This unusual fusion of abilities has created a continuing series of large-scale works that have entered into the common awareness of contemporary sculpture and into museum collections throughout the world. In 1985, Snelson was awarded an honorary doctorate in Arts and Humane Letters by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. In 1999, he became a Biennial Honoree at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, and will be given the International Sculpture Center s Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. He constructs his sculptures from stainless steel rods and tension wires, which he combines in modular configurations that repeat across each work. The rods and wires distribute a scheme of compression and tension, or push and pull the rods refuse to collapse and the wires are stretched to their limits.
Every part is necessary, nothing is redundant.
Move or remove any element, and the form fails. The structure of the universe is a matter of the arrangement of fundamental forces. Everything is made of forces. Matter is nothing other than stabilized energy, forces that hold themselves in place by their own force. It is force that is the foundation of everything, the source of all creation.