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Mihai Popa's architecture
There is no place for convention in Mihai Popa's life -- or architecture. That is what makes his works out of this world
- Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 23:58 August 15, 2008
- Artist Mihai Popa in his sculpture studio in New York.
- Image Credit: By Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
Mihai “Nova'' Popa's ambitions are as monumental as his welded steel sculptures.
His curved and wave-like forms reflect the forces of the cosmos, he says.
He designs models of circular modular cities to float on the ocean and to launch into space — should humans face an exodus from a dying planet in an ecological apocalypse he believes is a possibility.
He proposes a university for world leaders be built near the United Nations.
American Taj Mahal
“It's a modern alternative of the great temples of the past, the Taj Mahal of America, to give a sense of a new way of living for the entire species,'' says the Romania-born artist of his high-rise “matrix'' of spheres and wave forms.
He creates “integral art'', combining art with architecture and an embrace of the cosmos in the face of the advance of technology.
“It's an intense existence,'' says Popa, son of a woodcutter, who came to the United States in 1966, escaping from Communist-controlled Romania.
He lives with companion Carol “Tundra'' Wolf in a house he designed more than 15 years ago as a kind of “propaganda'' for his ideas: an attention-grabbing bright blue structure, like a barrel laid on its side with a gangplank leading to the door. He calls it the Elliptical House.
It's on Millstone Road in Water Mill near Bridgehampton, New York, and shares a 100-acre-plus complex with a renovated potato barn, sheds for six sheep, horse paddocks, living quarters for more than a half-dozen staff and assistants, metalworking workshops and rolling fields where huge sculpture groups are installed in a park dubbed the Nova's Ark Project (www.thearkproject.com).
The 2,800 square feet two-storey space was built with the old wood from a demolished Brooklyn church and covered in corrugated fibreglass.
It's based on an ecological idea: It's 40x40 in the middle and 20x40 at the base, “which means we are giving back half of the house to the planet''.
“We like the archaic spirit and new forms of the house,'' he says. “Old, powerful wood beams and steel ... to give you a sense of timelessness.''
He and Wolf share the space, and their lives, with “Luna'' Shanaman, who serves as farm administrator and has been engaged with them since 1983 in a kind of “extended family'' arrangement.
Popa, now in his sixties, and Wolf, in her late fifties, came east to Southampton in 1973, living most of the year in a Manhattan loft, which they've sold.
Work began on the Elliptical House in 1986, ending with the certificate of occupancy in 1991.
There's a rough-hewn, sculptural quality to the entire space, much like Popa's handmade wooden furniture and the carved and constructed doorways, stairways and cabinetry.
“Everything is artistic and because of that, you are content in your environment,'' Wolf says. “Technology is not allowed to overwhelm. It's there but we don't let it steamroll us.''
Basic comforts
Creature comforts, therefore, are somewhat rough-hewn too. A futon couch, projector and makeshift screen serve as the “media'' room.
There's a single small bathroom, sans marble and Jacuzzi.
The radiant heating coils under the floors don't always manage to heat the large, open spaces. With a 15 foot-high ceiling on the second floor, 10 feet on the first, Wolf concedes it can be uncomfortable when interior temperatures fail to rise above 50° on cold days.
The little bedrooms have the charm of a boat, with closets tucked into walls and built-in desks and a porthole window looking out into the main room from Wolf's couchette.
She has the trim and fit appearance of the horsewoman she is and hops on to the high bunk with ease.
Far from convention
Convention has little place in this life supported through sales of sculpture, boarding horses, leasing land and stables to the Southampton Polo League each summer and renting out some buildings for weddings and events.
And they may sell the two-acre-plus parcel of land on which their house is located, moving the structure next door to the “farm''.
The Ark, on a recent darkening late afternoon, emitted a hum of activity as assistants used a crane to lift a rusty steel-flattened orb into place in a new work.
Woolly sheep stared and horses grazed nearby in paddocks that share fields with looming steel sculpture groupings: Settlers, Soldiers, Astronauts, Kiss, Milky Way and The Embrace of the Sun.
Partners for life
Popa's worktable in the house held the shapes of his next work.
And he and Wolf (who was a social worker when they fell in love a few years after he arrived in the US), are also collaborating on a book. “It's about what's happening to humans and the next phase,'' she says. “It sounds Utopian but, some day, it will be necessary.''
Wolf eagerly leads visitors through the outbuildings where Popa's art is stored: the African Series, the new dimensional wall murals, the models of modular cities they want to exhibit in the former barn. In the corner of one building, she uncovers a car, a 1973 mustard-yellow Mustang Mach 1.
“We bought this with our last $3,000 [Dh11,019],'' she says of the car Popa refuses to give up. “People thought we were crazy. But look how beautiful it is.''
STYLE
In the Elliptical House
Not surprisingly, life in the Elliptical House is not predictable or conventional.
With a kitchen area on each level, each person usually prepares food and eats separately: “We graze like horses, every man for himself,'' Wolf says.
“Being so preoccupied, we don't have a common rhythm in life.''
Each sleeps in his or her own quarter, the women in their own downstairs “couchettes'', little bedrooms with built-in bunks like those on trains, opening through fancifully carved doorways on to the large space downstairs where the women have their desks and computers.
Popa's open sleeping loft just under the curving wooden vault of ceiling on the upper storey is near his work table, his models and drawings.
“Nova keeps odd hours and does his designs through much of the night,'' says Wolf, who jokes: “He's from Transylvania. Maybe that explains it.''
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