STATEMENT: A PACKRAT'S PLAN FOR ART

1) Be a collector. I started very young and had trouble with the Borough of Roselle Park, N.J. The place was an eclectic mix of houses, farms, factories, railroad yards, a county dump and a park. The dump was a few blocks from our house and was a virtual mine of good stuff for a kid. The Borough set up a trash collection service for the homeowners and to that end hired an Italian farmer with a horse-drawn manure wagon to collect the stuff. When the wagon was filled, he would haul the contents to the dump. One day came a loud knock on our back door and Mr. Adase, the Italian farmer, holds up a large metal pipe with flexible metal hose attached and says to my mother, "Lady, three times I haula away this hunka junk from your house and I do it again but this is last time". Another time Mom was walking the dog on the road past the dump and someone up on the railroad track hollers "Hey kid, picking any chunk?' Yep, it was me again.

2) See the hidden art in found objects. Once in Aspen, I saw a knight welded up from old auto parts and that got me going. I first studied blacksmithing and bought a coal-fired forge to heat and bend metal. Next I learned gas and arc welding at a vocational school in Boulder and began to inhabit junkyards and auto wrecking yards to look for neat stuff. When I retired and moved to Spokane I found the time to collect things and begin putting art projects together. One of my favorites was a pterodactyl made of steel plate, rebar, and part of a sewer auger. Someone else must have liked it too because one night persons unknown climbed up to the porch eaves and cut it down with bolt cutters. Pictures of it were shown on local TV but it never was found.

3) Be open and try new art forms. When Laura presented me with two coils she wove on a loom and wondered what could be done with them, I wondered too. After several measurements on a Q meter and an impedance bridge, I had the answer. They could be used in the tuned circuits of a Theremin. People like me, who build electronic things from scratch, must be serious collectors of components found at flea markets, garage sales, auctions, estate sales, and going out of business sales. Just about all the parts needed for Laura's Theremin came out of my junk box.

4) Be a collaborator. It is fun and rewarding to work with someone on an art project because they bring different values and ideas into the mix. One person does not have all the answers and really needs another for input and help to bring things together. Artists tend to be loners but some projects are so diverse and rely on so many different skills and talents that collaboration may be the only way to successful completion.

5) Think young. Old as I am, I try to understand the view point of artists who are so much younger than I. They have ideas that would never occur to me and at first I may unimpressed but then, when I look more closely, I begin to get an inkling of what they want to do and become enthusiastic and really excited about their skill and the beauty of their art.