When John Suttman fires up his 1400 degree kiln this time of year the room is cold. In winter, he turns the heat on only enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Everything else is left to the temperature of the room. When the kiln is running, the heat is sealed inside it, intense and contained, while the rest of the space remains unchanged. A contrast that may be unintentional but echoes through his work.
Suttman has spent a sculpting career working in materials that resist control, shaping steel into forms that appear lighter, softer or familiar enough to be mistaken for something else. Metal becomes wood. Structural elements appear playful. Objects built for use quietly perform while disguising the effort and force behind them. The tension between what a material is and what it appears to be runs through his work at the La Posada Hotel. From the Turquoise Room Bar to the recreated Wishing Well on the South Lawn and the large train gate near the hotel’s rail stop, his work is part of how people move through the property, often without noticing where architecture ends and sculpture begins.
For much of his career, metal was the primary material through which Suttman explored those ideas. His attraction to difficult, unforgiving materials began early. His father worked as a technical artist for laboratories in New Mexico, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, producing precise functional drawings, while his uncle was a sculptor. Between those influences, Suttman grew up around both disciplined problem-solving and creative experimentation. This was the seed that grew and eventually began to bare fruit from a young age. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of New Mexico, working in multiple mediums before beginning a successful career designing and fabricating high-end fashion jewelry. That work sharpened his technical skills and attention to detail, eventually merging with an interest in furniture and metal fabrication…