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Stainless steel sculpture creates mood, holds evolving dance with nature

Return artist Ryan T. Schmidt enters ‘Tango’ at Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

Grand Rapids, Mich., (Sept. 22, 2017) – Ryan T. Schmidt’s polished stainless steel sculpture Tango represents the spiritual dance of life, a design of sweeping arcs and curvilinear form that is able to achieve its own graceful kind of organic energy.

The mirror-finish of Tango, standing 13-feet tall, is indeed in rhythmic dance with its surroundings. The light and clouds, the flowing fountain at Gerald R. Ford Museum, and the ArtPrize audience as well.

Schmidt, a native of Bryant, Ark., who has exhibited and sold work to private collectors in Miami, Los Angeles, Little Rock, St. Louis, Grand Rapids, London, Dubai, and recently in Taipei, Taiwan.

Many of Schmidt’s sculptures are regarded more as monuments, and grace public waterfronts, corporate headquarters and private estates worldwide.

Tango can be viewed Sept. 21 – Oct. 8 during ArtPrize 9 at 303 Pearl Street NW at the museum.

“My goal is to fully realize these concepts from the images in my mind, in a way that the sculpture is able to create a mood,” Schmidt said. “And then it changes in a moment with the season and in a completely seamless and natural manner.”

He has worked with cast aluminum and bronze, but relies on the everlasting virtues of high-grade stainless steel. From design to fabrication, finishing and installment, Schmidt’s early passions for Origami, drawing, ceramics and printmaking inspire his current endeavors.

Previously, Schmidt entered “Immanuel” for ArtPrize 8 at the circle-drive of the J.W. Marriot, and finished in the top 25 in 2015 with “Ascension” at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

ArtPrize is an independently organized international art competition that takes place throughout downtown Grand Rapids, offering a novel and entirely intriguing cultural experience for artists and art enthusiasts.

Tango at the reflection pool front entrance of Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan for Artprize Nine

About the Artist:

Ryan T. Schmidt is a stainless-steel sculpture and monument artist with exhibitions, awards and clients in

five countries. His works stand within public places, corporate headquarters and private estates. They

provide those who see them with an enhanced sense of how constructed beauty can interplay with the

natural world, our sense of aliveness, and be a poetic, fluid conversation with what we see as static or

constant. For more information on the artist go to https://www.soulartinc.com/about

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