Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Dumpster Divers



This monumental sculpture weighing in at somewhere between two and three tons, has a height of nearly 16 ft. The piece took me two and a half month's of constant labor with only occasional breaks for soccer or Chimay. The sculpture is a representation of the steel working industry and at the same time it is a self portrait. The figures are all operating steel working equipment and each one is caricature of someone you might find in a fabrication shop. The piece is autobiographical in as much as I have been "diving" in the dumpsters of Brakewell Steel for about as long as I can remember. When I was too small to even climb into the dumpster my father would lift me over the edge and I would pick up the little dots that collected at the bottom, at which point a worker would come out and yell at me. Since then I've grown up and the workers have grown accustom to me foraging in their scrap bins and to this day Brakewell Steel is still the primary source of my material. So what better way to pay homage than to create a monument for their front lawn?

the sculpture is located at 55 Leone Lane in Chester, NY