Art After My Own Heart

Alex Bay, Construction No. 1, Night Life, mixed media, 2001-2008 (detail)

R.L. Croft, Silo, mixed media

I had the pleasure of hearing an artists' talk last week at the McLean Project for the Arts at the McLean Community Center. The show featured the work of R.L. Croft, an artist from Manassas whose work I greatly admire and Alex Bay, an artist from Loudoun County whose work was unfamiliar to me, but equally inspiring. They're both sculptors who use found and reclaimed objects in incredible ways.

I'm not really comfortable writing about art so maybe it would be best if you just took a look at the MPA's site for a description of their work. Better yet, go to the show and see their work for yourself. It's a small show, but well worth the visit.

www.mpaart.org

Happy Customer!

Chris Noel is my designer art hero. I genuinely admire what he's accomplished in his budding career as a fine artist and his opinion truly matters to me. Although I sometimes wonder if he's just being polite (he'll tell you what he really thinks, but he's also a very nice guy), it delights me to no end that he seems to really like what I'm doing with my "art."

As I was packing up my work at the close of the Private Arts show last Saturday, Chris reminded me how much he liked Fossil, one of my pieces in the show. Though I have grown to really love that particular piece, I really had no idea what would happen with it once I took it home. Most likely, it would end up in my garage since it isn't exactly one of the family's favorites, so the idea of trading it for one of Chris' works was something I couldn't pass up. Chris was delighted to take it home with him — despite the risk of getting a hernia — and reports that his wife really likes it too (whew!). What did I get in return? Still deciding, but I'll let you know when I do.

See more of Chris' work at www.postconsumerrealism.com.

Found, Part III

Found this two-part wood piece a couple weeks ago while camping with my son's Cub Scout pack at Pohick Bay Park. After camping, he and I went fishing along the Potomac and I found some great pieces of weathered wood, including this cool thing. It's more wood than rust, but it's still pretty sweet.

Found, Part II

Ever since the positive reception my rebar and concrete sculpture Fossil got at the Private Arts show opening in March, I've been on the lookout for more pieces like it. They're not very common so I wasn't expecting to find anything for a while, if ever. Imagine my excitement (yes, excitement) when I hit the jackpot not once but TWICE this past weekend.

The first came on Saturday at Lake Fairfax Park near our house in Reston. After dropping my son off for his fishing class, I went for a hike around the park and found a baby turtle, an entire deer skeleton, and a juicy piece of rebar and concrete just lying in the woods near a gravel road. I showed the turtle to my son and we relocated him to a safer spot, decided to pass on the deer skull (still a bit meaty), but went back in the car to pick up the rust. Pretty productive for a drizzly Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday, we spent a nice afternoon at the Workhouse Arts Center (more on that later) in Lorton then headed north to DC for dinner at Comet Ping Pong. After some great pizza and ping pong with the family, we left for home, passing through the fancy-schmancy neighborhood of Chevy Chase. The road at that point was really narrow (three lanes squeezed into the space of two normal lanes) and the houses were huge so I was alternating between watching the cars next to us, marveling at the houses, and scanning the sides of the road for anything of interest.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the tell-tale shape of broken concrete with a speck of orange that usually means rebar and my pulse quickened. I turned right at the next street and got the expected "Dad, where are we going?" from the back seats. I could feel my wife Susan's eyes rolling in her head when I said that I had "spotted something." Thankfully, there were no further questions as I pulled over, jumped out of the car, and lugged my heavy prize back to the car.

One of the best parts about this "art" that I do is the unexpected finds that happen every day. You never know when you're going to stumble across something really great and it makes every car ride or walk around the neighborhood a treasure hunt.

Found, Part I

I first saw this piece driving home from hanging work at the Private Arts show in Alexandria in March. I was still being cautious about lifting too much with my surgically-repaired back so regretfully left it beside the side of Lee Highway where it was resting against a sign. Last week, I found myself in the neighborhood again and decided not to let it slip my grasp. It's about 20" across and super-heavy, but well worth the effort of schlepping it back to the car at 10:00 at night.

Wow!

My "I'm a serious artiste" pose with Fossil in the foreground.

Last night was the opening of the Private Arts gallery show at Artery 717 in Alexandria and I have to say that I was totally blown away by the response. There were probably close to 300 (maybe more) people there over the course of the evening looking at more than 140 works of art in the show by almost 40 artists. I've never been to an opening like that and, as one friend described to me, it was like a Hollywood movie set in Greenwich Village starring Doug Fuller as Andy Warhol. Now, I am nothing like Andy Warhol, but I appreciate the comparison.

It was incredible to finally share my rust love with people beyond my immediate family and friends. My wife, kids, parents, neighbors, friends and clients were there (around 25 in all) and I got a tremendous amount of positive feedback on my work. Nothing sold, but I wasn't really expecting it to), but one gentleman was really enamored of a piece I call "Fossil": a rusty pieces of rebar with piece of concrete attached connected to a piece of wood I found. I left around midnight on a creative high!

Best question from the evening: a young teenage son of a friend asked if I used quotations around the word art on my name tag because I was unsure whether or not it was really art that I was doing. Pretty perceptive kid! ; )

Here are some (not so great) photos of a few of the pieces in the show:

Love/Hate (found metal, wood and cardboard on a piece of an old wooden trunk) 21"x19"x10"

Tone (found corrugated metal on an old breadboard) 20"x25.5"

Wingardium Leviosa (found metal and wood) 27.5"x11"

Almost (found metal grill on painted wood) 21.5"x21.5"

Rusty the Clown (found metal on the top of an old wooden trunk) 16"x33"

Peace (found metal on a piece of an old wooden trunk) 20"x20"

Fossil (found rebar and concrete on found wood beam) 19"x25"x15"

My Favorite Quotes...and Why

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." – Marcel Proust

"It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope..." – Dr. Seuss

“Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain." – Edward de Bono

"I like nonsense — it wakes up the brain cells." – Dr. Seuss

I've always been a sucker for a good quote. The first two above succinctly sum up the philosophy behind my rust art: finding new places is less important than discovering new things in familiar surroundings. For example, just yesterday I took a long hike/walk on the trails around my home in Reston, Virginia. These were paths I'd trod many times before, yet I still managed to find a great piece of rusted chain link fence, a cool section of a cut stump and an old weathered shipping palette with rusted nails. One of my favorite things about my rust obsession is the fact that it's made me more aware of my surroundings and given me an excuse to get out of my car and see things in a much more intimate way than I ever did before. I'd highly recommend it — even if you're not hunting for rust!

The bottom two quotes reflect my attitude towards life: that the act of finding humor in the everyday is in itself an art form. And in some weird way, making "art" from junk you find on the streets has a certain humor to it.

My Private Arts are Showing!

I'm excited to announce that nine of my rust pieces will be on display at Private Arts: A Designer's Art Exhibition at Artery 717 in Alexandria. Tonight, March 21st, is the show opening and it will hang until April 18th. I've been on the committee organizing the show (it's taken us over a year to pull it off!) and it is so amazing to see it finally come together. There are over 140 works by almost 40 artists who, in their day jobs are graphic designers, photographers and other professional creatives. The show is sponsored by the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington (ADCMW). Check out www.artery717.com for more details and gallery hours.

Scanned "Art"

Since this blog is pretty new, and I may not get to post as much as I want to right away, here's a sample of some of the many (smaller) things I've collected and scanned over the past 5 years or so. My process is fairly simple, but it seems to work okay. I use a typical flatbed scanner and scan most things at 1500 dpi or higher, which can make for pretty big files. Most of these I print out using an Epson 1280 or Epson 4000 inkjet printer on Epson watercolor paper with pretty good results. A few pieces have been output by a service bureau at a larger size using the giclee process.

This one reminds me of a chicken for some reason. A rusty chicken.


This is on of my favorites. It's pretty small, less than 2". I love the expression on "his" face.


Is it a dog? A moose? I'm not quite sure...



This is one of the earliest pieces I found. I was at my father's soaring club (that's sailplanes) and noticed this little piece of metal, probably 2"x3" on the ground. It had a wonderful patina: a mix of rust, dirt and moss. I scanned both sides and really liked how they looked blown up huge to about 24"x36". They have a real painterly feel to them. I went to look at it several weeks after I had initially scanned it and found all the moss gone! It was a good reminder that the stuff I collect is constantly changing.


I found this at the beach and love it's organic jaggedness.

"Artist's" Statement

This is what I had to say about myself for the Private Arts show. I'm still not sure I qualify as an artist and I hope it doesn't sound too pompous!

A while back, while working at my design firm Hinge, I found myself drawn one day to a beautifully sculptured, rusted crankshaft discarded behind our building. Soon, I was collecting rusted metal of all sizes, particularly pieces that resembled letters of the alphabet. I have always prided myself in being able to appreciate the unusual or absurd and finding beauty in cast-off objects seemed to suit me well.

After years of “rust harvesting,” my collection of rusted metal and other found objects have finally started to find themselves being combined into sculptural objects or scanned on a flatbed scanner to produce abstract works of what I hope might be considered “art.” I particularly enjoy taking something small and seemingly insignificant and blowing it up to find the hidden textures, thereby giving it new meaning and significance. If my work can also produce a smile or a puzzled look from a viewer, then all the better.

What I’m best at is spotting things. I love the feeling of finding beauty in something that others have ignored. Like the design work I do, if I can make someone stop and take a look at something, you’ve done your job.