Norman Tinker

July 3rd-15th, 2007; Opening Reception July 6th from 5-8pm

Norman Tinker

Norman Tinker is a sculptor's sculptor. His expressive work is marveled at daily by Miller St. travelers, but it should by all rights be in the Museum of Modern Art. It is that good. Mr Tinker is the real deal; "It is rare I set out to create beauty," he says " but sometimes that happens." Yes , sometimes that happens with work that can be as dogmatic as a dumpster but with a subtle sense of eloquence that creeps in and won't let you go.

Mr. Tinker will be a guest artist at Aarhus Gallery from July 3rd-15th, showing a selection of his collage, assemblage and sculptural work. An Opening Reception will be held July 6th from 5-8pm as part of Belfast’s Friday Art Walk Series.

The work of Aarhus artists; Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Annadeene Konesni, Richard Mann, Wesley Reddick, and Willy Reddick will also be on view.

Artist's Statement

“A Description of Process”

My early student work was of the human figure and was done in traditional materials such as plaster or clay. I also did some stone carving. Fairly early on, when I was a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I learned to weld from a fellow student. It wasn’t long before I started welding large, biomorphic looking structures out of scraps of steel and filling in the spaces with concrete. From there the work developed into architectonic, geometric forms, combining slabs of steel and concrete, and structural steel such as I-beams and channels.

In 1972 my teaching career came to an end when the Silvermine College of Art in Connecticut closed down and I was faced with supporting my family in some other way. After working as an architectural draftsman, and as a designer of decor for shopping malls, I started a welding and ornamental ironworking business called “The Tinker Shop”. For the next 22 years I was a tradesman who had neither the time nor the energy to make sculpture.

In 1995 I retired and the next year moved to Belfast. I soon discovered the joy of working with other people’s castoffs, mainly metal. The material was available, plentiful and cheap, often even free. I found artistic riches in the endless variety of shapes, contours, surfaces, textures and colors of material that has been crushed, rusted and mangled by forces both violent and gradual.

Working with scrap metal I try to avoid clichés like birds or insects, or animals made from farm implements and tools. Instead I try to find abstract compositional relationships through combinations of disparate parts. The constant surprise of discovery becomes a major part of my creative process. As a piece develops I usually let my intuition or unconscious take over and all manner of past experience can creep in. Sometimes I can end up with something that reminds me of an early work of art that I have seen, even if only in reproduction or photograph, such as The Parthenon Frieze or the “Winged Victory of Samothrace”. As I work I can also sometimes hear in my mind a work of jazz or a line of poetry. Recently while working I kept hearing Miles Davis playing “If I Were a Bell”. Because it was Miles I also kept remembering Robert Frost’s “stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and the line “miles to go before I sleep.” The sculpture is a rambling, somewhat jagged, horizontal piece that I thought I would call “Miles to Go”.

There are times I feel as though I’m creating beings from obscure dreams, or the kind of creature or feeling one is afraid of finding as a child going into a dark cellar. It is rare that I set out to create beauty although sometimes that happens. More often, the work surprises me with a more jangling, even threatening look. Always the work has to reach a point where it has a rhythm, sense of movement, tense energy, a life of it’s own. If it doesn’t, I feel compelled to keep working it until it does.