Portraits of the Jersey Shore Asbury Park Punk Rock Flea Market Lamp Maker

Asbury Park Punk Rock Flea Market Lamp Maker

“I am the oldest of five kids, and when we were younger our parents fought a lot. Since I was the oldest, I bore the brunt of everything. So to get away from it, I had these arts and craft hobbies. So I would take my action figures – my GI Joes, my Ninja Turtles, what have you – and I would go in my room, smash them with a hammer, and I would have a pile of arms and a pile of legs, and I would just design my own action figures out of the remnants of the smashed figures of my action figures. I always had a knack for designing new things.

“When I was going to college, my parents were splitting up, so I had to pay for school, because I couldn’t count on them to pay for books and school and stuff like that, so to pay for it all, I became an electrician. Later I had a friend of mine who was looking through a restoration catalogue, and she found a light fixture that was $1,400, but it was way too much money for her. The next day I went to an antique store, found some parts similar enough to make it happen, then the rest is history. I made a nice fixture for her at a fraction of the cost. So this is all about order out of chaos. Making lamp sculptures like these is my happy place.

“When I was a kid and was asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ for the longest time I said, ‘A garbage man.’ Then I later said, ‘An environmentalist.’ Then later I said, “Some kind of priest, or something like that.” I think that doing something like this is all of that. I make things out of garbage, which is the garbage man; I recycle, which is the environmentalist; and there is definitely the spiritual aspect of being born again with these new creations, and everything having a second life. It is all of it coming together for me.”

(You can find his Instagram account to see more of his work in the comments below.)

~ Asbury Park
Punk Rock Flea Market

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