Eric Helin Design • Eric Helín Biography

Artist's Statement | Biography

Steeped in the Bohemian culture of Southern California in the 1970's, Eric Helin describes the energy and artistic ferment of that time. "It was electric,"he remembers, "there seemed to be no cultural or class distinctions. Everyone rubbed shoulders with everyone else." He was also fascinated by the pop culture and the avant-garde styling that emerged during that year. It was at that time and in these surroundings that he began working in an animation studio. This would come to have a lasting impact on his art and thinking. Later he turned his attention to graphic art and finally to design. During his academic career, he has instructed a diverse number of subjects at the college level, ranging from 3D Computer Design to World Religions. It was only after insistent urging from his sister that at last he happily turned back to the world of design. He holds academic degrees in Classical Culture and Religion.

Biography
Eric Helín says he can recall several incidents over the course of his life that contributed to his artistic insight and eventually his career. His first memory was of bright blue cone shaped flowers. He remembers sticking his nose into a flower, breathing in and feeling the cool fleshy petal cling to his face. His mother later confirmed that there were, in fact, blue morning glories growing on the side of their house in Victoria, Texas. When he was two the family left Texas and moved to Birmingham, Alabama. At the time, Birmingham was one of the hubs for the U.S. steel industry. He recounts the following memories of Birmingham where he first encountered steel which would later become his main sculptural medium.

“There is a huge statue of Vulcan (god of the forge), on Red Mountain symbolizing Birmingham’s connection with the steel industry. At night, the sky reflected the reddish glow of molten steel. I had no idea this first brush with steel and the statue were a portent of the part that steel would play in my later life as a sculptural medium. But if destiny plays a role in our lives, somehow the seeds were planted there. The statue had such an impact on me, that years later my mother, remembering this, sent me a newspaper clipping of it. From the first moment I saw the statue I was captivated by it. At that time the head of the spear he holds was lit at night. It looked like a giant glowing Popsicle, which would turn from lime to cherry if someone had died in a traffic accident.”

When he was three the family moved once again, this time to Alcoa, a small town near Knoxville, Tennessee, which is where he actually grew up. His grandfather invented several items during the course of his life and was granted patents on a number of them. He remembers his grandfather’s basement shop and being fascinated by the array of tools which his grandfather used to create his various projects; some of which he says were simply trinkets made for amusement.

“Of course, as a kid, I was fascinated by the trinkets. I remember at one point, that he cut walnut shells into sections and filled the openings with colored plaster, which he had “pearlized” with powdered brass, to create Christmas tree ornaments. I can remember pounding nails into scraps of wood in his shop before I could read or write. All the men in East Tennessee seemed to have their own shop in their garage or basement. If they needed something they made it – from furniture to knives. I can remember nailing scraps of wood together and making things before I knew how to write my own name. My father, on the other hand, was not handy with tools and the creative impulse meant very little to him.”

His parents for the most part, he says, seemed very normal, though he realizes now that they may have been a bit more eccentric than he thought at the time. He says his mother hated cooking and made no secret about her dislike. He remembers that his mother had his father paint the kitchen a fiery Chinese red, gloss, enamel with the announcement that since she was going to be mad when she was cooking anyway, the kitchen might as well reflect her mood. “The kitchen,” he says, “fairly vibrated and glistened at the same time, creating an edgy marriage of color and sheen.” He says he remembers the kitchen stank of enamel paint for a month afterward and he’s sure it cut several years off the end of everyone’s lives. He goes on to say, “that may be one of the reasons I love bright colors. You might say I ‘cut my teeth’ on bright colors early on.” He says he also clearly remembers the first time he became aware of a work of art, enough to really appreciate it.

My first conscious connection to a work of art came when I was about six years old. My mother and I were looking through a book when we saw a picture by Picasso – Three Blind Musicians – from his Cubist period. I was fascinated by the picture and told my mother how much I liked it. She told me, in no uncertain terms, the picture was “ugly,” but I refused to give in to her attempts to convince me to the contrary. Today, Cubism still continues to influence my work.

The family would make one more major move to Arizona when he was twelve. It was here, in high school, that he was reintroduced to ceramics. He remembers his first encounter with ceramics came in fourth grade when he made a tiny bowl from terra cotta. He still has the bowl sitting on a shelf and claims that for a first attempt he doesn’t think it was half bad. Clay was the first medium he really connected with. He loved the pliability of clay. He thought of it as the ultimate material. A material you could form into anything. He noticed shortly after he began working with clay, that the other students were making bowls or pots which differed in size and shape and in how they were decorated but they were still bowls and pots. He says he really didn’t think much about it at the time but realizes now the structural forms of his pieces were all unique. He never realized, at the time, there were early indications that he should pursue a career in art and design. He remembers creating a ceramic hand about this time called “stargazer” the fingers actually spiraled upwards to a point and a ball rested on the tip. He entered it in a local art show. When it was stolen, he was devastated and gave up working in ceramics for years.

“I was about thirteen when we made our first trip to Las Vegas and the lights . . . the lights . . . the lights . . . the glorious lights . . . the neon lights!!” He can’t remember when his fascination with neon started, but remembers being dimly aware of standing and staring at a neon light in some place, like a moth attracted to a candle flame. One of his parents, mother or father was holding his hand and tugging on it, saying: “let’s go” he was pulling against the tug and still staring over his shoulder at the light. The lights in Las Vegas was not the first time he was “grabbed” by the intensity of neon and it certainly wasn’t the last.

He moved to Los Angeles shortly after he graduated from high school, “my main goal,” he says, “was two-fold: to live on my own and become a rock star.” I could write music but as the only guy in the business who leveled with me said: “your music is far too visual to make it on the hit charts.” While he was living in Los Angeles he began working at a small animation studio in Santa Monica. He says he never realized how many people would give their right arm to be working in the animation business. While it was fun, at the time it never meant much more to him than a paycheck. He says he never realized how much the skills he learned there would help him later on. Next he tried to free-lance his graphic art skills but unless a person was working for a firm with the equipment the paste-up process would keep a person poor. He left Los Angeles and went back to college and then on to graduate school. It wasn’t until he was in graduate school that it finally dawned on him that his real gift was creativity. Every artist has a favorite material in which he likes to work but no other material has captured his imagination like steel.

    It was about a year after I began working with steel that I connected with it in a unique way. I was outdoors around dusk, cutting a thick piece of metal with a chop saw. The waning light gave the sparks spraying from the cut a special intensity. Sparks ricocheted from the legs of my trousers and fell in a cascade of falling stars, that showered around my feet. These came bouncing back up and formed a knee-deep pool of hazy light, in which I seemed to be suspended. As I looked around me, swept up in a kind of momentary euphoria, I suddenly recalled a long-forgotten passage from Ayn Rand’s classic industrial novel Atlas Shrugged in which she describes molten steel in the most intense and sensual terms. Until that instant I was unable to really understand the meaning of those words that I’d read almost 20 years before, but in that moment I suddenly came full circle, I understood the true nature of steel and I knew why I loved working in it.

    “. . . the first break of the liquid metal into the open came as a shocking sensation of morning. The narrow streak pouring through space had the pure white color of sunlight. Black coils of steam were boiling upward, streaked with violent red. Fountains of sparks shot in beating spasms, as from broken arteries. The air seemed torn to rags, reflecting a raging flame that was not there, red blotches whirling and running through space . . . But the liquid metal had no aspect of violence. It was a long white curve with the texture of satin and the friendly radiance of a smile. It flowed obediently . . . A flow of stars hung above the stream, leaping out of its placid smoothness, looking delicate as lace and innocent as children’s sparklers. Only at a closer glance could one notice that the white satin was boiling. Splashes flew out at times and fell to the ground below . . . they burst into flame.” Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged

    “Ayn Rand,” said one psychologist, in a tone of immense disgust, “created an eroticism of steel.” “To think that steel is erotic,” said one young sculptor friend, “borders on insanity.” That may be the case but at the same time it’s still true. Like it or not, anyone who has worked with steel understands this quality. Ayn Rand didn’t make it up, she simply explained it. Steel is also very much alive – when you cut through it, in the screech of the metal, you can hear a rabbit scream!!

He says, in the process of creating something, he’s able to enter a mental state that he refers to as : “being ‘on glide’.” He claims that a few years ago, he found he was able to enter this creative state at will and after that he never suffered from any kind of creative block. He says that whatever makes it possible to enter this state of mind seems to have been the culmination of a realization process that began several years ago when he started reading a book on Animation from Script to Screen by Shamus Culhane, an early animator and peaked during a visit to Taliesin West.

I was visiting Taliesin West one sunny day in mid-April of 1998. Nothing was particularly special about that day and I'd already visited there several times before. I’ve always been fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright's work. I was outside, in the area behind the sitting room, when I began to study a series of flat columns adjacent to a small reflective pool. Some were larger at the top than at the bottom and vice versa. As I moved my head from side to side, they appeared to scissor open and closed. In one position they actually gave the appearance of being a solid wall but as I would shift the physical position of my body, they would seem to scissor open revealing the spaces in between. As I crossed the gravel driveway towards the theater I remember saying to myself. “Wright is destroying space and recreating it on his own lines!!” At that moment I had something on the level of a profound experience and I "understood" something that I had never known before. All I know is that after that happened, I could do things with forms I wasn’t able to do before. Every one of my pieces is, in some way, ultimately a reflection of this ability. After this happened, forms suddenly seemed fluid, whereas before I had seen them as solid and static. I can't communicate it perfectly but I’ve tried to explain it to the degree that it’s possible in the Dynamics of Concrescentism.

He makes the following assertions about his work.

My work is not about the random attachment or combination of dissimilar forms or shapes in a conglomeration but rather achieving a harmonious resolution in the interconnectedness of dissimilar forms in fact my work is probably more about the achievement of this balance than anything else. This is one of the guiding factors of my work.



			Artist's Statement \| Biography Steeped in the Bohemian culture of Southern California in the 1970's, Eric Helin describes the energy and artistic ferment of that time. "It was electric,"he remembers, "there seemed to be no cultural or class distinctions. Everyone rubbed shoulders with everyone else." He was also fascinated by the pop culture and the avant-garde styling that emerged during that year. It was at that time and in these surroundings that he began working in an animation studio. This would come to have a lasting impact on his art and thinking. Later he turned his attention to graphic art and finally to design. During his academic career, he has instructed a diverse number of subjects at the college level, ranging from 3D Computer Design to World Religions. It was only after insistent urging from his sister that at last he happily turned back to the world of design. He holds academic degrees in Classical Culture and Religion. Biography Eric Helín says he can recall several incidents over the course of his life that contributed to his artistic insight and eventually his career. His first memory was of bright blue cone shaped flowers. He remembers sticking his nose into a flower, breathing in and feeling the cool fleshy petal cling to his face. His mother later confirmed that there were, in fact, blue morning glories growing on the side of their house in Victoria, Texas. When he was two the family left Texas and moved to Birmingham, Alabama. At the time, Birmingham was one of the hubs for the U.S. steel industry. He recounts the following memories of Birmingham where he first encountered steel which would later become his main sculptural medium. “There is a huge statue of Vulcan (god of the forge), on Red Mountain symbolizing Birmingham’s connection with the steel industry. At night, the sky reflected the reddish glow of molten steel. I had no idea this first brush with steel and the statue were a portent of the part that steel would play in my later life as a sculptural medium. But if destiny plays a role in our lives, somehow the seeds were planted there. The statue had such an impact on me, that years later my mother, remembering this, sent me a newspaper clipping of it. From the first moment I saw the statue I was captivated by it. At that time the head of the spear he holds was lit at night. It looked like a giant glowing Popsicle, which would turn from lime to cherry if someone had died in a traffic accident.” When he was three the family moved once again, this time to Alcoa, a small town near Knoxville, Tennessee, which is where he actually grew up. His grandfather invented several items during the course of his life and was granted patents on a number of them. He remembers his grandfather’s basement shop and being fascinated by the array of tools which his grandfather used to create his various projects; some of which he says were simply trinkets made for amusement. “Of course, as a kid, I was fascinated by the trinkets. I remember at one point, that he cut walnut shells into sections and filled the openings with colored plaster, which he had “pearlized” with powdered brass, to create Christmas tree ornaments. I can remember pounding nails into scraps of wood in his shop before I could read or write. All the men in East Tennessee seemed to have their own shop in their garage or basement. If they needed something they made it – from furniture to knives. I can remember nailing scraps of wood together and making things before I knew how to write my own name. My father, on the other hand, was not handy with tools and the creative impulse meant very little to him.” His parents for the most part, he says, seemed very normal, though he realizes now that they may have been a bit more eccentric than he thought at the time. He says his mother hated cooking and made no secret about her dislike. He remembers that his mother had his father paint the kitchen a fiery Chinese red, gloss, enamel with the announcement that since she was going to be mad when she was cooking anyway, the kitchen might as well reflect her mood. “The kitchen,” he says, “fairly vibrated and glistened at the same time, creating an edgy marriage of color and sheen.” He says he remembers the kitchen stank of enamel paint for a month afterward and he’s sure it cut several years off the end of everyone’s lives. He goes on to say, “that may be one of the reasons I love bright colors. You might say I ‘cut my teeth’ on bright colors early on.” He says he also clearly remembers the first time he became aware of a work of art, enough to really appreciate it. My first conscious connection to a work of art came when I was about six years old. My mother and I were looking through a book when we saw a picture by Picasso – Three Blind Musicians – from his Cubist period. I was fascinated by the picture and told my mother how much I liked it. She told me, in no uncertain terms, the picture was “ugly,” but I refused to give in to her attempts to convince me to the contrary. Today, Cubism still continues to influence my work. The family would make one more major move to Arizona when he was twelve. It was here, in high school, that he was reintroduced to ceramics. He remembers his first encounter with ceramics came in fourth grade when he made a tiny bowl from terra cotta. He still has the bowl sitting on a shelf and claims that for a first attempt he doesn’t think it was half bad. Clay was the first medium he really connected with. He loved the pliability of clay. He thought of it as the ultimate material. A material you could form into anything. He noticed shortly after he began working with clay, that the other students were making bowls or pots which differed in size and shape and in how they were decorated but they were still bowls and pots. He says he really didn’t think much about it at the time but realizes now the structural forms of his pieces were all unique. He never realized, at the time, there were early indications that he should pursue a career in art and design. He remembers creating a ceramic hand about this time called “stargazer” the fingers actually spiraled upwards to a point and a ball rested on the tip. He entered it in a local art show. When it was stolen, he was devastated and gave up working in ceramics for years. “I was about thirteen when we made our first trip to Las Vegas and the lights . . . the lights . . . the lights . . . the glorious lights . . . the neon lights!!” He can’t remember when his fascination with neon started, but remembers being dimly aware of standing and staring at a neon light in some place, like a moth attracted to a candle flame. One of his parents, mother or father was holding his hand and tugging on it, saying: “let’s go” he was pulling against the tug and still staring over his shoulder at the light. The lights in Las Vegas was not the first time he was “grabbed” by the intensity of neon and it certainly wasn’t the last. He moved to Los Angeles shortly after he graduated from high school, “my main goal,” he says, “was two-fold: to live on my own and become a rock star.” I could write music but as the only guy in the business who leveled with me said: “your music is far too visual to make it on the hit charts.” While he was living in Los Angeles he began working at a small animation studio in Santa Monica. He says he never realized how many people would give their right arm to be working in the animation business. While it was fun, at the time it never meant much more to him than a paycheck. He says he never realized how much the skills he learned there would help him later on. Next he tried to free-lance his graphic art skills but unless a person was working for a firm with the equipment the paste-up process would keep a person poor. He left Los Angeles and went back to college and then on to graduate school. It wasn’t until he was in graduate school that it finally dawned on him that his real gift was creativity. Every artist has a favorite material in which he likes to work but no other material has captured his imagination like steel. It was about a year after I began working with steel that I connected with it in a unique way. I was outdoors around dusk, cutting a thick piece of metal with a chop saw. The waning light gave the sparks spraying from the cut a special intensity. Sparks ricocheted from the legs of my trousers and fell in a cascade of falling stars, that showered around my feet. These came bouncing back up and formed a knee-deep pool of hazy light, in which I seemed to be suspended. As I looked around me, swept up in a kind of momentary euphoria, I suddenly recalled a long-forgotten passage from Ayn Rand’s classic industrial novel Atlas Shrugged in which she describes molten steel in the most intense and sensual terms. Until that instant I was unable to really understand the meaning of those words that I’d read almost 20 years before, but in that moment I suddenly came full circle, I understood the true nature of steel and I knew why I loved working in it. “. . . the first break of the liquid metal into the open came as a shocking sensation of morning. The narrow streak pouring through space had the pure white color of sunlight. Black coils of steam were boiling upward, streaked with violent red. Fountains of sparks shot in beating spasms, as from broken arteries. The air seemed torn to rags, reflecting a raging flame that was not there, red blotches whirling and running through space . . . But the liquid metal had no aspect of violence. It was a long white curve with the texture of satin and the friendly radiance of a smile. It flowed obediently . . . A flow of stars hung above the stream, leaping out of its placid smoothness, looking delicate as lace and innocent as children’s sparklers. Only at a closer glance could one notice that the white satin was boiling. Splashes flew out at times and fell to the ground below . . . they burst into flame.” Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged “Ayn Rand,” said one psychologist, in a tone of immense disgust, “created an eroticism of steel.” “To think that steel is erotic,” said one young sculptor friend, “borders on insanity.” That may be the case but at the same time it’s still true. Like it or not, anyone who has worked with steel understands this quality. Ayn Rand didn’t make it up, she simply explained it. Steel is also very much alive – when you cut through it, in the screech of the metal, you can hear a rabbit scream!! He says, in the process of creating something, he’s able to enter a mental state that he refers to as : “being ‘on glide’.” He claims that a few years ago, he found he was able to enter this creative state at will and after that he never suffered from any kind of creative block. He says that whatever makes it possible to enter this state of mind seems to have been the culmination of a realization process that began several years ago when he started reading a book on Animation from Script to Screen by Shamus Culhane, an early animator and peaked during a visit to Taliesin West. I was visiting Taliesin West one sunny day in mid-April of 1998. Nothing was particularly special about that day and I'd already visited there several times before. I’ve always been fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright's work. I was outside, in the area behind the sitting room, when I began to study a series of flat columns adjacent to a small reflective pool. Some were larger at the top than at the bottom and vice versa. As I moved my head from side to side, they appeared to scissor open and closed. In one position they actually gave the appearance of being a solid wall but as I would shift the physical position of my body, they would seem to scissor open revealing the spaces in between. As I crossed the gravel driveway towards the theater I remember saying to myself. “Wright is destroying space and recreating it on his own lines!!” At that moment I had something on the level of a profound experience and I "understood" something that I had never known before. All I know is that after that happened, I could do things with forms I wasn’t able to do before. Every one of my pieces is, in some way, ultimately a reflection of this ability. After this happened, forms suddenly seemed fluid, whereas before I had seen them as solid and static. I can't communicate it perfectly but I’ve tried to explain it to the degree that it’s possible in the Dynamics of Concrescentism. He makes the following assertions about his work. My work is not about the random attachment or combination of dissimilar forms or shapes in a conglomeration but rather achieving a harmonious resolution in the interconnectedness of dissimilar forms in fact my work is probably more about the achievement of this balance than anything else. This is one of the guiding factors of my work. Back to Top home • biography • about us • designs/products • neon work • art furniture / functional art • music • gallery • contact us • sitemap • faq Copyright © 2005-2007 Eric Helín Design. All rights reserved. This page was last updated on September 16, 2007 .•ºadd this web site to your favoritesº•.