Carlton Newton, former professor of sculpture, welcomed the Richmond Times-Dispatch to his Church Hill studio to chat about his career before the April 5 closing of his Reynolds Gallery exhibition “Drawings for Sculpture.” The show collected his steel sculptures, which weave through the air like undersea plant life, along with Sumi ink drawings that envision pieces yet to be fabricated.
Newton and his wife, professor emeritus Elizabeth King, have lived and worked in Richmond for 34 years, and the couple helped the sculpture department become the number one public art program in the country.
“It felt like an honest, hardworking studio — a good-feeling program with a minimum of baloney,” Newton said with a light chuckle. “We had no plan to stay in Richmond. But we found an incredible studio [here in Church Hill]; we found an incredible teaching program. … And we immersed ourselves in it. It was a fantastic coming together.”
A sculptor by trade, Newton was interested in computer design as a tool to create his art. It was his idea to install the first computer lab for art students in the sculpture department. He wrote a grant for it, got it and the school bought 10 computers with it.
“That drastically changed the way students approached design and their work,” said Joe Seipel, dean emeritus of the VCU School of the Arts and former chair of the sculpture department. “Because of his influence and ability, that happened. That was pretty early for sculpture programs to embrace that opportunity. We were one of only a handful of art programs investing in that kind of technology. The only others were places like MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology].”
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