Art of the deal - Real Estate loss spurs landscape sculptor to turn scrap into art

Photos by Brian A. Pounds
Story by Marian Gail Brown

Where others see a stack of tire rims, bent brass industrial ladles or downed tree limbs, landscape sculptor Joe DeMarco - armed with his trusty blow torch - pictures a medley of musical instruments, a bevy of birds and some funky stick people.

An unobtrusive sign on Birdseye Road, a quiet country lane in Shelton, points travelers to "Landscape Sculptures," on DeMarco's property. What it really should say is "Caution: Artist at Work. Beware - unwittingly you may provide inspiration." But that would be too long a sign.

DeMarco, 56, owes his artistic career to a $1.5 million real estate deal that went sour and the lawyer responsible for it. "I was very upset and frustrated, too" DeMarco says. "And I found that I better turn my energies into something else.

"So I picked up a blowtorch and I looked at this pile of tire rims. First I cut them into very thin strips. Then I bent them and wove them into shape with my torch."

When DeMarco was done, he had created the object of his dissatisfaction, a piece he lovingly refers to as "The Attorney."

"He was very short legged with quite a big belly, small shoulders and a tiny little head," DeMarco says. In fact, the likeness was so good that one of DeMarco's gallery show clients remarked " 'it looks just like a lawyer I know.'"

Most of DeMarco's sculptures are in metal, though he does use hickory, granite and other woods and stones at times. But all of his raw material comes from used, rusted or discarded objects. In that way, he is the ultimate recycler.

"I don't like to work with anything new or perfect," DeMarco says. "It's important to me to have stuff that was found on the side of the road or was blown down by a storm. So, I won't cut down a tree. It's like that saying: there's 'nothing more beautiful than a tree.'"

"I find it more exciting to look at the roughness of things," DeMarco says. "I like what nature does to the exterior of the metal, the oxidation of the metal and the patina the metal gets from being outside."

With such a philosophy, DeMarco just might be a municipal recycling director's best gift, turning bulk metal trash into gold.

At Gallery shows in New York City's ultra-hip SoHo, New Haven, West Hartford and Norwalk, DeMarco's work has sold for any where from $250 to $4,000. Other pieces from the artist, such as "Hear the Band," featuring a medley of musical instruments, advertised on his Web site, are priced up to $10,000.

Amid the artist's raw material in his back yard, there's a hickory totem pole carved to resemble a willowy woman scowling. DeMarco says she resemble someone he exhibits his work alongside at galley shows.

Then there's a fisherman at the helm of his boat, looking out to sea and beckoning visitors to his outdoor/indoor studio. Nearby are a couple of eagles, proud and tall; an ostrich with a fine plume of metal feathers; a phoenix rising out of the back yard. It's an interesting, stimulating assortment of guests.

Much of the metal DeMarco employs to make these sculptures comes from M. Jacobs & Sons, a scrap-metal yard in Derby. Whenever the owners of the company get a load of some particularly interesting or malleable metals, they call DeMarco.

With all of this raw material on his property, you might think DeMarco would be none too popular with the neighbors. After all, who would want to live next door to a blowtorch wielding-scrapmetal gathering-tree-hugging artist?

"I've got cows to one side of me, relatives to the other," DeMarco boasts. "Neither of them are complaining about my work."

"I am a self-taught artist who believes God doesn't make junk and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder," DeMarco explains in a brief description of his work on his Web site. "When showing my work, I love to watch the expression on people's faces. It says everything from wow to ugh. I also hear comments from 'unbelievable' to 'Do you give a free tetanus vaccine with your work?'"

Lisa Wasylyshyn falls into the DeMarco fan club category. "I just think he is very talented. He is certainly creative. I don't know where he gets his ideas," says Wasylyshyn, a business manager for Sun It Corp., a lawn and garden product company in Milford that exhibits at trade shows.

"When his work comes together as a piece of art, it's just beautiful," Wasylyshyn says. "Some of his work is quite big. People love it - the humor, the simplicity, the feeling it inspires."

These days, DeMarco is more grateful for the business deal that went bust than anything else. It opened a door to a venue he had never considered.

The folk who buy his sculptures - like the out-of towner who pulled up in a car one day and bought eight pieces - tend to be wealthy professional types.

Don Fertman of Shelton bought one of DeMarco's metallic ostriches as a surprise birthday present for his wife, Betsy.

"I like the way Joe blends the abstract with the real," Fertman says. "And I knew my wife would love this ostrich. It's about six feet tall. Even though its feathers are made of metal, they have the softest, lightest look to them."

The Fertmans had DeMarco install their ostrich in the sideyard of their home in Huntington section of Shelton, so passers-by could enjoy it as much as they do.

"Anybody whop buys my work is a character," DeMarco says. "It take a character to appreciate my work. It's funky, whimsical stuff."

Steel Bird: Artist Joe DeMarco fashioned this ostrich, which stands 8-feet tall, from copper-plated steel.