein

Catalog of exhibition at UIMA of Mike Helbing and Roxane Legenstein, two contemporary Chicago artists working with metals in innovative ways. Mike Helbing’s uses many found elements for his sculptures, so many of his pieces are additive and the first step in his sculptural process is collecting materials. After he finds a piece of metal of exactly the right shape and size, he balances or plays off one shape against another as he builds his structures. While line works to describe and mark out the boundaries of volumes and activate space around Mike Helbing’s sculptures, line is Roxane Legenstein’s protean element, it changes from a formal element capturing our attention with its simplicity, traveling through the black ground.Legenstein keeps color to a minimum, using just copper, gold, silver and iron filings on vinyl, a process she originated herself, inspired by the black sand she encountered on Lake Michigan’s eastern beaches.