“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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