Rory Beerits

Beerits employs traditional methods of metalworking and found object assembly to investigate the spiritual power of the natural world. Utilizing decidedly human materials from our anthropocentric era, Beerits reworks unremarkable artifacts from our environment into icons of animal mythology. His process begins like a ritual, focusing on animal anatomy while seeking specific objects to suit each creatures’ form and function. Mundane materials sourced from junkyards, street corners, and fellow up-cyclers undergo magical metamorphoses—scythes transform into wings, colanders into scales, wrenches into pincers, and oil drums into feathers. Beerits’ compelling creatures occupy the liminal space between the immediately identifiable and the otherworldly, invoking possibilities beyond our constructs of history and memory. In the presence of this work, we are reminded of our own great capacity for personal transformation. Akin to meditations, these sculptures combine elements of the everyday, the sublime, and the transcendent to touch upon a sacred space at the crossroads of instinct and intuition.