In absence of playing basketball, creating assemblage art has been my Zen activity since the Covid lockdown. I started collecting things that spoke to me in some way, followed a common aesthetic sense, and could be combined to form a larger three-dimensional image. Discarded appliances and other refuse left on the street, obsolete electrical and mechanical devices, and other vintage objects in thrift shops, Goodwill stores, and on eBay. I separated and catalogued each object according to type and stored them in bins and cabinets in our basement.
This stuff began taking up too much room downstairs by the time I realized I had yet to make the first piece of art. I started out by making a couple of flags using vintage advertising yardsticks for stripes, rusted steel for stars. My wife gave the first one as a Christmas gift to her cousin who serves in the Air Force. A friend of mine generously purchased the second one in a kind gesture of encouragement.
It grew from there. The smallest piece is about 8 inches x 6 inches, the largest, about 4 feet square. It wasn’t until we got ready to move it all for my first gallery exhibition six years later that I realized how many there were. We moved 51 pieces that first day. The next day I discovered 10 more we had missed. I had ferreted them away behind furniture around the basement and forgotten about them.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to travel to New York to see the latest opening of my friend Eric’s paintings. We also visited the Outsider Art Fair where some of Renaldo Kuhler’s work was exhibited. Those experiences inspired my latest burst of creativity in which I finished 7 relatively small pieces, variations on the usual themes.
For me, it’s not about exhibition or public reception. Like most artists, I dread that part. (That’s why it took six years to put any out there. With dwindling space left in the basement, I promised my wife I would try to sell some before making any more.) If artists were good at marketing and promotion, we would choose work in advertising or PR. Those fields certainly pay better.
The process of making this art has helped me survive one of the toughest periods in my life while attempting to maintaining my sanity. When making a new piece, I lose all sense of time and place. Hours zip by as my mind engages with the necessary processes – imagining, forming, problem-solving, craftsmanship. I experienced the same phenomenon when editing films, and I experience it now as I write.
For some, exercising, traveling, or relaxing might be their Zen place. For me, it’s making stuff. Anything, really. I am grateful to be able to do this. I am lucky to have family and friends who support and encourage my stabbing at windmills.