We don’t often tread into fine art worlds, especially practices with teams and operations as complex as Barry’s. Our corner focuses on small-scale, independent makers. But Barry’s practice exists at an intersection we find fascinating: contemporary technology applied to historical forms, digital precision paired with obsessive handcraft, California aerospace culture meeting Italian Baroque reverence.

Barry grew up in 1950s-60s Southern California, surrounded by the aerospace industry. His father worked for an aircraft subcontractor. Weekend nights meant fathers in garages building cars, motorcycles, mini jet engines. “You had this idea that you’re on the edge of the new world, that the future was being created,” he told us. That “quest for the new” he absorbed in California’s car culture, where “finish fetish” is celebrated, shows up in how he approaches classical sculpture today. His pieces get what he calls an “uncommon vibration” to make them contemporary rather than historical re-enactments.

But there’s a counterpoint. Barry was raised by fundamentalist Christians, applied only to Bible colleges, then at the last minute threw in an application to Pomona College. It changed his life. His favorite artist coming out of college was Duchamp. When he encountered Chinese scholars’ rocks, he saw them as natural inverse readymades. Duchamp recontextualized industrial objects; the Chinese did the same with natural stones. Both were pure acts of connoisseurship.

He never carved a sculpture traditionally from a block of marble. He came to stone through what he calls a “weird backdoor” via digital technology. In the mid-90s, his minimalist work had reached an impasse. The advent of 3D scanning, digital modeling, CNC milling attracted him. He went to the Johnson Atelier in New Jersey looking for digital technology. The fact that it was linked to stone was accidental. Three decades later, he’s still playing with rocks and machines.

The studio we visited is designed entirely around making. Barry worked with architect Andrew Berman for nearly a decade building it from the ground up, designed methodically like a machine for producing sculptures.

Walking in, the courtyard hits you first. Hundreds of tons of stone formerly scattered across the US, Mexico, and Europe, now consolidated in Brooklyn. The orange boulders in front are his favorite: Mexican onyx from Baja California. He and his team went to the desert and brought back 80 tons. You buy stone just because it’s beautiful, he explains. If you need a specific stone later, you may search for years.

The facility has twin 20-ton bridge cranes, a computer-controlled diamond wire saw, a German water filtration system, a Robotor CNC milling machine that arrived in 2023. When you cut stone, you need cooling. Water provides that plus dust control. It turns into mud, gets filtered out, the stone powder separated, the water reused. That’s why the studio stays clean instead of dusty like traditional stone shops.

We saw work at every stage. Medardo Rosso Project pieces in pink Iranian onyx. A giant Hester Diamond portrait (Mike D’s mother from the Beastie Boys, a patron who passed away) in Belgian black marble. A Venus figure cast twenty years ago finally being realized. The Buddha piece for a show in Boston, three stones blending together: French red marble, Mexican onyx, golden honeycomb calcite, inlaid with trompe l’oeil pigments so the stone looks like it magically morphs from one material to another.

Barry showed us scholars’ rocks he’s working on, forms stretched and distorted digitally from natural rocks and fake Chinese specimens he bought at junk shops. Some pieces look almost like museum of natural history specimens, perched on the verge of recognizability. He’s working on new portraits too, getting ready to mount them on their pedestals. The scale of ambition across all of it is striking.

Barry has 18 people working in the studio. He recently instituted a retirement plan. Three kitchens, nine bathrooms, locker rooms with showers. The facility has a digital studio, metal shop, wood shop, hand-carving studios, galleries, even living quarters for visiting artists and late nights. “I can’t do anything without their help,” he said

The work is dialogue with artists across generations. By 3D scanning historical sculptures, he sees and manipulates their works in ways those artists never could: above, below, inside. Digital scanning gives him objective data rather than interpretation. He analyzes what’s there, understands what the original artist was trying to achieve, then pushes things either in their direction or counter to it. The changes he makes, the non-traditional stones, the advanced processes yield completely new works. When his pieces are shown next to historical sources, the difference is immediate and striking.

There’s real tension between permanence and transformation in this work. He uses stone, one of the most enduring materials, making works that will outlast all of us. But his pieces often capture moments of flux, change, movement. The sleeping hermaphrodite is both sexes at once. The scholars’ rocks blur the line between what’s natural and what’s created. His goal is to make something both new and timeless.

Walking out of the studio visit that day, we were aware we weren’t fully ready to appreciate everything that goes in there. Barry is a special artist with a story that spans decades and continues to evolve. His studio in Greenpoint is a monument not just to past work but to what sculpture can become when reverence for history meets the capabilities of the present.

Growing up around Southern California’s aerospace industry, you witnessed a culture of technical innovation and quality control. How did that environment shape your eventual path toward classical sculpture?

The “Quest for the New” I absorbed in the Southern California of my youth has manifested itself in the architectural design and organization of my studio, and in my approach to creating my sculptures. L.A. car and surfboard culture, where “finish fetish” is celebrated, also deeply influenced me. I’ve always been drawn toward technological and aesthetic achievements where exquisite realization goes far beyond what’s functionally necessary. The fact that my “Classical” sculptures are fabricated in a high-tech, ultra-high-finish level manner is my way to imbue them with fever-pitch intensity, to give them an uncommon “vibration”, to make them fresh, unique, contemporary works of art (not historical re-enactments). I’ve looked at and worked directly with a lot of traditional sculptures. In so doing, I’ve come to see those works of the past as often flawed. Whether through damage sustained over time, or because sculptors did not often, for practical reasons, execute their works as full-on, jewel-like treatises, the sculptures of the past we are left with today mostly fall short, in my estimation, of what they could ideally be. I aim to use every technological advantage available to a 21st Century artist to make exquisite works of art, sculptures that go as far beyond the ordinary as possible, with no limits set on their conception and execution.

Your early artistic influences seem to span from Duchamp to Chinese scholars’ rocks – two very different approaches to elevating objects to art. How did these traditions help you develop your own philosophy about sculpture?

The basic radical nature of Duchamp’s work first sucked me into the world of art when I was a 20-year-old student at Pomona College. I’ve been striving to re-imagine what art works and art making are ever since. When I first became acquainted with Chinese scholars’ rocks, I saw them as natural inverse “Readymades”. Duchamp brilliantly changed the perception and import of industrially-produced objects (a urinal, a bottle rack, a snow shovel, etc.) by recontextualizing them. The Chinese did the same with natural objects (stones). In both cases, pure acts of connoisseurship – the selection of objects, their removal from their normal context, and their re-presentation on pedestals / bases – yielded sculptures of profound, innovative beauty.

I am not a reflexive stone sculptor. I constantly question and re-examine my decision to use the material as my primary medium by calling into question and emphasizing it’s essence, its mineral presence, while at the same time addressing head-on the very concept of what “making” an artwork is. Since I never have carved a sculpture in the traditional method from a block of marble, making sculptures from rocks never has seemed a self-evidently proper, natural, advance, “arty” thing to do. With my Scholars’ Rocks, my goal was simply the perverse carving of a rock from a rock. Unlike the Chinese, I didn’t just select a stone, I also shaped it into the form of another (imaginary) stone. I am now currently engaged again, after a hiatus of many years, with my Scholars’ Rock project. One goal for the new sculptures I will produce in that vein will be to further blur the line between what’s natural and what’s created.

You came to stone sculpture through what you’ve called a “weird backdoor” via digital technology. Could you talk about that transition from minimalist work to becoming deeply engaged with classical techniques?

After my mid-90’s shows of suspended black and white geometric Corian sculptures at Angles, Mario Diacono, and Luhring Augustine Galleries, my work had reached an insular, self-referential impasse. I felt that my aesthetic decisions were still circumscribed by my fealty to the precepts of minimal and conceptual art – and monochrome / fundamental painting, in particular – even though, formally, my art, with its occasional inexplicable decorative flourishes, had often moved to the Rococo-esque fringes of reductive orthodoxy. By 1997, like a habitual Roman Catholic, I was still attending Mass even though I was possessed of little belief. The extreme labor requirements of producing my work, towards an end that held little of the revelatory unknown, had begun to weigh on me. Simultaneously, the advent of new digital technologies – 3D scanning, digital modeling, CNC milling – attracted me. I hoped that those technologies would enable me to produce new works in a completely new way. My goal was to create portrait sculptures – sculptures of human heads, shapes (objects if you will) of great complexity – without utilizing traditional methods.

One of my initial exploratory trips during that period was to the Johnson Atelier in New Jersey. There they had just established a Stone Division equipped with the latest computer-controlled machines, machines for making stone sculptures. I came for the technology, and the fact that it was linked to stone was “accidental”, unintended. Three decades later, I’m still playing with rocks and machines, and my state-of-the-art studio complex in Brooklyn – 12 years in the making – is dedicated primarily to the production of stone sculptures.

Your work often deals with preserving and transforming historical moments through contemporary means. What does it mean to you to be in dialogue with artists across centuries?

By 3D scanning historical sculptures I am able to see and work with the creations of my illustrious forebears in a wonderfully intimate way. I can see and manipulate their works in ways – above, below, inside – those artists could have not imagined. It’s a great privilege to be in such direct dialog with great art of the past, and I take that privilege very seriously. I learn everything I can about my historical models. The changes I ultimately institute to the digital models derived from my initial 3D scanning of ancient works often come to me through that research. Although indebted to their historical models, the many subtle changes in form I institute, the non-traditional stone types I employ, and the advanced processes I use to shape my sculptures, yield completely new works of art.

There’s an interesting tension in your practice between permanence and transformation – you work in stone, one of the most enduring materials, yet your pieces often capture moments of change. How do you think about this interplay?

It’s daunting to make aesthetic decisions that require months and years of work to realize. Even more daunting is to know that by choosing that most venerable of sculpture mediums, stone, I am electing to make truly permanent works, objects that will live on for centuries and join the many-millenia-long line of petro monuments produced since the dawn of human history. I shoulder that stony weight with great seriousness of purpose. My twofold task? – to make something both new and timeless.