You don’t just look at Leonardo Drew’s Number 73S.
You experience it.
It’s big. It’s intense. Made of broken wood panels—splintered, weathered, layered, stacked, sometimes painted, sometimes raw—and somehow it feels more alive than half the objects in the room. This isn’t a sculpture you casually walk past. This sculpture pulls you in.
At first, you notice the material: distressed wood, salvaged fragments, pieces that seem almost discarded. But linger for a moment, and the work begins to shift. What looks like debris becomes rhythm. What feels chaotic reveals composition. The wall turns into a landscape. Or a body. Or an architecture. Or something unnamed, but deeply familiar.
That’s Drew’s magic.
He works with materials that carry history—wood that’s been used, marked, worn down—and gives them new life. Not polished. Not perfected. Honest. Every crack, every edge, every trace of time is visible. Instead of hiding that history, he builds the work from it.
Number 73S holds tension:
order and disorder,
control and improvisation,
stillness and movement.
Your eye never settles. It travels, scans, loops—caught by a jutting panel, slipping into shadow, then jumping to a lighter section. The piece choreographs how you look. You’re not just observing it; you’re navigating it.
The materials themselves are humble: broken wood, repetition, fragments. Yet the impact is monumental. Drew transforms what could have been waste into something powerful, almost sacred. The work doesn’t tell you what to think. It creates a space where something happens—visually, emotionally, physically. All responses are valid. That openness is intentional.
Number 73S reminds us that beauty doesn’t have to be smooth. Meaning doesn’t have to be neat. Broken things can hold immense power. It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence.
That’s not decoration.
That’s art doing real work.
You can see this piece—free and open to the public—at Seeing the What, a Lobby pop-up exhibition curated by Sima Familant, at The Writer’s Block, 333 NW Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97209.
Opening Thursday, March 5, from 5–8 pm, with gallery hours Thursday–Saturday, 12–4 pm, through May 23.
Come check it out!
Sima is the curator of The Lobby – https://ellenbrowningbuilding.com/the-lobby/
