Hugh Townley’s Einstein, Eddington, Edison and Ford is from 1979.

NORTON, Mass. The economy may be tanking, but the number of exhibits devoted to prominent Rhode Island artists (or at least prominent artists with Rhode Island connections) just keeps rising.

So far, the list includes “Chihuly at RISD,” “Building Books: The Art of David Macaulay,” and “Harry Callahan: Eleanor” — all currently at the RISD Museum — which celebrate, respectively, the work of glassmaker Dale Chihuly, author-illustrator David Macaulay and photographer Harry Callahan.

Now comes “Hugh Townley: The Wizard with Wood,” a terrific exhibit devoted to the work of sculptor and former Brown University professor Hugh Townley. The show, which features about 80 of Townley’s trademark wood sculptures and wall reliefs as well as a selection of prints, drawings and artist’s books, runs through Dec. 1 at the Beard & Weil Galleries at Wheaton College.

If Townley’s name isn’t as familiar as those of, say, Chihuly and Callahan, it’s not for lack of talent. Indeed, when it comes to his signature pieces — rough-hewn yet intricately interlocking sculptures that feel at once intimate and monumental, modern yet timeless — Townley had few equals.

He was, as the show’s title accurately puts it, a “wizard with wood.”

At the same time, Townley, who died in February at age 85, probably would have been the first to admit — or more likely complain — that his work often got less attention than it deserved.

“Deep down, I do think he felt a little underappreciated,” says Anni MacKay, a Vermont gallery owner who got to know Townley near the end his career. “He was always fiercely independent, which made it more difficult for him to do the networking and socializing that artists often need to get ahead. And then there was his work. In the 1960s and ’70s, when Hugh was making some of his most innovative pieces, the market for large-scale wood sculpture just wasn’t there.”

Still, MacKay thinks the time may be ripe for a Townley revival.

“One of the great things about Hugh’s work is the way it appeals to so many different people,” she says. “If you know something about the history of modern art, discovering Hugh’s sculptures for the first time is finding a new chapter to a story you already know. People who don’t have an art background, meanwhile, respond to the sculptures’ beauty and craftsmanship.”

Ann H. Murray, a Wheaton art historian (and Brown University grad) who organized the exhibit with MacKay, agrees that Townley’s work deserves to be better known.

“He was incredibly inventive,” she says. “I’m not sure you’d put him in the very top tier of postwar American artists. But if he’s not at the top, he’s definitely near it.”

Certainly, the Wheaton show makes a strong case for upgrading Townley’s art-world stature. Though his work draws on a wide range of sources — everything from Pop Art and Minimalism to African and pre-Columbian sculpture — the results never feel forced or derivative.

That’s especially true of Townley’s most striking pieces — the big multi-part sculptures and reliefs that often suggest giant carved-wood mosaics. In these works, Townley typically relied on a familiar repertoire of shapes and images — some recognizable, others more abstract — that he continued to refine and add to throughout his career. These include the stylized hands, hearts, stars and arrows that appear in many of his sculptures and give his work an instant visual appeal.

Other shapes, including freeform curves, arches and amoeba-like shapes, are more abstract and reflect Townley’s ties to both Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Townley, of course, wasn’t the first artist to mix simple yet symbolically-charged images with more abstract shapes. Others, including the great Spanish Surrealist Joan Miro and the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, had been there before him. So had a number of Abstract Expressionist artists, including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Sculptors as diverse as Constantin Brancusi, David Smith and Isamu Noguchi also developed symbol-laden sculptural vocabularies.

Still, Townley managed to set himself apart.

For one thing, he worked almost exclusively in wood, a medium that many 20th-century sculptors shunned in favor of more durable materials such as steel, stone and bronze. Townley’s choice of tools — mainly jigsaws and band saws — was even more unusual. Though prized by woodworkers for their ability to navigate tight curves and corners, such tools are rarely used to make the kind of large-scale wood sculptures that became Townley’s stock and trade.

At the same time, Townley used power saws in much the same way a sculptor uses a chisel — to cut, gouge and shape blocks of wood (usually mahogany, but also oak, maple, ebony and plywood) into the forms that he wanted. He then assembled these forms into a finished work, deftly playing contrasting shapes, colors and even wood grains against each other.

The result was something completely new — a kind of three-dimensional mosaic that mixed elements of painting, sculpture, drawing and even typography.

A good example of Townley’s handiwork is Einstein, Eddington, Edison and Ford, a large wall relief that greets visitors as they enter the Wheaton galleries. Created in 1979, it consists of a series of blocky semi-abstract forms — among them, a flower-like swirl, a phallic arrow and rounded, tree-like shape — that protrude slightly from a darker background.

Though the work is made entirely from mahogany, subtle differences in color, grain and surface patterns created during the sawing process make each element stand out. It’s as if Norm Abram (of WGBH’s New Yankee Workshop fame) were channeling the playful modernism of artists like Klee and Miro.

Other works offers variations on the same theme.

One of the show’s earliest works, A View of Wisconsin from 1958, suggests a semi-abstract landscape, complete with hills, valleys and neatly plowed fields. Another wall relief, A Brief History of Halley’s Comet from 1984, features a stylized comet surrounded by abstract swirls and squiggles that evoke distant galaxies.

(In an inspired touch, the same work features several background panels cut from pieces of bug-eaten wood. The holes, in turn, provide a starry backdrop for the rest of the composition.)

In addition to his wall reliefs, Townley also made free-standing sculptures.

Many have figurative references, including Birdsmith, a 1961 work that suggests a kind of rough-hewn robot, and Keeping Place with Big Ears, a 1980 piece whose front panels (they’re the “ears” referred to in the title) open to reveal a series of hidden drawers and compartments.

Even when his style became more abstract, Townley still found ways to make real-world connections. The so-called Mandan Posts, a series of works from the early 1960s, for example, come in a variety of shapes and sizes and constitute a kind of extended sculptural family.

One of the surprises of the show is how quickly Townley developed his distinctive style and way of working.

Born in 1923 in Lafayette, Ind., he served in the army during World War II before enrolling in the fine arts program at the University of Wisconsin. After graduation, he moved to Paris, where he studied with Ossip Zadkine, a Russian sculptor known for his Cubist-style bronze sculptures. He also spent time in London and Holland.

In 1952, Townley returned to the United States, where his talent was quickly recognized. In 1955, for example, his work was included in “New Talent,” a major survey exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. A year later, he was part of the Whitney Museum’s “Young America” exhibition, which highlighted the work of outstanding young artists. Other exhibitions followed, including one-man shows at Yale University (1966), the Tyler School of Art (1972) and the University of Oregon (1976).

Townley also embarked on a teaching career, first at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee and later at Beloit College and Boston University. His tenure at Brown lasted from 1961 until his retirement in 1989.

Though the Wheaton show focuses mainly on Townley’s mature work, several pieces date from the late 1950s, a period when many artists were searching for alternatives to the emotional excesses of Abstract Expressionism. A group of small ceramic pieces from 1957, for example, features several shapes that would become part of Townley’s sculptural vocabu- lary. Another work — this one undated — depicts a stylized bird executed in bronze.

Still, these pieces feel tentative compared to the wood sculptures that Townley started making in the late 1950s and early 60s — works such as A View of Wisconsin (1958), Mandan’s Holiday (1963) and Wendigo (1963). With their boldly abstract shapes and rough-hewn look, these sculptures achieve a remarkable balance between old and new, primitive and modern.

Though his style and way of working remained more or less intact throughout his career, Townley did introduce new wrinkles from time to time. In the late 1980s and ’90s, he began painting his sculptures and wood reliefs in bright primary colors. He also branched out into other mediums, including printmaking and book design.

Near the end of his career, Townley discovered a new material: plywood.

According to MacKay, the change was made mainly for practical reasons. A victim of Parkinson’s disease, Townley found it easier to lift the lightweight sheets of plywood than the heavy blocks of hardwood that he was used to working with. But the plywood also added a new dimension to Townley’s work.

By angling the blade of his saw so that its sliced through several layers at once, he could create elaborate patterns that mimicked the effects of a painter’s brush.

“In a sense, that’s everything you need to know about Hugh,” MacKay says. “He was someone who could take a potential liability and turn it into something beautiful.”

“Hugh Townley: The Wizard with Wood” runs through Dec. 1 at the Beard & Weil Galleries at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. For more information, call (508) 286-3644 or visit www.wheatoncollege.edu/

gallery.

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