Boundaries between nature, living space, and fine art dissolve in Randy Polumbo’s universe. His works glow with a startling mix of materials—airplane and trailer parts, silvered upholstery, glittery cast and blown glass, LEDs, mirrored and metal sheets, baked mycelium, and looping videos. While these sculpture-as-space installations consistently seduce, dazzle, and disorient, each one also resonates with a distinct vibe specific to its function. Lodestar (2018), made from a World War II jet, transforms a military airstrip control tower into an elevated beach lookout. In Orient Point Lighthouse (2022), an 1899 Long Island lighthouse perched on a scant island of rock morphs into a quirky artists’ retreat; and a psychedelically conceived healing space for ketamine patients affirms the freedom to see the world from independent perspectives.
In recent works, Polumbo uses mycelium—the vast root system supporting mushrooms—to traverse the ecological mess we’re in. This abundant natural substance, which can be grown and harvested, is suitable for multiple applications, from medicine to faux leather, to building material. It has become an essential and evolving art material for Polumbo, whose hybridizations of nature, living, and art enable us to think seriously and joyously about sustainability and our place within the larger world.
Joyce Beckenstein: Let’s start with a recent pivotal moment in our lives, the Covid pandemic. Antigenic Rift (2021), an installation of glass and irregularly shaped mirrored orbs, resembles interplanetary forms and deadly Covid-19 glycoprotein cells. Connections between the cosmically infinite and the microscopically infinitesimal have long informed your practice. Can you explain this thought process?
Randy Polumbo: It may go back to my late childhood, when I made space rockets from everyday objects and launched them with solid fuel engines, often with disastrous but funny results. Anything with a point on the end went missing for “nose cone” use—the orange tops of Elmer’s glue bottles, certain lipstick caps, the containers from L’eggs pantyhose. . .
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