The magical combination of the aesthetics and the engineering reflect the duality of Will Clift’s training and interests. Clift spent his undergraduate and graduate years at Stanford in multi-disciplinary studies incorporating Philosophy, Mechanical Engineering, Symbolic Systems and Psychology. The recent returning to his native Santa Fe, has added that ingredient of tranquility to his work while his endless quest for new materials, his ventures into larger structures incorporating more complex forms infuses his sculpture with continued new dynamics.

In looking at any Clift sculpture, one immediately perceives the artist’s identification with, as well as his evolution from, two great 20th-century American artists. Alexander Calder and George Rickey were both similarly trained in physics and engineering and both have long been recognized as masters of sculptural innovation in their use of materials, their revolutionary conceptualizations of space and movement, and their lyrical aesthetic. Similar to these artistic predecessors, Clift is always searching for unconventional materials, using carbon fiber composites, as well as pigments and alloys developed for aerospace construction and automotive industries that enable him to fabricate his 21st-century designs

In my sculptures I explore the line between order and disorder, combining intersecting parts into a whole that stands in delicate equilibrium on a small foot. Each work is inherently precarious, yet ultimately poised and stable, overcoming entropy. I use this narrow point of balance to connect viewers to something beyond the sculptural object itself. In each static form is tension, the suggestion of gesture or movement, the ephemeral moment between breathing in and out. There's potency and power in equilibrium, as well as grace, when the point of balance is reached.

Will Clift