Having lost her father at the age of three, Lin Emery enrolled at Columbia University when she was sixteen years old. She attended Syracuse University, the University of Mexico, the University of Chicago, and the Sorbonne before the end of her undergraduate tenure. While in Paris, Emery studied sculpture under Russian artist Ossip Zadkine and began to cultivate her passion in that department. On returning to the United States, she learned welding and casting at the New York Sculpture Center. She eventually settled in New Orleans, where she repurposed her living space as a fully-equipped studio.
Emery's early work was largely figurative-as she created many life-size religious figures on commission for Southern churches-but the artist gradually began to focus on the physical support systems and welded armatures that held those figures together. After her abstract work experienced success in New Orleans and New York, she began to experiment heavily with motion. Emery describes her work as a dance, the choreography of each piece influencing the kinetic response of the next.
“My sculpture is kinetic, meaning that it moves. The elements are derived from nature, and I borrow natural elements — wind, water, magnets — to set them in motion. The rhythms are influenced by infinite variables: the points of balance, the normal frequency of each form, the interruption of the counterpoise. I juggle, juxtapose, and adjust to achieve the dance or pantomime that I want. Then the sculpture takes over and invents a fillip of its own.” -Lin Emery
In Off Shoot, Lin Emery seamlessly melds the kinetic with the organic, resulting in a piece that captures both the essence of mechanics and the nature of growth. As does a living flower on its stem, Off Shoot moves according to the force and direction of the wind; its individual elements dance independently of one another while remaining connected in graceful symbiosis. Emery’s work–much of which utilizes natural forms as both subject and context—consistently exhibits her technical mastery of kinetic sculpture in its complex fluidity of motion. Off Shoot bears a resemblance to many of Emery’s monumental works, such as her Lily, installed at Loyola University, New Orleans, and Lyric, exhibited at the International Kinetic Art Exhibit and Symposium in Boynton Beach, Florida, in 2015. Emery’s body of work features diverse arrangements of these tall, plant-like forms, their bases always serving as fulcrums for teetering branches and petals that respond directly to atmospheric conditions.