The Godfather of Glass: Gene Koss

by Craig Guillot, WHERE Y’AT MAGAZINE

I could almost see the artwork from the highway through the open door of his Belle Chase warehouse. Gene Koss is known for taking sculpture to the max, but there are some things that just have to be seen to be believed. Dominating the room was one of his most famous pieces; it’s twenty-six feet and six thousand pounds of mechanics, aesthetics and art consisting of welded I-beams and cast glass. Bridge takes sculpture to a whole new level.

“In a way, it’s very elegant, but also very scary…This thing could kill you when you’re trying to set it up,” says the 54 year-old Tulane professor of 25 years as he pushes the center beam to show me its ability to move.

Coulee Song

Originally from rural Wisconsin and a graduate of Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art, Gene Koss travels to a lot of industrial places such as scrap yards, shipbuilding places and old warehouses for inspiration. Behind his studio, he keeps a small stock yard of odd-shaped beams, scrap metal and gears, as well as a small collection of train parts which he hopes to put to use someday. In other parts of the warehouse, he has caches of weird things that friends and relatives have brought him over the years. He even claims to have his share of “secret” scrap yards that only he knows about.

Koss recently relocated his studio to a riverside West Bank warehouse, which is filled with highlights from the past 20 years. His trademark is working with hot cast glass and stainless steel, getting them to work together as one. “If I was living in Minnesota, I don’t think my work would he where it is at [now]. I have to be in a place that I enjoy and this place is full of industrial stuff,” he adds. “I always look at how things are connected and put together.” But it’s hard to overlook his desire to build things large. The scale of his operation is not cheap; whereas other sculptors might use chisels or small torches, Koss uses forklifts, welding machines, engine pullers and laborers. He even recently purchased a mini-semi to transport his work around the country and is looking to add a crane to his warehouse.

Dressed in some rugged jeans with a stained shirt and baseball cap, Koss looks more like a rural farm hand than a world-famous sculptor. He respects people that work for a living and hasn’t let his status as a Tulane professor snob others. It is something that’s unmistakable in his industrial sculptures, which not only speak to the art-loving aristocrats, but also to working class construction workers and craftsman.

“I’m basically a blue-collar worker with a fancy name. When I’m in the studio, it’s nothing but sweat and dirty work,” he adds. “A lot of my work is labor-intensive. It’s humanist, so I relate to the people that are close to the earth.”

Koss admits that undertaking such massive projects is not easy. He often works more than two years in advance on large pieces, spending much of his time in theory and research with engineers who address the safety factors in excruciating detail. The sheer mass of his sculptures keeps him out of some museums and could be a liability in others One of his most famous works, Coulee Song, is 40 feet long and weighs eight tons-not something you can just bring in and sit on a shelf. His other agrarian-influenced works-including Timber, Plow and Amish-are nearly as massive.

“Every piece is quite different but you can also sort of see a carry-over of what I’m about. I want that to happen as an artist,” says Koss.

Between teaching undergrads and Master’s candidates at Tulane University, Koss has been busy with his newest large sculpture, Lake Neschonic. He’s a little secretive on the project but did say that it will be a fourteen-foot tall, five-ton kinetic piece that will be done in early September. He constantly works with models and drawings to massage his ideas, but admits that there are problems you only encounter once everything “goes live.” Between working with engineers and laser cutters, Koss stresses that he and his crew are very sensitive to the craftsmanship.

“You can’t go into these things blind. All the details need to be figured out. We don’t want to cut any corners on how the pieces are made. It might cost me another ten thousand dollars, but that’s the way we want it to work,” he adds On the floor of his studio lay a couple dozen blue plates of glass, each carefully created and colored with countless man hours.

In keeping with his down-to-earth image, Koss shies away from large commercial functions and snooty cocktail parties. In the eighties, he consistently sold-out shows, but admits that he is more interested in doing the work that he wants to do. He mainly makes his smaller glass sculptures to finance the larger projects, joking that he has a tendency to abandon things once they start to sell.

“They are very involved financially to build, but I’d rather build the things that are important to me than do stuff I’m not happy with. That’s why I’m a sculptor,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to move glass off the pedestal. I wanted it to become more sculptural, rugged and wanted it to fit into the real world.”

Koss states that he likes to keep pushing the limits as opposed to copying himself in every new project. While he wanders far outside the realms of contemporary art, he still retains an appreciation of other sculptors, museums and art critics. His work is not just about appearance, it’s also about mechanics and kinetics, implying and often creating motion. And at times, it seems as though Koss’ sculptures are alive.