Mark Drury, sculptor, painter, and designer
Sculptures inspired by nature and found objects, a childhood steeped in Rockport art, and very possibly the best pizza dough recipe
Mark Drury is this year’s Bastille Day featured artist at the Découvert Fine Art in Rockport, MA. The Shape Memory exhibit of his sculptures and paintings will be featured until August 14, 2022.
Bastille Day is special for the gallery, which otherwise focuses on master drawings the rest of the year. Gallery co-owners and life partners Steven Law and Donald Stroud conceived of the event to honor a living artist and create a memorable experience for people taking part in the celebration.
At this July’s event, the long line of people waiting to enter the gallery were served amuse-bouches, including tiny tastes of oysters on the half shell, cool and spicy gazpacho, ripe heirloom tomatoes with sea salt, and rosé and rose Jell-O. These small tastes, envisioned Steven and friend Victoria Wallin, were intended to evoke memories of any sort.
His own memories are a thread that runs through Mark’s sculptures and paintings and a source of ongoing inspiration. Nature, found objects, and brass rods are building blocks for the sculptures, which feature wood blocks, smooth stones, and craggy rocks, with some parts intended to move and be touched.
After many years of leading corporate design efforts for companies such as Apple and Sun Microsystems, Mark decided to step off the treadmill of Silicon Valley professional life and move with his wife to Rockport to raise their son close to nature and be more present during his formative years. It was at the start of the pandemic when Mark began creating the sculptures featured at Découvert Fine Art.
Tell us about the exhibit.
Shape Memory is the first exhibit of my life for which I’ve been allowed to create art for art’s sake, exploring with abandon a pure stream of imagination controlled only by me. In some ways it’s the most important exhibition of my life.
At the start of the pandemic, I read “Wisdom @ Work-The Making of A Modern Elder” by Chip Conley who sold his company at age 56 and wondered what he would do. That’s the time a lot of people think they will head toward retirement, but the author said, “you’ve reached the zenith of your career—take flight!” He asks, “what was the thing that brought you the most joy in your career?” In a split second, I knew it was “deskabob,” an idea I came up with while working on a project for Sun Microsystems.
What I initially created was like a shish kabob, but with bright colored shapes on it. It would sit on an executive’s desk and they could move the pieces around. The sculptures in this show evolved from that idea and they are larger. I also started working with found objects from nature. Most of the wood in these sculptures is from a 28-foot-long plank I found April 2020 on Cape Hedge Beach in Rockport.
Everything we need we have.
That’s an idea many people realized for the first time during the pandemic.
Yes. Nothing can take away your imagination or your desire to create things as an artist. I’ve been an artist my whole life and I’m always creating.
When Donald [Stroud, co-owner of Découvert Fine Art] passed away I made this painting of him called the “Medicine Buddha.” Donald represented the Medicine Buddha because he was so thoughtful and could see things other people didn’t see. When Medicine Buddha attained enlightenment, the story is he could see all of his past lives and future lives all at once. He saw it all.
Everyone takes away something different to your work, and some have said it evokes surrealism and ideas from dreams. Is that how you think about it?
These are about shape and memories and this other thing I learned from Lama Marut, who was a Buddhist teacher. He said, “you can gift yourself a better memory of the past, so do it.” These sculptures are a way to gift myself with a better memory of the past. We can change our past because the past lives in our memory. I've chosen to create those better memories in a three dimensional sense, in art, by hand, with sweat and emotion—rather than words.
How has being in Rockport influenced you as an artist?
My connection to Rockport spans decades. Each summer I visited my great grandmother Marjorie Selew Thompson, who we called Barmie, and who lived in Rockport for over 30 years, teaching rug hooking and embracing the natural beauty here.
She gave me Frank Allen’s chalk, watercolor brushes, and wood cutting gear. He was of the Cape Ann School and I still have wood blocks that he cut, and beautiful watercolor paintings and drawings. They lived together on Atlantic Ave. in a tiny log cabin. It’s the oldest house on Cape Ann. I would spend summers there. She taught me how to cook and encouraged me in art.
With your art, is it an organic process or do you have a specific vision in mind?
I start drawing [shows sketchbook] and writing. I’ll do something like this [shows sketch of a sculpture] and then go into the shed and say how do I execute this? How hard is it to bend the brass into a circle?
You can see where these drawings come from [shows sketches of early versions of the illustrations in the show]. One of the things I like to think about is time is love.
People might see these drawings and say these are scribbles, well you could say that, but not knowing how I got to here, there’s memory, anger, frustration, hope. These come from watching nature. Watching barn swallows and the way they dart around and it’s total chaos to watch them fly. There is a reason to it.
Who was instrumental in your development as an artist?
At the University of North Texas, I had great teachers and benefitted from learning art history and engaging in an artistic critical dialogue. I was amazed to learn that Henry Moore created abstract human forms from his memories of being in the tubes, the bomb shelters, in WWII.
Also, during these formative years, I received a gift from my great grandmother, a John Marin exhibition catalog that inspired me to believe that hope could be found in nature. Marin’s quote, “The birds are still singing out there,” inspires me to this day. We go outside, breathe air, behold the wonder of it all, and the birds still sing. The abstract nature of Moore and Marin appealed to me. When I walk down the street, I see things in shapes: negative space, positive space, big shapes, small shapes.
Christo is another influence. I met him in Dallas at an opening of his drawings, just when I was beginning my professional career in design. The richness of the drawings themselves, the layers, the skill of the hand. The emotions that came through. Large ideas. Ambition. I learned from him that no idea is impossible. There’s no limit to imagination or execution. The process of experimentation became vital to my life as an artist.
Speaking of Christo, do you have thoughts about making larger pieces?
A collector I know came to the house and the shed where I do my work and took a serious interest in a work in progress and said she would like it really big. I’ve got the work now as a maquette, which is a smaller size done to get the proportions right. I can scale it up. Do I want to do something big? Yes! That would be awesome.
I have done very large designs when I worked at Apple, such as cable wall system to display a roadshow gallery of graphic design work that had been created using the Mac. One piece was heavily influenced by Memphis design and the other end was a big black metal geometric conical shape. There’s a crossbar at the top and the bottom and the rest was all cables. We hung the artwork on the cables and you could see through the gallery system to the people on the other side who were looking at what was on that side.
If you could go to any time and observe an artist working, where would you go?
I would go back to ancient Egypt and talk to the artists cutting black granite sarcophaguses, and those making hieroglyphics, which are iconography and so simple and clean and communicative. They had symbols for everything: afterlife, Horus, the hawk, the jars. They would put them in a lozenge or stack them, and I would love to ask how they came up with that.
In modern times I would love to have been with Christo for the wrapping of Pont Neuf in Paris. That’s where I planned to ask my now wife to marry me, but there were too many people there. We took a detour over to Ile de la Cité where Notre Dame is. There’s a park shaped like this [forms upside-down triangle shape with his hands] that’s the most feminine spot in Paris, according to what I’ve read, because It’s the shape of a womb. There are stairs and chestnut trees that are beautifully manicured. I proposed there [she said yes].
What’s the best advice you received as an artist?
Small town, long life. As in, don’t do anything that you’re going to regret because the world is a small place and you’re going to live a long time.
What are your favorite things to cook?
I like to make tikka masala, risotto from Harry Cipriani’s in Venice, and Anadama Bread. That’s the first thing I learned how to make from my great grandmother when I was 12 or 13 years old. It’s mostly cornmeal, molasses, and flour.
Are you a recipe follower?
Yes. I use New York Times recipes. There’s this Shortcut Moussaka and Samosa Pie that are awesome. My wife Alicia doesn’t have the NY Times Cooking app on purpose. She follows them on Instagram and will say how about this? There’s a sauce, it’s the coconut lime dressing in the Sesame Tofu recipe, that you can use on anything. It’s that good.
The other thing I like to cook is pizza. I make my own dough. I use the recipe from Tra Vigne in Napa Valley. It will give you the crispiest, thinnest crust. I know the recipe by heart because I’ve been making it for 25 years.
Lightning-round questions: People often bond over food and art, and here are quick questions about both.
Favorite breakfast.
Most memorable meal.
Huset in La Roma, Mexico City. We went for our 30th wedding anniversary, and my 60th birthday.
You’re hosting a dinner party and get to invite 6 people living or dead. Who is coming and what are you serving?
John Marin, Frida Kahlo, Christo, Cleopatra, Ferdinand Porsche, and Buddha.
I will start with pizza as an appetizer, then I’d make the Samosa Pie, and for dessert I would make chocolate pots de crème from my favorite restaurant in San Francisco, Zuni Café.
Favorite piece of art you own.
It’s right here on my wrist, a Rolex Explorer. This watch represents one of the most important things I've learned along the way in this life: Time is love. There is a longer story about this—The Palace of Versailles and what I found there.
Most captivating museum visit.
When I had my first company after leaving Apple we were working on an event in Paris for 3,800 high-tech sales people from around the world and one of the venues for this event was The Louvre. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays and we met with the event staff at the Louvre that day. Once we finished our meetings—which were pretty intense, our French hosts said... the museum is yours to explore, enjoy!
Where to find Mark Drury, and you should!
Decouvert Fine Art, 73 Main St., Rockport, MA, features his exhibit until August 14, 2022.