WAUPACA COUNTY POST

June 13, 2002

 

PRIME TIME

By Sharon Van Ryzin

Post Staff Writer

 

Local Sculptor Inspired to Make People Laugh.

 

            Dinosaurs share space with funky musicians and a big goofy chicken on springs in the woods out behind Gary Pearson’s studio.

            His yard and the surrounding forest have become a gallery of sorts for his welded metal sculptures made from junk he has found in trash heaps and dumpsters.

            “That’s what’s fun about art,” he said.  “You can do whatever you want.  If somebody likes it, they buy.  If they don’t, I’ll put it out here in the woods and look at it myself.”

            The Baltimore, Md., native was inspired early on by David Smith and other noted sculptors whose works he saw on frequent museum visits.

            “In the mid-80s I went to a metal art show at a museum in Baltimore,” Pearson said.  “As I walked around, I was thinking it didn’t look hard to do, and I wanted to try it.  I went home that night and started scrounging around in my father’s garage to see what I could come up with.”

            The result of that initial endeavor was an 8-foot pterodactyl made of pipe and metal scraps that is still standing in his parents’ rock garden in Maryland.

            Like Smith, whose father and grandfather were blacksmiths, and who worked as a welder in an automobile plant, Pearson has no formal training as a sculptor.  He learned what happens to metal when heat is applied in his various metal fabrication jobs and in his father’s sports car restoration shop in Maryland.

            “There was always a pile of junk sitting around in the shop.  When there was nothing to do, I’d weld something,” he said.

            And like Smith, whose works can be seen in such prestigious places as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pearson dreams about making that one important piece.

            “It would be fun to do something really big, like a commissioned work for a city,” he said.  “I guess that would be my goal, but I don’t think I’m anywhere near that.”

            In the meantime, he’s content making whimsical accessories for people’s gardens - and his own.  His favorite piece is a multi-level weather vane that graces his side yard.  Its varied -shape components comprise a functional piece of kinetic art, his first in a series of spinning things.

            “I like things that move,” he said.

            His weather vane has three distinct sections.  A slight breeze moves one part.  It takes more wind to move the second part and more yet to move the third.

            “I like to sit and watch it spin in the morning while I’m drinking coffee,” he said.  “I’m going to keep it - unless somebody wants to give me an astronomical amount of money for it,” he laughed.

            “The hardest part in doing these is to get the balance,” he said.  “You have to play around with it a bit.  That one I worked on for every bit of a week.”

            Art supplies are found in junkyards, where he looks for “anything weird.”

            At J.R. Larsen Co., a scrap processing operation in Weyauwega, Jim Larsen is accustomed to seeing the artist rooting around in the trash, and now he saves things out that he thinks his friend might like.

            “It’s fun going down there, picking in the junk,” Pearson said.  “He had a couple tubas and a cornet out there, so I made him a band that he has out by his scale.”

            Lately his focus has been building musicians.  A couple of his violin players are on display at Walker’s Barn, and his current attraction is with guitar players.

            “Most of them I do with beards and sunglasses because they look cool,” he said.

            His art imitates his life.  He lays drums in the Cleantones, a four-piece rock and roll and blues band, with friends in Stevens Point.

            “Actually it’s revised blues, on the edge of metal,” he said, “old blues songs redone.”

            “We don’t want to play more than two or three times a month.  We’re all in our 40s and have too many things going on.”

            Pearson and his wife, Gayle, who is currently completing her master’s degree in nursing, have a really important thing going on right now that will change their lives considerably.  They are in the process of adopting a baby from Siberia.

            “I’ve been driving trucks over the road, but that isn’t a lifestyle I like anymore,” Pearson said.  “You’re never home.  I’m going to be a father now, and I don’t want to go back out on the road.  I’m going to baby sit during the day and work out in the garage, welding at night.”

            He met Gayle in Baltimore.  She was from Green Bay and encouraged him to take a look at Wisconsin.

            “We came out here and liked it, so we decided to move,” he said.  “I was born and raised in a big city.  After living in a big metropolitan area, I missed it at first when I moved out here.  But when I went back a year or so later, I couldn’t wait to get out in the woods again.

            “Coming out here was a total change, not hearing any planes flying over or ambulances 24 hours a day.  I like it out here because it’s nice and peaceful.”

            Most of his artistic influence comes from nature, music and films.  And a lot from cartoons.  He says he grew up on Warner Brothers, hence his predilection toward making silly, large-beaked birds that look a bit like Heckle and Jeckle.

            “I like doing funny stuff,” he said.  “Haft the time I’m laughing at myself as I’m building something.  All winter I watched the old musicals, so I built a couple guys with top hats, dancing.

            “I guess I don’t do stuff that’s too serious, because I’m not that serious.  I don’t do anything political because I don’t want to.”

            Among his cartoonish collection is a lady with her hair pinned up, looking like she’s chasing someone out of the house with a rolling pin, a man riding a unicycle that used to be an old metal wagon wheel and a confused duffer with a golf ball resting on his toe.

            “I don’t use any patterns because they would all look the same,” he said.  “I’ve made a few angels and fairies, but I’d never make a pattern.  Whoever buys my stuff should have an original, not one of many.”

            Pearson’s work can be seen at Walker’s Barn and Charlene’s Gallery Ten in Door County.  He’ll see customers by appointment at G.P. Works, (715) 258-8702.  He has shipped pieces that are “99 percent recycled and guaranteed to rust” to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, California and Key Largo.

            Not everything he dose is silly.  Among his more conventional creations are more elegant birds and a series of flower sculptures that include his variations of tulips, poppies, irises and roses.  He cuts petals from a sheet of 20-gauge metal with a plasma cutter and hammers them out on an anvil till they look right.

            “The roses take a long time,” he said.  “There are 20 petals in there.  There is a little more detail than in a tulip with only six petals.  Pansies are easy ‘cause they only have four.”

            Variations in color are made with different heat settings on the torch, and some of them he paints, because he gets bored with the same thing all the time.

            For that reason, he sometimes works with wood. He once uncovered an old telephone pole with interesting grain that became his version of an Easter Island big head.

            “I like to just dream up an idea and play around with it,” he said.  “I just lay out a few things and get an idea going.  Am I going to build a bird, a mosquito or a man?  Half the time I don’t have an idea right off.  I play around with some things till I see something.

            “In Baltimore you can weld anything to a stand, and they will think it’s neat.  Out here it has to represent something.”

            His several art books provide some ideas, but he doesn’t like to use them as a crutch.

            “I try not to get influenced,” he said.  “Anybody can look at David Smith’s pieces and copy them, but what do you really achieve?  You’re just copying someone else.”

            Pearson would like to work on his art full time and make a living at it.

            Later this year he’s hoping to have some time to attend shows and find more galleries that will display his pieces.  He plans on putting a proposal together to send out to places like botanical gardens.

            “I guess there is no sense making it if I’m just going to have it sit out in my woods,” he said.  “Although they look good out there.”

            He has a practical approach to marketing his art. 

            “In galleries you see pieces for $5,000,” he said.  “I don’t see how they can justify selling it for that much.  I’d rather have fun making it and sell it at a reasonable price.  I’d rather have fun with it, and if you can make a little money, that’s even better.

            “I guess the bottom line is not to must make things to sell.  If I can make somebody laugh, that’s something right there.”