About the Artist
Harold Grinspoon is a Massachusetts-based contemporary artist. His sculptures have risen out of a life of creative ventures in both business and establishing the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, which provides literacy and heritage for Jewish children. Carried into his art, he is always thinking about the next impactful item or sculpture he can create.
For over 20 years Grinspoon has been fascinated by the effects of the torrents of nature against the struggle of trees as their stories are expressed in weathered skeletons. On hikes, Grinspoon began retrieving unique specimens from various parts of the country. But it was at his home in Massachusetts, that Grinspoon’s inspiration for tree sculptures was born. With many acres of woodlands, hills and culverts, plateaus, and wetlands, he watched the constant life cycles of trees. As trees naturally died, he began sculpting them where they stood and within the confines of their natural shape.
Soon he began imagining shapes outside the boundaries of the tree’s trunk. Grinspoon saw that by quartering a tree vertically, rearranging the separate quarters and finding an artistic relationship he could create a dynamic structure. The first sculpture was made from a cherry tree about 30 feet tall. The resulting configuration presents viewers with infinite interactions of the individual pieces as if they seem to be conversing with one another.
Each has unfolded in its own unique way, within its beauty, size, form, strengths, and weaknesses. His creativity stems from giving a new voice and meaning to objects that have aged out of their original purpose in life. His art evokes nostalgia of familiarity, and joy for the beauty of a completely new form. At 92 and seven years into Grinspoon’s third career and daily practice as an artist, he has moved into working with stainless steel spheres and rods, glass spheres, acrylic rods and tubes, found objects, and amber.
