An Interview with YVONNE BOBROWICZ: Fiber Artist of the Almost Ethereal

photograph by Judith Zausner

 

Trained in traditional textiles and weaving, Yvonne has found her path to an ethereal visual effect in fiber art.  By knotting enormous amounts of mono filament she creates a compelling experience of both light and texture.  

 

You came from two parents with creative genes. Life had to enable that for you.

My mother had talent in the design and textile area and made clothes for me and my 2 sisters. She also could have been an actress. My father was a master woodcarver and taught woodworking.

My first weaving was when I was 10 years old at camp; it was a bath mat.  

When I was in 7th grade I was asked what I wanted to do in life. That was unusual. I said that I wanted to be an Arts and Crafts teacher. I'm the teacher type; I taught at Drexel University from 1966 to 1997.


Was there a clear point when you knew that your direction would be in fiber?

Yes, it was at Cranbrook (Cranbrook Academy of Art), which was a very beautiful and inspiring place. It was there that I was exposed to all arts and crafts  and discovered "the thread". I was taught functional weaving and created suiting, upholstery, drapery and rugs.


And then how did you enter the world of fiber art after graduating from Cranbrook?

My father built a large loom for me which replicated the one at Cranbrook and that was special. And then I opened a studio designing and handweaving functional textiles for architecture and designer clients.


After you moved to Philadelphia with your husband, you had three children and continued working with your art while meeting some important people of the day

I moved to Philadelphia because my husband started teaching Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Penn was going through a metamorphosis and it was a very fertile and inspiring time. There was Buckminster Fuller, Lou Kahn, Ann Ting. LeRicole, and Louis Munford.

In the 50s I had studied with Anni Albers at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) and also wove. In the late 60's I started creating wall hangings,tapestries, room dividers, rugs with high and irregular pile that evolved in to floor sculpture. In the 70s I did work for corporations as well as a tapestry for Lou Kahn's Fort Worth Museum.

In the 60s there was a new craft movement which reflected what was happening in society. It was the women's movement, civil rights, space exploration and developing individuality. Lenore Tawney and Sheila Hicks are good examples of this new movement in fiber art. Jack Lenor Larsen did a show in 1969 at the Museum of Modern Art. That was incredible to have a fiber art show in a celebrated art museum that also included well known international fiber artists. It was an exciting time!

Processes go through change and I just go with it also. I had the good fortunate of being provoked creatively.

Going forward, you gracefully transitioned from more traditional weaving to woven structures and your current work looks almost ethereal with the clear industrial monofilament fibers.

When I was about about 50, it was a rebirth time for me.I rented a loft and heard that DuPont was giving materials to artists  I went from weaving with heavy natural materials to light. I started knotting masses of clear mono filament that picked up light beautifully. In new ways of exploration, Flavin, Irwin and Terrill were working with light on the west coast.
I also started reading Jung and the Dao of Physics and many books by well known psychologists, philosophers, etc.


You had an exceptional upbringing and an extraordinary life. You won the Pew Fellowship and your work has been collected by museums such as the Chicago Art Institute, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Racine Museum of Art.
Now at 85, how do you look forward?

I showed abroad frequently and I am still creating. Even though my body does not cooperate every day with what I want to do, I'm still working on these fiber pieces and continue to receive show invitations from overseas.

Exploring the CREATIVE WORLD OF PLEATS in Art and Function

Pleats have a history and in their history they have served as a mechanical function and also as an art form. The construction of a pleat is simply consecutive multiple folds in a material that can be sustained when ironed, stitched or otherwise fastened to secure it in place. There are 12 different pleat styles that have been documented and they are often identified by the width of the pleat and their placement in a garment.

The virtue of a pleat is its compact nature and ability to expand which provides purpose in both utilitarian items as well as in fashion and art. Consider one of the earliest fashion statements was made by the famous pleated collar of Mary Stuart.  It was actually referred to as the “ruff” collar probably because it created a rippling of ruffles around the neck; it was detachable and supported by a wire frame.  In 1634, the Dutch painter Rembrandt painted a portrait of vanHaesje v.Cleyburg which beautifully exemplified the ruff collar. In the next century, the Scottish pleated kilt evolved and was used initially by the British Army and then became popular with everyone..

Fashion has always had a love affair with the pleat. In the early 1900s, Fortuny a Spanish designer who grew up in Paris, created the famous Delphos gown. It was a shift dress constructed from finely pleated silk with glass beads that weighed down the fabric while holding its shape and also allowing it to flow on the body. His genius was not limited to fashion design; over a period of 30 years he patented more than twenty inventions.

In the 1930s, pleats were styled on pants for both men and women and with film stars wearing this new style, there was a new buzz in fashion. Fast forward to the present and there is wonderful artful play with fashion using pleats by designer Issey Miyake which are extraordinary and sculptural. By translating the pleated garment as an art object with a mechanical approach, Industrial designer/mathematician Li-Rong Liao created a pleated paper dress which fans out and looks like a cross between a prom dress and a lamp shade yet is constructed with compelling elegance .

For functioning pleated products, there is the accordion instrument which arrived here in the 1800s. It became popular for dance music because it generated loud sound and amplifiers were not developed yet. More pleated products with a long history that manipulate air are the bellows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellows and the decorative hand fan (the oldest existing Chinese fans are bamboo and date back to the 2nd century BC). Using the pleat attribute of  efficient expansion, there are many products in many fields that can be identified. For example in the field of medicine, there is the surgical mask, the balloon catheter and even folded track doors separating room areas.

Yaacov Agam enjoys bridging art with technology. He is an Israeli artist who has generated work on canvas using the pleat to create a three dimensional approach to a two dimensional art form. He plays with illusion and color to engage the viewer. From each visual approach, the right, left and full front, every view holds a distinctly different play of colors, shapes and composition.

And finally there is the static pleat. Yes, a cemented pleat which is actually steps to a building but if it were in fabric it would be able to contract and expand. A wonderful example of this is the painted steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the Dali show. Each step was painted with a part of the entire image in sequence. From a distance, the eye reads and unifies all the steps as one flat painting..

So many pleats in so many ways in our world. Extraordinary. Functional. Artful. Visionary. You be the discoverer.

 

 

 

An Interview with BILL DALEY: Man of Monumental Ceramic Art

Photograph by Amanda N. Williams

 

As a clay master of large ceramic art vessels, Bill continues to draw forms that that are often in anticipation of his next piece. His beautiful work is in museum collections here such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art as well as other museums abroad.

 

Your first experience using clay was in elementary school building a pot and then in high school you learned to use the potter’s wheel. Did you have a string of "clay memory" that spanned those years?

I remember swimming in a small creek in the summer with friends when I was about 8 years old. It had a mud bank and we would cover our bodies with mud and then jump off a tree branch into the water and rinse ourselves.

I made a coiled pot in 6th grade and used the pottery when I was in high school.

In art school after the war, I wanted to be a painter and then switched to ceramics and have been doing both ever since.
These are what I call memory traces and each one has an effect.

So you remember being focused on both painting and ceramics , but it was not until you met Charles Abbott in your junior year at Mass Art that you decided to major in Ceramics. Can you talk about this? Who were other ceramic artists whom you revered?

During the first 2 years of art school, I had to take all types of art classes and by Junior year I had to declare a major. I was a veteran-most of us veterans wanted to teach because it was a challenging program and we felt profoundly that art could make the new life better for everyone.

I drew all the time. and at one time thought of becoming a painter and although drawing is still at my core it is my tool now for working in clay. I often describe my clay work in the same terms as those used to observe a painting such as fluidity of paint, nature of line.

I decided on clay as a major after deciding on art education.
 Abbott influenced a few of my friends who later became very successful. All of his teaching was through indirection; introducing us to his world through his eyes he exposed us to so much of ceramic art.  He was my first clay teacher and I knew right after the first class ended that it would be my major. I was also very influenced by Viktor Schreckengost in the 1950s who created the magnificent murals at the Cleveland Zoo and Richard DeVore who is the greatest vessel maker of the 20th century. Also, I had the extraordinary privilege of teaching with and being mentored by Joseph Carreiro, William Parry and Marcus Renzetti. And it was the Shang bronzes of China wooed me away from the wheel and the Silla dynasty in Korea that inspired me to make vessels.

I have worked in many different diverse materials and each time I learn more about clay. When I worked in metal I learned about clay, when I worked in wood, I learned about clay, etc.

In learning more and more about clay, you became a clay inventor combining different clay sources together; some with iron, all with plasticity while creating these mud elements with different percentages of grog and water to get different colors through firing in the kiln.

Every place I taught, I looked for native clay- and its often free for the digging. Now I have 5 clays that I purchase from Ohio, California, Kentucky, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Each has a property that's useful; it can be strength, color, etc.

All of these different clays are blended. They come in 80 pound bags and I mix 400 pounds at a time. If  I want to change it, for example, I can grind up bricks to make texture. There's a chemistry all its own.

We now have greater mastery over materials; we can make them behave in new and exciting ways;  and we have more master crafts people than ever before in history.

It's amazing to consider the depth of your resourcefulness with clay and that you have no boundaries in teaching art.. At PCA (Philadelphia College of Art), you taught and supervised a wide range of art related courses that included ceramics but also had the breadth of courses from drawing to textiles. It's amazing that you can cross over and engage so many art disciplines in teaching. How does this affect your own art?

As an art education major I had to experience all creative techniques and it's part of my belief in teaching to reach out to many disciplines. I read many books on how to teach and it is not the technique but the ability to be creative, to take risks, not to do the same thing over and over. You can change all the time. The material says different things but its what you tell the material that's important. To be fully creative, you must be enjoy thinking outside of the box.

I remember during one of my classes I invented a playful experiment. I placed 500 ping pong balls in a box on the ceiling and connected it with a string that I had access to. Then when the students were ready, I pulled the string and these balls came out bouncing all over every surface including some heads. After a minute or two when the balls settled down, their project was to draw their experience. It was great fun and very interesting too.

That lesson is like drawing conceptual art and yet your work is so boldly architectural. Many of your stoneware sculptures are exquisite in their lines, surfaces, shapes and general design and remain unglazed. Many commissions that you have rendered involved pieces for building installations such as those for churches, schools and interior walls for airlines. Do you experience having an architect's creative mind?

When I went to teach at what was known as the Philadelphia School of Industrial Arts, the teachers were masters in their expertise. And so I had a chance to watch them and I  learned how it is to be a good craftsman. I worked with wood, stone, clay, metal, fiber and developed a keen sense for the differences in materials.
I also worked and taught in an industrial design office where I was on a project for the World's Fair in Brussels.

Ironically, my son is an architect!

Being a good craftsman with clay requires very physical strength. Now that you are 89, how do you maintain that creative energy with "mud"? 

You must have inner energy to want to do it. I am focused on keeping well with yoga, walking and eating healthy. I am starting to do smaller pots now so it is something I can lift myself and move myself to and from the kiln.

I also draw all the time; it's a form of exploration.

ART and the SMARTPHONE:#1 -PHOTOS

Sure you know that the smartphone is more than just a cellphone but it can also open an incredible world of art exploration.

CLICK. With the camera, you get an instant digital picture. But wait, it’s not quite what you wanted. You’re thinking the colors are wrong, lighting could be better, and, well, boring in many ways. STOP. There are apps to simply enhance or dramatically transform your photos. Go from color to black and white with a touch of the screen, blur edges and opacity, choose your favorite color and paint with your finger, put your favorite person on a faux cover of PEOPLE magazine and much more.  It feels like a magical world of Photoshop tools on a miniature palette and there is a plethora of apps that can make this happen.

You can take a photo and work on it right away, choose one that is already on your phone or often just use one from the app site.  It can be remarkably simple or more complex depending on your needs, skills and time available to delve and experiment. The following apps are FREE, Compatible with Android & iPhone and recommended by many users although I also encourage you to explore additional offerings online.

PICSART 
Comprehensive photo editing program includes drawing, magical effects, photo sharing and much more.

SNAPSEED
Another excellent photo editing app. Google owns it so photo sharing is given a big push thru Google+

PIXLR EXPRESS        
Lots of editing options and with over 600 effects, you can even whiten your teeth in a photo!

PHO.TO.LAB  
I love the hilarious photo options offered in this app. Easily and quickly, you can place your photo inside a magazine cover or a hat on a friend. On the other hand, just beautify a photo for fun.

SKETCHBOOK 
Developed by the giant Autodesk software company, this app offers lots of sketching tools to replace those urges to draw on paper napkins. 
Check out Eric  Molinsky’s portrait drawings. He uses this app and only his finger to create wonderful caricatures of people he sees as he travels the New York City subways!

It’s important to know that:
• While some apps are free and others cost just a few dollars, many try to engage you in upgrades for a fee. For example, pho.to.lab is free but if you want to use the animal morphing feature to merge your face on an animal, that will be extra.
• Not all apps are available on all platforms so it’s important to read whether it is available on your Android, iPhone or Windows phone.
• Be prepared to see advertisements because if your app is not charging you then they may be selling their traffic to advertisers.
• All these apps encourage photo sharing and engaging in an art community. It is interesting for the user and his/her circle and also is a soft promotion for the app.

Post photo editing suggestions in addition to sharing them digitally:
• Use a greeting card template to create a card. Some apps may offer this option.
• Place it alone or as part of a group in a calendar
• Create “wallpaper” for your smartphone; some apps have this function available 
• If you have a wide format printer, tile your photo and create wrapping paper
• Print on specially treated paper or fabric to utilize in a craft project
• Upload it to a website that will process it on a plate, cup, etc.


It’s a new mobile world of photo transformations on the fly. So spread your creative wings and get moving!

“ You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” - Ansel Adams

Innovative Technology Revolutionizes Prosthetic Legs

Hugh Herr was a young expert level climber when, in 1982, he became disoriented during a blizzard on Mount Washington and suffered extreme frostbite necessitating both legs to be amputated.

Aimee Mullins was born without fibula bones which required her legs to be amputated below the knee when she was one year old.

Amy Purdy, an avid snowboarder, survived bacterial meningitis at the age of 19 but consequently lost hearing in one ear, kidney function and both legs.

Adrianne Haslet-Davis a ballroom dancer and instructor, was injured in the Boston Bombing and lost part of her left leg.

Mike “Monster Mike” Schultz lost his left leg above the knee in an accident during a snowmobile race.

Gregg Stevenson lost both legs as a soldier in Afghanistan.

 

All of these individuals have augmented their experience of being able bodied. New technology has empowered them in ways that provide not only independent movement but extreme movement and flexibility. They can jump higher than the average person and run, dance and move with natural grace.
 

Prior to his accident, Hugh Herr was not a focused student but he took the accident to propel himself forward. Initially it was to develop new feet for himself to better enable climbing and then he advanced his technical work parallel with his academics. He says "Nature is driving design and design is also driving nature. Bionics explores the interplay between biology and design; my legs are bionic and bionics has defined my physicality."


These are the three bionic interfaces integrated in design:
1.Mechanical: how things are attached to the body-eg.for Hugh's legs they are attached using synthetic skins and robotic tools.
2. Dynamic: building bionic limbs to lift person in to a stride. Exoskeletons being built will relieve the physical body demands and therefore allow for extreme physical feats that will not impact metabolism.
3. Electrical-explores how it interfaces with the nervous system. Information is imbedded in the chips of the bionic limb and is then under neural command.

Today Herr is Assistant Professor at MIT and head of the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab where he develops “wearable robotic systems that serve to augment human physical capability” and has Extreme Bionics as its center to advance the physical changes with the changes in the brain. He no longer focuses on designs for himself but for those who have difficulties that he can understand and possibly find a solution. Herr has published widely, holds many patents and has received numerous awards for his remarkable work.


Aimee has had a lifetime of wearing prosthetic legs. Since a congenital defect left her without bones in her legs, she adjusted to what was available as she grew up. And she grew up to be a fashion model, actress and athlete where she first received worldwide attention.  An honor student, Aimee was one of three US students selected to receive a full academic scholarship from the Department of Defense and was the youngest person (at age 17) to have a top-secret security clearance at the Pentagon. As an athlete, she became the first amputee in national history to compete in the NCAA and also became the first person using woven carbon-fiber prostheses that were actually prototyped after the hind legs of a cheetah. She set World and the basic design of those cheetah legs became the global standard in sports prosthetics. Then the media discovered her and she went on to become a fashion model as well as a spokesperson on beauty.

Aimee’s engaging talk on TED explains the dynamics of her prosthetic legs as well as the choice of wearing any one of 12 different legs outfitted with different shoes or artful extensions on any day.


Adrianne was with her husband who had just returned from Afghanistan, walking around and watching the Boston Marathon when the bomb went off only about 4 feet from where she was standing. She lost her foot and part of her leg. Recovery was grueling but then she heard from Dancing With The Stars which was exciting and gave her hope and focus to dance again. She performed at the 2014 TED Conference which was her first time dancing in front of an audience since she was injured. Hugh Herr had designed her bionic leg specifically for dancing after he visited her in the hospital.

Amy Purdy ignited Dancing with Stars when she danced with Derek Hough in a steamy choreographed session. Twirling and slithering around each other, Amy’s permanently pointed rubber toed feet were initially designed for swimming but magically brought grace in her dance movements. Her success is not limited to dance. As a competitive athlete, she won a bronze medal in snowboarding at the Sochi Paralympics. “If I can dance, I can walk. And if I can walk, I can snowboard. And I can live a great life,” says Purdy.


Monster Mike, a professional athlete, is a multi X Games Gold Medalist. During a snowmobile race while pushing ahead of a competitor, his snowmobile turned over and severely damaged his left leg.  As necessity is known to be the mother of invention, he created a prosthetic leg for himself. Without any engineering training, Mike used mountain bike parts to build his first prototype and then enhanced the design so it would be adaptive to extreme sports. Using it while racing in adaptive divisions of Moto X and the X Games, he won Silver and Gold medals respectively. With the formation of his company, Bioadapt, he builds and sells a variety of tough prosthetics that can withstand the demands of extreme sports.

Gregg returned from Afghanistan to his home in the UK as a double amputee. His extraordinary prosthetic limb has a Bluetooth remote control to switch from different action modalities such as walking, jogging, cycling or golfing. It’s amazing features such as being able to automatically sense and react to his movements and being waterproof (think shower or beach). Recently he received a new £70,000 Genium X model knee that is programmed from a laptop and also uses Wii-style sensors to anticipate his action and adapts appropriately as a human leg would.

To be clear, these prosthetic limbs are not mass manufactured. They are elegantly customized to the user with sophisticated instruments and calibrated with extreme accuracy. To engineer a fit,  the amputated limb extension is measured externally for its physicality and imaging of the neuromuscular interior is assessed for the best support design. And then there is the assessment of the height and size of the user as well as specific needs. In the case of  Adrianne, a dancer's movement was studied so the foot prosthetic can move fluidly with the ankle to allow for unusual movement. As a mountain climber, Dr. Herr has enjoyed the benefit of using different prosthetic feet to climb different terrain.

Bionics are making profound differences in people's lives. They are bringing ability to lives that were previously disabled and shining a bright light for a fulfilled future where there were only dim thoughts. Going forward, wearing exoskeletons will not be relegated to bionic needs but will also become universally adapted as an advantage for the able bodied. We are building a future of transparent adaptive technology for everyone.

We must accept the proposition that humans are not disabled, a person can never be broken, our built environment and our technologies are broken. We the people need not accept these limitations but can transcend disability through technological innovation.
-Dr. Hugh Herr

 

 

 

 

Three Living Holocaust Survivors and their Creative Success

World War II ended almost 70 years ago but the impact of the Holocaust still lives with over 200,000 survivors worldwide. Although it is difficult to accurately capture exact data on the number of survivors, it ia estimated that their average age is 79. And although so many brilliant and talented individuals were killed in camps. fortunately there are individuals who, despite incredible obstacles, are alive and have experienced successful creative lives. The following is a brief story of three of these individuals.

SAMUEL BAK, 81: Painter and Writer

An exceptional artist, who some acknowledge to be the greatest living painter of the Holocaust, has developed his art from a young age. He was born in Lithuania/Poland where, at the age of 9, he had his first exhibition inside the confines of the Vilna Ghetto. Survived with only his mother, after the war they eventually settled in Israel where he studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
A collection of his works is on permanent display at Pucker Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts and many exhibitions of his art have been in prominent museums and galleries worldwide.

• 2001 Publication of his book Painted in Words: A Memoir, (printed in four languages).
• 2002 Received the Herkomer Cultural Prize in Landsberg, Germany






JUDITH (PETO) LEIBER, 93: Handbag designer

Born in Hungary, Judith was preparing for university matriculation in London when she returned home to be with her family despite the new restrictions for Jews. “Hitler put me in the handbag business” Judith says because Jews were not allowed to study so she had to learn a trade. Met and married Gerson (Gus) Leiber , an American GI, in Budapest and they settled in New York City.  She worked for various handbag companies when in the 1960s with encouragement from her husband, she began her own company. Judith Leiber’s worldwide success is an extraordinary story of hard work, smarts and enormous technical and visual talent. Her handbags are on permanent display at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and her own museum, The Leiber Museum, in Springs, New York.
• 1973 Coty American Fashion Critics Award
• 1980 Silver Slipper Award from the Costume Institute of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
• 1994 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America
• 2010 Visionary Woman Award from Moore College of Art & Design






YORAM GROSS, 87: Animation artist of stories for children

Born in Poland, he loved music above all and says "All I wanted to do was play Chopin". But he and his family were on Oskar Schindler’s famous list, but they decided to take their own risk escaping by moving and hiding places 72 times. He later moved to Israel where he worked and learned about documentaries and films and then moved to Australia where, with his wife, he honed his animation skills and created experimental films. Well known for his series of Blinky Bill and Dot and the Kangaroo, he tells the stories to the hearts of children that are rooted in the holocaust experience and laced with lessons of survival, kindness and triumph.

• 80+ international awards for various films
• 1995 Order of Australia
• 2011 Autobiography, “My Animated Life”














The University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation and the University’s Institute for Creative Technologies are working on an extraordinary project to create holographic interviews available at museums worldwide. Designed to be an interactive exhibit, it will inform, educate and create a permanent remembrance for many many years. After the remaining holocaust survivors have passed on, their legacies will remain visible and audible in perpetuity and the lessons shall never be forgotten.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

-Winston Churchill

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Winston Churchill

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/survival.html#fWACbY1KzbgRXRp3.99

An Interview with ISAIAH ZAGAR: Mosaic Muralist; "Mirror, Mirror on the wall....."

photograph by Judith Zausner

 

Isaiah’s Peace Corps roots and his art training at Pratt Institute are the subtle influences of his city wide mosaic murals in Philadelphia.  His most famous project, Magic Gardens, is a mosaic space created with broken mirrors and other recycled elements that surface walls and floors and are indeed magical.

I’ve learned that your first creative awareness, perhaps explosion, was when you were three years old. You were taught to color within lines in your coloring book but then promptly took the crayon off the page, to move it along the table, wall, and refrigerator. So from a primary lesson on boundaries you immediately pushed outside the boundaries. Perhaps this was your first mural of memory?

I don’t even know if I would consider that a mural.  Just feeling the textures of everything and being excited by the visual quality that was presented and that it was different than what was there already. It changed the paradigm and changed the way things looked.  Could you call it a mural? I don’t think you could call it a mural.  You could call it a place where empty spaces were filled with ideas and rituals. But in my case it was just a child scribbling, a graffiti process, a naming that said “I’m here … I’m doing this thing”. And of course it changed everything.  And of course my mother flipped out; she was appalled at what I had done and that was a fantastic eye opener for me. I saw the amazing changes that went on in her from seeing what I had done.

You can’t call it art but it was a creative experience.  It was to color … what I call total embellishment … the continuing and continuing without borders.

It was a moment in time that was very powerful to me and continues to resonate … I have very strong visual memories of the actual event.


After graduating from Pratt Institute and subsequently working as a Peace Corps Craft Developer, you had a personal crisis. You had a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide. Yet you turned this around when you began putting discards on the wall with cement and began your mural art. It is ironic that you have rescued these broken bits of mirrors ("My favorite material to use is mirrors because mirrors reflect the present") and pottery (began with his wife’s imported pottery and Eyes Gallery retail store) and elevated them to a new status and purpose just as the process of doing so brought you out of your mental health problems. Do you have thoughts on this?

I wasn’t broken a bit … I was broken a lot.

Your description of it is very clear.  I don’t know what more I can add.
 
I was given a scholarship to take a class with Emanuel Bromberg, an artist and a painter. He saw something in my work and took me to visit the work of Clarence Schmidt.
Clarence Schmidt was an artist who was not an artist; he was a man who just created with discards. I was brought to see the folk art environment or the vernacular environment of Clarence Schmidt and it knocked me for a loop, my heart began to beat very rapidly.  The way I tell the story … there were no young women around so what does a 19 year old man say about his heart palpitating so fast at seeing something that was outrageous and different from anything that I had ever seen.  I just wanted to be there for a while.  I immediately climbed the fence and I went inside the structure and I was just knocked out by its insanity … its absolute insanity of what I had known to be art.  In fact I couldn’t even call it art … I didn’t call it art … I was just knocked out.  

After the nervous breakdown, I had to rebuild myself as an artist. How could I be an artist after a nervous breakdown? That was in 1969 and I was 28 years old. I needed to find a place where I can be a Clarence, not worried about the marketplace, but living the life of the artist. I needed to find something so devastated that I can build it up from scratch and that became South Street. 

I only wanted to create art … I didn’t want to deal with the real world.  I created a fantasy world – an art object that I created a la Clarence Schmidt with the same kind of impetus – using found objects, derelict materials, free materials, materials that I scavenged the world over. 

Last year over 60 thousand people visited Magic Gardens and more have traveled through the city to see the other mosaic murals. 

Your flagship mural, Magic Gardens on South Street in Philadelphia, is an extraordinary and large assemblage of many broken and recycled elements plus your own poetic and artful expressions ("I built this sanctuary to be inhabited by my ideas and my fantasies.") How do you maintain it? Does the weather impact it?

Yes the weather does majorly impact it.  The piece changes rapidly from year to year.  It has intrinsic in it a death knoll and whether we can stave off the death knoll forever is not clear because I was not and am not a structural engineer.  I worked with intuition and worked without much regard to the longevity of the project … always thinking that it was like abstract expressionism … that I could keep changing it – that it was ever changing. A project that could be continually reinvented – not only by myself but also by other people … that it could be kept moving and changing rather than a piece of art that was static.  I’m not sure about that anymore, whether the soul of it can remain intact with so many other hands involved in it.

Your art gives purpose to the recycled movement. As an honorary Dumpster Diver, you have inspired artists and aspiring artists to view trashed objects in a different way. Though you don’t go in the dumpsters yourself, your network of dumpster diver donors keep you actively sourced. How do you store all of these pieces until they are used?

Well I have a garage here that is useful and I have a big building in South Philadelphia that I have been working on for the past 7 years and it is a useful place to store a lot.  I’ve also run out of the energy to do reconnaissance missions to get materials.  I have essentially slowed down to a non-work stop, basically because I have so much that I have done.

I thought that I was skirting the problems of storing art because I was making the art in the street and when I was doing paintings on canvas I didn’t use stretch bars so that I could roll them up or I was even doing paintings on rice paper … that was as easy as pie … I would paint a big painting with several pieces of paper and I could roll it up and store.  However, no one was seeing any of these things … they were made and stored … even I didn’t look at some of them again.  I was having this tremendous problem – although I didn’t know it – of over producing.

The amount of work I have done is staggering. I was able to give one of the larger pieces to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) because it related to Anne DD’ Harnoncourt. I made this piece called ‘The Futurist’ because she was very involved in a show of the futurists. I made a big 10 x 12 feet mosaic that was accepted by the PMA as a gift.   I thought this would be the beginning of the possibility of moving these big panel mosaics, some as big as the wall. 

 

And your work is all about exploring boundaries on different levels. In creating mosaic murals, you use lots of broken mirrors and glass; those pieces have changed from their original state to one with broken boundaries. Then these pieces are placed in assemblage to create a mural where the boundaries merge and disappear with other elements and they radically challenge conceptions of what a building wall should look like. Do you consciously explore boundaries in making art?

Well the art that I make in the City on Walls have boundaries now. They actually didn’t have boundaries when I was able to do complete walls, the complete building … then I never thought about boundaries in fact.  In this case, where we are sitting in my studio; any place where I looked out onto where I had control over I embellished and they didn’t have rectangular boundaries.  But when I do the murals in the City or on panels they do have boundaries and they do have themes.

I just finished one for a fitness center on between 7th & 8th on Reed Street and it’s a long mural – about 200 feet long by 7 feet high and it has its boundaries, it doesn’t go all the way up through the building,  it just has its boundaries on one level.  Although it has figures that begin at the feet sometimes and only end at the middle of their bodies … you can imagine that it could go to the next level.

Magic Gardens is in the center of a big city and it’s on a street that is known for its idiosyncrasy, it’s movement of hippies and how they changed the way people looked at things.  It has an identity that people want to see before they even know about Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.  They want to come to the street so they do happen upon the garden and if it was in some outlaying area that didn’t have that reputation then it wouldn’t have the power that it has … the environment … the placement of an art object is so important.

You have completed over 130 outdoor murals AND, in doing that, covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia. This is an enormous art legacy. Now at 74, have you scaled your art to less physical installations? What’s on your horizon?

I’ve just completed small pieces for a show of small pieces but I’m not enamored of the challenges of small pieces.

I don’t know what the future will bring at all.  I have rebounded several times from complete breakdown failures [mental that pushed into the physical]. Now I’m in another one; I’m not whole yet and I don’t know if I can get whole.   And so I can’t prognosticate about the future without the feelings of the present.  That is how one thinks about the future.