Andrew White

Columbia, SC

Andrew White’s work embraces the idea that our lives are entangled with things: we use them, abuse them, lose them, keep them for a while, and then throw them away. To his eye, that rough exposure to the world can add an unfakeable beauty to an object that is otherwise shiny and boring. Rust, scratches, and faded paint become markers for memories, reminders of what happened during a life lived. Through our interactions with them, some of our things become meaningful.



Taking that debris – whether it’s something personal or something anonymous that he plucked from the curb – and using it to create something new allows me to transform the slippery connection between the past and present into a tangible thing that he can handle and hold. Combining and recombining these worn out pieces of the past into a new object with a present and a future lets him preserve, create, and transform memories. Although it is incredibly inefficient, he has yet to find a better way for him to make the past a real part of the present.



He is a native Midwesterner with no formal training in art or metalwork. He moved to Columbia, South Carolina, several years ago and now does his sculpting in a half of a garage that he shares with rats, armed with a welder and a few basic hand tools. He is particularly interested in creating pieces that wrestle with the tensions between new and old, natural and mechanical, and alive and dead. He has had a solo show at Tapp’s Arts Center in Columbia in the summer of 2017.