‘An Aesthetic And Environmental Art Exhibit’

 

Oil Drum Art At The Barnum Museum

Offers One Starting Point And Many Thematic Responses

By Shannon Hicks

BRIDGEPORT — “Oil is a major issue that has sparked countless wars, yet the oil drum is a remarkable invention; providing nourishment and fueling the fire,” the artist Natasha Cohen wrote as part of her artist’s statement for a show that recently opened at The Barnum Museum. The oil drum has also, in some cases, been used to encapsulate fire. Countless campers, college students, construction workers, and others have long relied on the strength of the oil drum to hold their fires.

Jack Lardis sees the oil drum as a metaphor providing artists worldwide an opportunity to create aesthetic or environmental statements about society. Mr Lardis is the founder and president of Oil Drum Art, Inc, a 501(c)(3) organization that was founded in 2003 when he launched the concept of turning used (read: recycled) 55-gallon oil drums into works of art. Mr Lardis sent out an invitation for artists to apply for New Haven’s Open Studios event that year; 75 artists responded to his call, and 15 were selected to create art for the citywide event.

Fast forward four years, 15 exhibitions of oil drum art (ODA), and 17,000 visitors later, and you have the current exhibition at The Barnum Museum. “Oil Drum Art — a juried aesthetic & environmental exhibition” opened at the Bridgeport museum on July 19 and will remain on view until August 30, offering visitors 38 works of art. At least 13 of the works have been shown in previous shows, including a few prize-winners and even a former Best in Show, while others are being presented publicly for the first time.

In a similar vein to the CowParade exhibits that have been presented in cities around the world (and even closer to home, very much like last year’s Parent Connection Rooster Revue and this year’s collection of stars being decorated by 14 Newtown artists for an auction to benefit C.H. Booth Library in September), artists participating in oil drum art shows have all been presented with the same starting point — in this case, a 55-gallon oil drum.

The majority of the oil drums themselves are located by Mr Lardis, who gets them from a food company and from a paint company.

“There are many sources for safe drums,” Mr Lardis said, “but these two companies have been very accommodating.” Nevertheless, when the artists receive them, the drums still need to be cleaned. Fortunately a degreaser (Mr Lardis tells the artists to try something “like 409”) gets rid of almost anything on the inside of a drum, and a good scrubbing takes care of the exterior. Of course, if paint remover is used to pull the basic enamel paint that coats the outside of a drum, an artist then needs to take steps to prevent rusting… unless it’s meant to be part of the finished piece.

Before artists receive an oil drum, they submit their ideas to ODA through drawings, photography, text, or computer renderings. Once their proposal is accepted, an artist acquires a drum (or drums, as many of the works use more than one drum while still remaining under the four-by-four-by-nine-foot measurements and weigh 150 pounds or less) and gets to work.

“What you see here is ingenuity of artists from all creative disciplines,” Mr Lardis told The Bee on July 19, a few hours before the exhibition opened. While artists made sure their works were properly placed, members of The George Lesiw Band arrived and tuned up for the evening’s opening reception, and catered food was delivered, Mr Lardis was a calm in the middle of the temporary storm that was taking place within the museum’s People’s Bank Gallery, the changing exhibitions space on the museum’s main floor.

“It really appeals to every creative persuasion: video, radio, poetry and literary, music and even drumming,” he said, referring to Don Fazekas’s “Drummin,” which represented a challenge the professional drummer and could not resist. (“The piece,” Mr Fazekas wrote, “a work of art, is also a working instrument.”)

 “It’s important for the public to realize that it’s much more than sculpture and painting. There are no restrictions. This is an aesthetic and environmental art exhibit. Most of the pieces deal with the environment and geopolitical issues,” he said. “ODA is eventually going to become a forum to provide an open dialogue in the United States.”

Within each show dialogue is likewise encouraged. Each artwork includes an artist’s statement, which Mr Lardis said is part of the show’s educational process.

“That’s a very important aspect of the show: it opens a dialogue between the viewer and the artist, even without the artist being there to answer questions,” he said. “The statements explain, in part, the artist’s thought process and meaning.

“So often you’ll see a parent or an adult with a child, and the child will say ‘What does that mean?’ Now everyone will understand so much of this show,” Mr Lardis said.

The majority of the works have environmental messages, complying with the show’s themes of environmental art and/or geopolitical art.

The Bridgeport collection offers pieces that explore and define the obsession many civilizations have today with oil consumption. Tao LaBossiere’s “Dependency” uses three steel barrels, plus fiberglass resin and paint, to create a stubbed-out cigarette. A glowing red light and smoke machine below what is meant to be ashes at the bottom of the machine completes the effect.

The Hartford resident, who won a Best in Show award with this work in a 2005 ODA exhibit, said in his statement, in part, that “our dependency on oil is an addiction as unmerciful as smoking.”

Colleen O’Connor, with “The Harnessing of Solar Power,” one of the new works on view, celebrates the promise of solar power by putting the spectrum of colors around her barrel.

“Untitled (Terror Threat Levels),” by ODA board of advisors member Preston Link, takes five barrels, each painted a different color of the US government’s terror threat levels, and stacks them. Green, blue, and yellow are on the floor, with the orange and red barrels balanced atop those three. Mr Link, one of just two artists from out of state who have work in this show, feels “the future prosperity of Iraq lies in the exploitation of its valuable oil and natural gas resources.”

The other non-Connecticut resident with work in this collection is Mike Sandstrom of Buttonville, Md. His “Fossil Fuel” is a black drum filled with (manufactured) chicken wishbones representing, his statement says, two metaphors: the oil drum, which fueled the Industrial Revolution and gave us material benefits (which in turns have become a threat to our existence), and the latter, representing all the wishes of mankind including, he wrote in his statement, “many to find a solution to the imbalance between nature and society.”

Best in Show for this show, an honor that was accompanied by a cash prize of $250 and a gift certificate worth $75 to Jerry’s Artarama Art Supply Warehouse in Norwalk (a supporter of ODA from the movement’s inception), went to Peter Good of Chester for “Big Money.” Mr Lardis had said during his remarks during the reception (which he announced all of the winners selected by co-jurors Richard Brilliant, PhD, and Matthias Elfen) that the jurors had selected “artworks that were the simplest artistic execution of a complex concept.”

Mr Good’s work was indeed that. His barrel had been painted to look like a roll of $20 bills, and then laid on its side. Simple, yet strong.

(Interestingly, this particular work has been exhibited at least once previously, although not an award winner at the time. “Big Money” was included in Oil Drum Art Juried Exhibition 2004 at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven.)

Lorna and George Cyr have three pieces in the Barnum Museum show, each showing the beauty that can be created from the steel of an oil drum when an artistic mind looks at steel and wants to see something beautiful. With “Duets,” the couple carved out the side of a barrel and placed two silver poles, about an inch each in diameter, inside the barrel. On each pole is a horse, creating the effect of a pair of carousel figures. For “Around & Around We Go,” Ms Cyr used the lid of an oil barrel as her canvas and again used the image of a horse as her centerpiece.

“For years I worked on canvas with paints,” Ms Cyr said. “This gives me the chance to do sculpture, portrait and oil paintings, all out of the box. It’s a lot of fun and it just gives me a whole new way to express myself.”

Mrs Cyr’s third piece in the show is “Touch ‘Mother’ Earth,” which pays homage to the Native Americans who first lived on the land. When she was a child, Ms Cyr’s father was very involved with the Penobscot Indians in Maine.

“He did a lot of hunting and fishing with them,” she said last month. “He didn’t have any Indian blood, but always said he wished he did.

“He taught me a lot of their ways and I still follow them,” she continued. “I have always admired the Indians and hate to see so many of their traditions have fallen by the wayside.”

The reverse of “Touch ‘Mother’ Earth” features a poem by Ms Cyr (an active member of Connectucut Poetry Society), which she wrote in tribute to her father.

The other artists with work on view are Corina Alvarez Delugo of Branford, Dennis Bialek of Torrington, Dean Caple of Prospect, Kelsey Castoctsovanni of Bristol, Natasha Cohen of Salisbury (who has two works on view), Erich Davis of Windsor, Joe DeMarco of Shelton, Catherine Duffield of Guilford, Don Fazekas of Naugatuck, Pamela Fogarty of Stratford, and Jesse Good of New London, whose “Allah Drives An SUV” was a second place honoree in the Barnum exhibition.

Also on view are pieces by Ken Grimes of New Haven (with “We Must Do It On Our Own,” which was the Best in Show winner at 2004’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas ODA exhibition), Tung Hoang of East Haven, Amy Mielke of Farmington (whose “Legs” was the first prize Main Gallery winner in Bridgeport), Dana Moran of Stratford (another winner for the Barnum presentation, this one first place in the show’s Student Category), Leslie Murray of Woodbury (third place Main Gallery winner), Jason Northrop of South Glastonbury, and Fred Osorio of West Hartford, who was presented the Environmental Prize for his work, “Out of Time.”

Also, Lon Pelton of Windsor, Mark Previtt of New Haven, Leslie Prodis of Branford, Jennifer Recalde of Beacon Falls, Yesenia Rosa of Stratford (the second place Student Category winner), Gerry Saladyga of North Haven, Peter Smith of Hamden, and Sid Werthan of Madison.

A group of students from Housatonic Community College also created a work for the show. Kelia DaCunha, Henry Gomes, Link James, Sopeap Kuhn, Chris Marque and Anne Secskas collaborated on a piece called “Alligator.”

ODA founder Jack Lardis also has a work on view.

While most exhibitions tend to have celebratory opening receptions — and this one at The Barnum was no different, with a reception held on July 19 — this one will also have a closing reception. On August 30 from 5 to 8 pm the public is invited once again for a party that will celebrate oil drum art, the artists behind the latest collection, and offer poetry readings with environmental themes.

Additionally, Ms Cyr will be joined by fellow members of Connecticut Poetry Society for poetry readings during the closing reception. As of press time this week, the list of poets includes Christine Beck, the current president of CPS; Polly Laszlo Brody, Yvon Cormier, Tony Fusco, Kenneth Lundquist Jr, Sandra Maineri, and Gus Stepp, Jr.

It’s a fascinating exhibit, whether one approaches it for the artistic value of the single works or as a collective statement concerning the state of the world’s environment and the politics that drive our need for oil. P.T. Barnum, a man known for his love of promotion and exploration of unique attractions (and who built the museum that bears his name), would have loved this one.

For those who cannot make it to the Bridgeport exhibition, or even for those who want to see more oil drum art, ODA already has plans for a Hartford Oil Drum Art Exhibition II, September 6–20; and a presentation at Artwell Gallery in Torrington in October.

The Barnum Museum, at 820 Main Street in Bridgeport, is open Tuesdays through Sundays. Call 203-331-1104 or visit BarnumMuseum.org for additional information.

For additional ODA information — including details about Mr Lardis’s longterm, five-step plan for Oil Drum Art —  visit OilDrumArt.org.