A Conversation with the Artist
What sparked your interest in making metal sculptures?
My love for metal began a long time ago when I was just a boy. Our family ran an automotive business and at an early age I became involved in its operation. I remember as a youngster being dropped off by my parents at the shop on closed Sundays. There alone with all those wonderful tools and materials I would work on some hot rod project spending long hours grinding, shaping and welding old metal parts together. At times the shop’s air would be so filled with rust particles and sparks that you barely could see a foot in front of you. I had such zeal and passion back then for all things metal, particularly if it was attached to wheels. Fast forward many decades and here I am relishing the same creative activities I did as a young adult only with a much different and distinct purpose. Nowadays, you’ll find me in my humble studio on a Sunday grinding and welding, rust and sparks flying everywhere as I torture some piece of steel into submission, and ultimately into a sculpture. It is very nostalgic and cathartic as well, just as it was back in my youth. Channeling hours of creative energy into a benign pile of rusted metal that then is textured into a unique form or shape is really such a rewarding endeavor for me.
What style of art do you prefer to create?
Right now it seems that the more abstract, the more surreal, the better I like it when it comes to sculpture. Of course, as it is with most artists, I wish to do something no one else has ever done before, creating art that elicits robust emotions from the viewer. Usually I lean a bit to the minimal side, creating artwork that is not too overly complicated visually. My personal studies into Paleolithic art had a big influence on my sculpture making some years ago. Venus, Stick Man and Birdman are all monumental sculptures I’ve fashioned that were inspired by the earliest of artists. Take my anthropomorphic sculpture Birdman for example: The original inspiration came from the surreal image of a half man - half bird painted on a cave wall in France some 17,000 years ago. Working in steel I scaled my three dimensional version of a birdman to a towering 14’ tall! Why those ancient artists depicted such things on those dimly lit cave walls will probably always remain an enigma!
You like to work with metal scraps in making your art. Why?
I’m like a kid in a candy store when it comes to junk metal piles! Wow… all those phantasmal metal shapes and biomorphic forms, some that would probably be impossible to duplicate, just begging to be dragged out of the pile and taken to the studio. I really relish the whole process from foraging for shapely scrapes to the conceptualization of the sculpture to the actual molding, melding and welding of the incongruous and disparate elements into a unified and refined art-form. One example of scraps being used is in my sculpture Zorab, a creation inspired by mysterious reoccurring grim-reaper like dreams I experienced. The bulk of this sculpture is made up of old rusty metal shelving captured from a nearby junk pile. Or, take my sculpture, She Serpent, a piece exploring the nature of melding snakes and the human female form on a monumental scale. It was constructed using over a mile of rusted barbed wire found in a heap in the woods on my property at ‘Sculptridge’.
You indicated that you create ‘outsider art’. Please explain.
I guess you should consider me an ‘outsider artist’. I have no formal art training and for the most part work outside the official art milieu. I relish the fact I’m self-taught in most things and firmly believe in the concept of experiential learning. I like working under my own vision without anyone else’s rules to encumber me in making of my muse. Occasionally I have exhibited in local galleries and events over the last decade or so but presently I just continue to enjoy filling up my seven acres of trails and woods with unusually shaped, textured and colored constructs. I hope to do this until it is time to put the torch and welder aside and shut the studio lights off for the last time.
My love for metal began a long time ago when I was just a boy. Our family ran an automotive business and at an early age I became involved in its operation. I remember as a youngster being dropped off by my parents at the shop on closed Sundays. There alone with all those wonderful tools and materials I would work on some hot rod project spending long hours grinding, shaping and welding old metal parts together. At times the shop’s air would be so filled with rust particles and sparks that you barely could see a foot in front of you. I had such zeal and passion back then for all things metal, particularly if it was attached to wheels. Fast forward many decades and here I am relishing the same creative activities I did as a young adult only with a much different and distinct purpose. Nowadays, you’ll find me in my humble studio on a Sunday grinding and welding, rust and sparks flying everywhere as I torture some piece of steel into submission, and ultimately into a sculpture. It is very nostalgic and cathartic as well, just as it was back in my youth. Channeling hours of creative energy into a benign pile of rusted metal that then is textured into a unique form or shape is really such a rewarding endeavor for me.
What style of art do you prefer to create?
Right now it seems that the more abstract, the more surreal, the better I like it when it comes to sculpture. Of course, as it is with most artists, I wish to do something no one else has ever done before, creating art that elicits robust emotions from the viewer. Usually I lean a bit to the minimal side, creating artwork that is not too overly complicated visually. My personal studies into Paleolithic art had a big influence on my sculpture making some years ago. Venus, Stick Man and Birdman are all monumental sculptures I’ve fashioned that were inspired by the earliest of artists. Take my anthropomorphic sculpture Birdman for example: The original inspiration came from the surreal image of a half man - half bird painted on a cave wall in France some 17,000 years ago. Working in steel I scaled my three dimensional version of a birdman to a towering 14’ tall! Why those ancient artists depicted such things on those dimly lit cave walls will probably always remain an enigma!
You like to work with metal scraps in making your art. Why?
I’m like a kid in a candy store when it comes to junk metal piles! Wow… all those phantasmal metal shapes and biomorphic forms, some that would probably be impossible to duplicate, just begging to be dragged out of the pile and taken to the studio. I really relish the whole process from foraging for shapely scrapes to the conceptualization of the sculpture to the actual molding, melding and welding of the incongruous and disparate elements into a unified and refined art-form. One example of scraps being used is in my sculpture Zorab, a creation inspired by mysterious reoccurring grim-reaper like dreams I experienced. The bulk of this sculpture is made up of old rusty metal shelving captured from a nearby junk pile. Or, take my sculpture, She Serpent, a piece exploring the nature of melding snakes and the human female form on a monumental scale. It was constructed using over a mile of rusted barbed wire found in a heap in the woods on my property at ‘Sculptridge’.
You indicated that you create ‘outsider art’. Please explain.
I guess you should consider me an ‘outsider artist’. I have no formal art training and for the most part work outside the official art milieu. I relish the fact I’m self-taught in most things and firmly believe in the concept of experiential learning. I like working under my own vision without anyone else’s rules to encumber me in making of my muse. Occasionally I have exhibited in local galleries and events over the last decade or so but presently I just continue to enjoy filling up my seven acres of trails and woods with unusually shaped, textured and colored constructs. I hope to do this until it is time to put the torch and welder aside and shut the studio lights off for the last time.
