DeMarco's art supply store is M. Jacobs & Sons scrapyard in Derby.

Arc welding equipment makes Joe DeMarco look like he's from outer space - which is only appropriate considering that untrained artists like DeMarco are often characterized as "outsider" artists.  DeMarco uses all recycled materials for his sculptures.

DeMarco sands the hands on one of his tree trunk sculptures.

DeMarco sells foot-long sculpted stones as decorative "garden guards."

Everything this guy in Shelton knows about art he picked up in his backyard

Photos by Arnold Gold
Story by Carolyn Wyman

Shelton - An unplanned dive off a scaffolding in 1979 effectively ended Joe DeMarco's bricklaying career.  During the next 15 years, he dabbled in trucking, salvage, real estate and just about every other business a dyslexic high school dropout could do.  The art business was not one of them.

But artist he is.  DeMarco says he was driven to it by a bad business deal.

"I lost a million bucks.  I remember thinking I had to do something to get my mind off it."  Where others might have done this by downing a few or traveling to some far-off location DeMarco, 55, did it by taking an acetylene torch to a car tire rim that was lying around his back yard and pulling the metal up to create arms and legs and a face.

That one sculpture led to another and another.  Before long, DeMarco was using the tire rims as the base for giant iron whirligigs, the frame for provocative faces and the bodies of soaring eagles.

Concerned about the cumulative toll the torch fumes and his heavy smoking might be having on his lungs, DeMarco then turned to stone and granite, using his old masonry skills to carve faces or to create gravity-defying bird baths.

DeMarco has also directed his artistic energies on the hickory trunks that were left when he had relocated his driveway, at first using a chain saw and then hammer and chisel to create life-sized wooden totems of voluptuous women.

"My wife says I'm a pervert.  But I love the flow of trees and women's bodies," DeMarco says.

Of course, his wife Eleanor DeMarco, also thought the whole idea of his becoming an artist "totally nuts," at least, until the day he packed his pick-up with a bunch of his sculptures, drove to the SoHo section of New York City, and placed 11 pieces in two galleries in one afternoon.

"That was a rush, I'll tell you," DeMarco said, as he stood in a back yard alive with dancing wire and mysterious smiles.

Since then, DeMarco has sold many pieces for $250 to $6,000 each, and shown at many local shows and galleries.  Last year, he had his own show at Southern Connecticut State University and this May, captured best show in the Celebrate West Hartford Arts and Crafts show.

Barbara Belmont, an art show producer who was among those responsible for giving DeMarco that prize, characterizes the way he "takes these incredibly basic elements and fashion them into absolute works of art" as "brilliantly creative."  At the West Hartford show, "people just stood around his booth and stared" because his work is "so beautiful" and "truly unique."

Which is not to say Birdseye Road, where DeMarco lives, has become easy street.

Although on Chicago folk art collector did drive up in a limo and purchase eight pieces, that doesn't happen every day.  "Sculpture is hard to sell because it takes up a lot of space."

In fact, DeMarco says, "I've never been in worse financial shape."  But he also says, "This is the most enjoyable thing I've ever done."