found elegance
Found Elegance is my recollection of the Spring 2001 show of the same name on exhibit at the Bismark Wilson Gallery in Fells Point, Baltimore.
Found Elegance
Claudia and I finished hanging the show on Friday evening. We were tired but enthusiastic about the show. Wade was able to join us in time for dinner just down South Ann St. at a very cool little dining establishment known as Peter's Inn. One word here: Yum.
I'd met Claudia Bismark and Wade Wilson a couple of years prior when they opened their gallery as an additional venue for the Baltimore Creative Alliance Members Show of which I happened to be participating. We hit it off immediately and I'm very happy to say they have been my dear friends ever since.
It was dark when we finished dinner and we meandered back up the street to the gallery. Claudia had left the gallery lights on (on purpose I suspect) and as we walked up to the front window, I told her I was going to try to encounter it as a stranger completely unfamiliar with the work. You know, Fresh Eyes.
I was unprepared for my own reaction. I encountered a dazzling art space full of work that beckoned for my engagement. My knees nearly buckled. It was like all my work had died and gone up to heaven. No shit, it really felt like that. Warm wooden floors and church white walls as the backdrop for my perfectly positioned and gorgeously illuminated sculptures. It's not often that one gets to witness a gallery full of one's work exhibited to near perfection... and I was not prepared for it. Truth be told, I actually felt light headed.
It was one of those moments in life where the world seems to stop for a few seconds, on your account. A moment that turns an instant into a lifelong memory. It's one of those memories I store in my heart. And as I was about to learn, it was just the first of many to come.
The Opening Reception was, well, glorious. I don't know any other way to describe it. Folks came from all over town and then some. Wade & Claudia, always the perfect hosts welcomed all with a greeting, warm and genuine which set a wonderfully friendly, upbeat and engaging energy throughout the entire run. I have never met so many interesting people.
Everyone seemed to be, if not artists themselves, then hip deep in the art world on some level. The place was full the whole day and the next. We had folks visit from Art spaces around town like the BMA, MICA, Johns Hopkins, School Bus 33, on and on. And in wonderful contrast to that, neighborhood folks from right off the street who looked in, liked what they saw, and hung out.
Most impressive to me though was the many working Baltimore artists who showed up. I so enjoy talking with other serious, full time artists. I made friends with many folks that I am still good friends with 20 years later, all because of that show.
As I indicated, Sunday was another beautiful day. It started when my elderly parents came early to see the show. They had recently moved back to Baltimore, their hometown. I think it was the first show of mine that they could attend and this was the perfect place an immigrant neighborhood in old Baltimore, it was the Baltimore they knew. The Baltimore where Ostrowskis Polish Sausage of Bank St still sits right across the street. For me it felt like one of those 'full circle' life events I was born just a dozen or so blocks north at Johns Hopkins.
I could sense my folks comfort in these surroundings. My Dad inquired about an antique headlight I had used in one of my sculptures. When I told him it was from '36 Ford he immediately related the story of him & my mother riding all the way to Ocean City in the rumble seat of his buddy's '36 Ford Coupe. There was no Bay Bridge in those days, you had to drive around the bay. A fantastic story told as only my Dad could, we all howled with laughter and my poor Mother actually blushed.
Another cherished moment.
Later that afternoon a large contingent of my local peeps from Shepherdstown made the pilgrimage and I remember it being a warm wonderful sun and gallery filled afternoon. The mood was bright & happy, I was selling my work, and I remember reminding myself to lap it all up while I could, rarely is life so perfect.
Subsequent weekends through April, I was present at the gallery on Saturdays. This allowed the opportunity for folks to come back and really take in the work and it gave me the time to converse with them. Again, the spectrum of diversity was lovely to me. I had so many genuinely interesting conversations with total strangers. There was a very positive atmosphere present throughout and it energized and excited me to my core.
Another hugely pleasant surprise was that my Mom would come to the gallery most afternoons I was there. What I noticed was how much she enjoyed being my Mom, talking to everyone, happy to be there and most of all I got a sense that she was very proud of me. And that my friends is golden. My heart filled watching her truly enjoy the moment. I can still see her about the gallery conversing and laughing with everyone. I am very thankful to have that wonderful heartfelt memory of her.
One Saturday afternoon it was particularly warm for March and we had the Gallery door open to the sidewalk. At one point I was standing outside looking up South Ann St for no particular reason & I saw a woman approaching carrying several pieces of scrap metal, which immediately caught my attention.
I know what it is like to comb city streets for scrap metal because I've done it. Once in the still mostly industrialized Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn I was showing my work in a loft gallery, 5 floors up in an old warehouse building right on the East River. I was also staying there for a couple of days during my opening.
One morning I grabbed a 5 gallon bucket out of my truck and started walking around the neighborhood picking up bits & pieces of scrap metal. I filled my bucket 3 times and I had covered only a couple of blocks, all good stuff too, different from what usually falls my way. I was ecstatic.
So when I saw this lady carrying a collection of street junk, I was touched in a place that rarely gets touched. I know I was smiling very broadly and before I spoke, she asked me if this was the gallery showing the scrap metal artist.
'Why yes it is." I offered, delighted.
"Is it OK if I set my stuff down out here against the building?"
"Sure, -what 'cha got there anyway?"
"Just some material I picked up on my way here."
I helped with her treasures and she disappeared into the gallery.
I saw she had mostly odd & end steel scraps, a few discarded and damaged bits of hardware and broken pieces of aluminum no parking sign. Not bad, not bad at all, actually pretty damn good. I must say that it is a bit unusual to see people picking up junk metal. In many cities you see aluminum can collectors combing the streets at night and the vultures who steal copper from derelict buildings but that's about it. Not too many folks picking up bits of scrap out of the gutter especially in industrial areas.
This I know first hand and I'm not one bit ashamed to say I've haunted not only the gutters of several cities but dumpsters outside of fabrication shops as well, all in search of my golden rust.
Once I loaded my car with scrap steel fished from a dumpster in New Orleans at 4am. I had so much scrap stuffed into it that the front end was riding light and let me tell you it was a long drive back to Maryland, but so well worth it.
I also remember getting some pretty intense looks on my Williamsburg street scrap sojourn. No worries though, self consciousness concerning junk collecting gets swallowed whole very quickly by the raw desire to collect it. I generally just make a distorted face or fart I find either works well.
You can't make art with scrap if you don't have any scrap. Not to mention that the stories in the scrap are often integral to the art. At least as far as I am concerned. Many young artists have asked where they can find some junk to work with. Here's the thing: if you have to ask, you probably should find another medium to work with. How and where you happen to obtain your material is integral if not sacred to the dance, or so I believe.
She reappeared and beamed right at me and I beamed back at her out of respect for actually picking scrap off the streets of Baltimore on her way to my show. She was older than me, I'd say by 10 or 15 yrs., well coiffed, and apparently had just gone through a very nasty divorce she didn't look like a welder.
I asked what got her interested in scrap metal. She said her therapist recommended she start making artwork and long story short, she found herself, or at least her bearings, by creating her artwork.
When I asked her why scrap metal she said because it had found her. Since her divorce she'd been riding the bus and started noticing scrap just laying around the city so she decided to start picking it up and in doing so formed a sort of connection with what she had collected. Amen Sister!
It's a rare and wonderful occurrence when two minds meet on the same scrap pile and dance to the same scrap music, even if for only a brief interlude. That's what happened.
I don't remember ever meeting anyone else who, like myself, was intense enough to pick up scrap & junk metal off the street and carry it around for use in their art. I know they exist but there is something magically liberating about the compulsion, the excitement, and the ritual of collecting scrap as if you were mining diamonds no one else can see.
As we shared that holy experience our conversation grew quite animated. In a good way. No, in a great way. It felt like there was a big ball of super positive energy surrounding our conversation. We shared a unique, almost ethereal understanding about scrap metal. Like we were speaking in tongues only we could understand. That's the only way I can describe it.
That's Art on a whole other level and not only is it rare but also extremely fleeting. I never even got her name because it never crossed my mind, we had blown right past such formality. I'll never forget it though, because you don't get to share the intimate details of obscure understandings very often, if at all.
What stuck with me was her near child-like excitement for picking up junk & scrap metal off the street. She told me that once she started to create her artwork, her life started to fall back into place, albeit a new direction but one she could not only maintain, but enjoy.
Ironically, I've always felt that way about how making art became my own salvation. Many talk the talk, but few, walk the walk. It was a chance meeting that felt magnetized by forces larger than my understanding. Chalk it up as yet another uniquely cherished memory of this particular time & space.
The show itself was huge success. I had sold much work and made countless friends. But the last happy surprise was that the Baltimore Public Works Museum purchased my Crane Cools Its Wings sculpture to exhibit as part of their program tracing run off water from the city into the Chesapeake Bay. I even did a voice recording explaining the work.
Happily, after being closed recently, the museum has re-opened as "The Public Works Experience."
As time has passed and I look back, what stands out overall is the many friendships I made during the show. And best of all is the deep friendship I have developed with Claudia and Wade over these many years. To this day they are some of my very dearest friends and I consider them family. Their friendship has been joy filled and wonderfully expansive. You can't make that up, you can't fake it, and you can't buy it you can only obtain it by opening your mind and heart... and I am quite sure that is the greatest gift of all.
Know that it is very rare to have art shows go so perfectly, extremely rare. Every occasion I've had to show my work with them has been a completely positive experience. You can't say that about nearly anything in life. And that is exactly why I am so grateful for Claudia and Wade.
Found Elegance
Claudia and I finished hanging the show on Friday evening. We were tired but enthusiastic about the show. Wade was able to join us in time for dinner just down South Ann St. at a very cool little dining establishment known as Peter's Inn. One word here: Yum.
I'd met Claudia Bismark and Wade Wilson a couple of years prior when they opened their gallery as an additional venue for the Baltimore Creative Alliance Members Show of which I happened to be participating. We hit it off immediately and I'm very happy to say they have been my dear friends ever since.
It was dark when we finished dinner and we meandered back up the street to the gallery. Claudia had left the gallery lights on (on purpose I suspect) and as we walked up to the front window, I told her I was going to try to encounter it as a stranger completely unfamiliar with the work. You know, Fresh Eyes.
I was unprepared for my own reaction. I encountered a dazzling art space full of work that beckoned for my engagement. My knees nearly buckled. It was like all my work had died and gone up to heaven. No shit, it really felt like that. Warm wooden floors and church white walls as the backdrop for my perfectly positioned and gorgeously illuminated sculptures. It's not often that one gets to witness a gallery full of one's work exhibited to near perfection... and I was not prepared for it. Truth be told, I actually felt light headed.
It was one of those moments in life where the world seems to stop for a few seconds, on your account. A moment that turns an instant into a lifelong memory. It's one of those memories I store in my heart. And as I was about to learn, it was just the first of many to come.
The Opening Reception was, well, glorious. I don't know any other way to describe it. Folks came from all over town and then some. Wade & Claudia, always the perfect hosts welcomed all with a greeting, warm and genuine which set a wonderfully friendly, upbeat and engaging energy throughout the entire run. I have never met so many interesting people.
Everyone seemed to be, if not artists themselves, then hip deep in the art world on some level. The place was full the whole day and the next. We had folks visit from Art spaces around town like the BMA, MICA, Johns Hopkins, School Bus 33, on and on. And in wonderful contrast to that, neighborhood folks from right off the street who looked in, liked what they saw, and hung out.
Most impressive to me though was the many working Baltimore artists who showed up. I so enjoy talking with other serious, full time artists. I made friends with many folks that I am still good friends with 20 years later, all because of that show.
As I indicated, Sunday was another beautiful day. It started when my elderly parents came early to see the show. They had recently moved back to Baltimore, their hometown. I think it was the first show of mine that they could attend and this was the perfect place an immigrant neighborhood in old Baltimore, it was the Baltimore they knew. The Baltimore where Ostrowskis Polish Sausage of Bank St still sits right across the street. For me it felt like one of those 'full circle' life events I was born just a dozen or so blocks north at Johns Hopkins.
I could sense my folks comfort in these surroundings. My Dad inquired about an antique headlight I had used in one of my sculptures. When I told him it was from '36 Ford he immediately related the story of him & my mother riding all the way to Ocean City in the rumble seat of his buddy's '36 Ford Coupe. There was no Bay Bridge in those days, you had to drive around the bay. A fantastic story told as only my Dad could, we all howled with laughter and my poor Mother actually blushed.
Another cherished moment.
Later that afternoon a large contingent of my local peeps from Shepherdstown made the pilgrimage and I remember it being a warm wonderful sun and gallery filled afternoon. The mood was bright & happy, I was selling my work, and I remember reminding myself to lap it all up while I could, rarely is life so perfect.
Subsequent weekends through April, I was present at the gallery on Saturdays. This allowed the opportunity for folks to come back and really take in the work and it gave me the time to converse with them. Again, the spectrum of diversity was lovely to me. I had so many genuinely interesting conversations with total strangers. There was a very positive atmosphere present throughout and it energized and excited me to my core.
Another hugely pleasant surprise was that my Mom would come to the gallery most afternoons I was there. What I noticed was how much she enjoyed being my Mom, talking to everyone, happy to be there and most of all I got a sense that she was very proud of me. And that my friends is golden. My heart filled watching her truly enjoy the moment. I can still see her about the gallery conversing and laughing with everyone. I am very thankful to have that wonderful heartfelt memory of her.
One Saturday afternoon it was particularly warm for March and we had the Gallery door open to the sidewalk. At one point I was standing outside looking up South Ann St for no particular reason & I saw a woman approaching carrying several pieces of scrap metal, which immediately caught my attention.
I know what it is like to comb city streets for scrap metal because I've done it. Once in the still mostly industrialized Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn I was showing my work in a loft gallery, 5 floors up in an old warehouse building right on the East River. I was also staying there for a couple of days during my opening.
One morning I grabbed a 5 gallon bucket out of my truck and started walking around the neighborhood picking up bits & pieces of scrap metal. I filled my bucket 3 times and I had covered only a couple of blocks, all good stuff too, different from what usually falls my way. I was ecstatic.
So when I saw this lady carrying a collection of street junk, I was touched in a place that rarely gets touched. I know I was smiling very broadly and before I spoke, she asked me if this was the gallery showing the scrap metal artist.
'Why yes it is." I offered, delighted.
"Is it OK if I set my stuff down out here against the building?"
"Sure, -what 'cha got there anyway?"
"Just some material I picked up on my way here."
I helped with her treasures and she disappeared into the gallery.
I saw she had mostly odd & end steel scraps, a few discarded and damaged bits of hardware and broken pieces of aluminum no parking sign. Not bad, not bad at all, actually pretty damn good. I must say that it is a bit unusual to see people picking up junk metal. In many cities you see aluminum can collectors combing the streets at night and the vultures who steal copper from derelict buildings but that's about it. Not too many folks picking up bits of scrap out of the gutter especially in industrial areas.
This I know first hand and I'm not one bit ashamed to say I've haunted not only the gutters of several cities but dumpsters outside of fabrication shops as well, all in search of my golden rust.
Once I loaded my car with scrap steel fished from a dumpster in New Orleans at 4am. I had so much scrap stuffed into it that the front end was riding light and let me tell you it was a long drive back to Maryland, but so well worth it.
I also remember getting some pretty intense looks on my Williamsburg street scrap sojourn. No worries though, self consciousness concerning junk collecting gets swallowed whole very quickly by the raw desire to collect it. I generally just make a distorted face or fart I find either works well.
You can't make art with scrap if you don't have any scrap. Not to mention that the stories in the scrap are often integral to the art. At least as far as I am concerned. Many young artists have asked where they can find some junk to work with. Here's the thing: if you have to ask, you probably should find another medium to work with. How and where you happen to obtain your material is integral if not sacred to the dance, or so I believe.
She reappeared and beamed right at me and I beamed back at her out of respect for actually picking scrap off the streets of Baltimore on her way to my show. She was older than me, I'd say by 10 or 15 yrs., well coiffed, and apparently had just gone through a very nasty divorce she didn't look like a welder.
I asked what got her interested in scrap metal. She said her therapist recommended she start making artwork and long story short, she found herself, or at least her bearings, by creating her artwork.
When I asked her why scrap metal she said because it had found her. Since her divorce she'd been riding the bus and started noticing scrap just laying around the city so she decided to start picking it up and in doing so formed a sort of connection with what she had collected. Amen Sister!
It's a rare and wonderful occurrence when two minds meet on the same scrap pile and dance to the same scrap music, even if for only a brief interlude. That's what happened.
I don't remember ever meeting anyone else who, like myself, was intense enough to pick up scrap & junk metal off the street and carry it around for use in their art. I know they exist but there is something magically liberating about the compulsion, the excitement, and the ritual of collecting scrap as if you were mining diamonds no one else can see.
As we shared that holy experience our conversation grew quite animated. In a good way. No, in a great way. It felt like there was a big ball of super positive energy surrounding our conversation. We shared a unique, almost ethereal understanding about scrap metal. Like we were speaking in tongues only we could understand. That's the only way I can describe it.
That's Art on a whole other level and not only is it rare but also extremely fleeting. I never even got her name because it never crossed my mind, we had blown right past such formality. I'll never forget it though, because you don't get to share the intimate details of obscure understandings very often, if at all.
What stuck with me was her near child-like excitement for picking up junk & scrap metal off the street. She told me that once she started to create her artwork, her life started to fall back into place, albeit a new direction but one she could not only maintain, but enjoy.
Ironically, I've always felt that way about how making art became my own salvation. Many talk the talk, but few, walk the walk. It was a chance meeting that felt magnetized by forces larger than my understanding. Chalk it up as yet another uniquely cherished memory of this particular time & space.
The show itself was huge success. I had sold much work and made countless friends. But the last happy surprise was that the Baltimore Public Works Museum purchased my Crane Cools Its Wings sculpture to exhibit as part of their program tracing run off water from the city into the Chesapeake Bay. I even did a voice recording explaining the work.
Happily, after being closed recently, the museum has re-opened as "The Public Works Experience."
As time has passed and I look back, what stands out overall is the many friendships I made during the show. And best of all is the deep friendship I have developed with Claudia and Wade over these many years. To this day they are some of my very dearest friends and I consider them family. Their friendship has been joy filled and wonderfully expansive. You can't make that up, you can't fake it, and you can't buy it you can only obtain it by opening your mind and heart... and I am quite sure that is the greatest gift of all.
Know that it is very rare to have art shows go so perfectly, extremely rare. Every occasion I've had to show my work with them has been a completely positive experience. You can't say that about nearly anything in life. And that is exactly why I am so grateful for Claudia and Wade.
