Hot Coffee with art journalist and sculptor William Corwin

William Corwin is an art journalist/writer who also happens to be a sculptor. He is a part of the New York art scene, and when you encounter him at a preview or an opening, you know you are in the right spot. He has also been busy as a sculptor. His solo show titled Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc.; Ten Years of Sculpture, is currently on view at River House Arts in Toledo, Ohio through January 25th. I asked William a few questions about his retrospective show, but also about the changing nature of art criticism and how he can maintain different practices while being able to stay true to himself.

Nina: Imagine you are in your favorite coffee or tea spot. Where is it? What are you drinking? What are the three things you see right now?

William: I am actually sitting in a library where I regularly do my writing and research. In the afternoons here, there is tea and coffee and cookies available, so I have a plate of cookies—mostly macarons and a brownie, and I have a lilliputian cast iron teapot with Earl Grey Tea. On the shelf directly in front of me is the 18-volume set of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence edited by W. S. Lewis, an odd Art Deco-ish lamp with a compass and a little heraldic dolphin (made by John M. Snyder), and on the desk is a slightly worn rectangle of blotting paper, which always makes me wonder, as I sit here, “where does one get blotting paper anymore in 2025?”

Installation view, William Corwin, *Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc.; Ten Years of Sculpture, December 6, 2024-January 25, 2025, River House Arts, Toledo, Ohio. Photo courtesy of River House Arts and the artist.*

Nina: Please tell me about your ongoing show Things at River House Arts in Toledo, Ohio. What brings together all the works on view there? And how is a Greek goddess tied to them?

William: Things is a catch-all title for my process of coming up with subjects for sculpture. I choose objects based on what pops up for me in the course of my discussions and travels. The full title is: Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc.; Ten Years of Sculpture, so it’s a retrospective of what I’ve been making since at least 2014. But each of those “objects” in the list emerge from a very specific path I’ve followed. I started thinking about Boats as sculpture after seeing a film on Netflix about the Sutton Hoo burial site in Southern England, called The Dig, with Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes. I was trying to come up with some sculptures for a show called Roots/Anchors at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island (a show which also included the artists Katie Holten, Shervone Neckles, and Xaviera Simmons), and the intersection of ship burial and the allure of the sea for sailors seemed perfect for the show. Similarly, I first thought of wheels as sculpture after a trip to India in 2007 where I saw giant wooden carriages of the Gods called Jugganatha, outside the National Museum in New Delhi. And Alps came about when I had a residency at the Altelier Mondial in Basel, where I spent almost three months regularly sitting on trains (which are truly spectacular in Switzerland) looking at Alps, and thinking about the specific signatures of various mountains. The work is based on these simple objects, or typologies of tool or sculpture, so “Things” is a very blunt umbrella term. Obviously all sculptures are things, but I think mine are a little more so.

The Greek Goddess sculptures are depictions of Artemis. I like Artemis because she’s an equivocal Goddess, she represents the cruelty of nature as much as the beauty. I was on a trip to Istanbul with the painter Tim Kent and I found a postcard of the Artemis of Ephesus, and that instigated the series. Artemis of Ephesus is a cultic statue which depicts Artemis with what appears to be numerous breasts. They’re actually bull’s testicles tied around the neck of the goddess as an offering, but the long visual tradition of the Ephesus type of figure has softened this rather grisly detail into a more sexualized breast. I love the duality of that history, that there is sex and devouring going on simultaneously. The two main sculptures right at the entrance to Thingsare Artemis sculptures: she’s very important to me right now.

Nina: You are a practicing artist as well as an active art critic and sometimes a curator. How do these different roles of cultural production influence one another? Did this confluence somehow affect this new show on view?

William: As an art journalist/writer I spend a lot of time reading about archeology because much of my writing is concerned with that discipline, and in the past, I’ve interviewed archeologists in depth about their work, and that has provided very fertile soil in terms of the “things” which I make. I like the immediacy of ancient art—objects were made to be used rather than simply looked at, and consequently, they have a very practical quality. Even certain tools, like Acheulian hand axes, while useable tools, were sometimes made into symbolic sculptures, thought to be used in burial rituals, which was something I discussed with archeologists like Sir Colin Renfrew at Cambridge or Drs. Yonas Beyene and Yohannes Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa. Many of the works in my show—the ladders for example, or the Pazuzu and Artemis figures, are interpretations of the ancient uses of figurative sculpture: figurative sculptures were created to represent specific individuals in a temple context—as stand-ins for the actual person so that they could always be seen to be worshipping in the God’s presence. I like to think of the ladders as self-portraits.

Nina: What was your favorite exhibition you saw in 2024, and what are you looking forward to in 2025?

William: I loved the Elizabeth Catlett exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. I was privileged to be able to include several pieces by Catlett in the exhibition Postwar Women which I curated at The Art Students League in 2019, and it was wonderful to see so much of her work together. As for 2025, I’m looking forward to seeing the Gustave Caillebotte exhibition in Chicago this summer.

Nina: What do you think about the role of art criticism today - does it live to its full potential? And if not, when do you think it made that U-turn?

William: I think art criticism, like everything else, oscillates between more incisive and harsh versus more descriptive and positive—it’s rare when you get both at the same time. I don’t know how much the art-going public actually notices criticism anymore, but people are less interested in judging what they look at, rather, they’re very interested in having things explained—where does this come from, how does this represent the artist’s life, how does this affect or reflect my life? It’s all very personal now. The ironic thing is that the art will still be judged in the long-term; history is very cruel, and most of the work we see right now will end up like most of the work that has ever been seen in galleries (since art became much more of a commodity in the mid-19th century), it will disappear. So whether art criticism is political, formalist, etc. doesn’t really seem to influence what has real lasting power. I think as we move into a, hopefully brief, period of deep political conservatism, there will be backlash and perhaps textual discussions of art will have more relevance than they have had for the past decade or so, I think the momentum is there.

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