Iron trash: the material for nice flowers and birds…

by Lana Dylevskaya, Freelance

TUCSON , ARIZONA - When you see rusted scrap metal your first thought is: “this is ugly”. So you may be surprised to learn there are some people who see beauty in the rusted scrap metal and who even create art objects, using “iron trash”…

Tucsonan steel sculptor Ned Egen ( Tucson, Arizona, USA) makes exotic flowers, animals, birds and bugs, using the rusted scrap metal (waste appliances and old car parts).

“I have been making metal sculptures for my 1956 Chevy pickup truck for 20 years. I bought the truck in 1973. I started making metal sculptures in 1982 and I put the first sculpture on my truck in 1985”, - says Ned.

“To be honest, I don't know what inspired me or why I began to put metal sculptures on my truck. At the time I started doing this I didn't know that there were other people who decorated their car or truck in this manner. However since I began decorating my truck I have learned that many people in the United States decorate their cars and trucks in a variety ways. I also understand that there have been people who did this long before I started, and probably there were people who did this soon after the invention of the car. There is a group of people in San Francisco who call themselves the art cars - see http://www.artcarfest.com

Every 2 or 3 years they caravan with about 100 cars and trucks from San Francisco, down the California coast to San Diego. Then they drive west to Tucson and end up in a motor rally in Houston, Texas. I have seen cars that were completely covered with glass marbles. A car completely covered with pennies, another car that was decorated with toy dolls, another decorated with blue toy horses, another one with cameras, another one that was painted like a zebra, another one painted like a cow. The group publishes a picture book with the cars that make the pilgrimage from San Francisco to Houston.

I started working in metal on my 40th birthday in 1982. Long before I was able to cut and weld steel, I used to seek out, collect and photograph rusty old objects. I derived joy from the colors, textures and shadows formed by the sun on the pitted and twisted surfaces of discarded, oxidized ferrous materials.

After 15 years of fascination with steel surfaces and objects, and accumulating 5 tons, I began using the torch, welder and hammer for interacting with metals. I started joining forms and ultimately shaping them in ways that enhance their individual forms and lighten my spirit. Most of my sculptures are inspired from nature: birds, animals, flowers and insects. Occasionally the nonobjective piece sneaks in.

My works are created with found steel objects and some new steel that I weld, bend, pound, cut and shape into forms. Some of the pieces I sketch on paper before working with steel. Others are first made from cardboard or paper. Many of the pieces are made directly by assembling found objects. All my works change and grow throughout the building process”, - says Ned.

The truth is that Ned gets the materials that he uses to make the sculptures any where he can get them. “All the material I use has been discarded by someone or some business or industry. Some of the sources for the materials are the Tucson garbage dump, automobile service stations and the railroad tracks. I find materials on the streets and alleys. I look for materials in industrial garbage cans and in the alleys where people put their garbage. Now that I have a reputation as a sculpture who uses discarded metal objects there are many people who bring me things that they no longer want to keep. This week a woman brought me a box of knives, forks and spoons, a rake and a shovel and some iron pots. I will transform these objects into other forms”, - says Mr. Egen.

He has lived in his house in Tucson for 33 years and had many (perhaps 100) exhibitions in Tucson in the last 20 years, but he has not had any exhibitions outside of Tucson. However his sculptures appear in well over a thousand private and some corporate collections in about 40 states and 9 countries.

“I began making my sculptures only for pleasure without any plans to sell my work. Within several years after I began doing this work, people who passed my house saw what I was doing and asked whether they could buy my work. I felt good that people appreciated my work enough to buy it. However it was difficult to part with some of the work. When I started, I had another job. I was on the faculty at the University of Arizona and I didn't have to sell my work. However I sold some and I kept others. It's been over 20 years and I no longer work at the University. I still make sculptures for pleasure and I also sell my work to people and galleries”, - says Ned.

Ned’s garden is his gallery. When he first began work on his garden he had in mind an environment where one could escape from reality. “In my mind I saw a primeval forest, an attempt at a throw back to a pristine world of fantasy, without predators, where everything could uninhibitedly grow. Unfortunately reality set in and now my creations find themselves competing for space. I have an outdoor steel garden and menagerie, requiring no food or water, which is essential for blooms in the southwestern desert sun”, - says the sculptor.

The Tucsonan has found a much more productive way for using things, those that many people would say are “waste products, polluting the environment”. Mr. Egen’s idea improves the environment and he shows that beauty can be found even in rusted scrap metal – he can “grow” nice flowers from it.

Ned Egen was born in 1942 in New York City, and was raised in the suburbs of New York City, graduated New Rochelle High School 1960, graduated Pennsylvania State University 1964 with a B.S. in chemistry, graduated University of Connecticut in 1967 with an M.S in chemistry and in 1970 with Ph.D. also in chemistry. He held a faculty position at the University of Arizona 1970-1996, started working in metal on his 40th birthday in 1982 and began full time work as a metal artist in 1996.

Pictures by Ned Egen and Lana Dylevskaya,

Tucson-Almaty.

Russian version of this article is published at http://www.greenwomen.freenet.kz/idon_ned.htm