Before becoming an artist, George Wyllie worked as a customs officer. Living with his family in Gourock, a small town on the outskirts of Glasgow, he played the double bass in a band that performed in local pubs. Art was just an “extra thing” in his life. But in 1965, at 45, Wyllie decided to make art the main thing in his life. He called himself a “scul?tor” because a question mark, he said, needed to be at the center of everything. Wyllie’s big break came in 1987, when he created the full-scale sculpture The Straw Locomotive. It was made of straw over wire mesh, and it hung from a crane at Sprinburn for months; then it was ceremonially burned. Next came Paper Boat, and other ingenious machines. Wyllie died in 2012, at age 91. This exhibition in his native Scotland presents Wyllie’s “Spires,” a series of simple sculptural forms that resemble the sky-poking masts of ships. —Elena Clavarino