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Junk Master
Al Wadzinski makes art from the discarded
By Haily Gostas
Photo by Eric Moore
“Hey, cool, a bike seat! I don’t have one like that!”
Wadzinski doesn’t know what he’ll do with this gift, but he happily adds it to his jumble of found baby doll limbs, shredded sneakers, and scrap metal. Perhaps it will complete the massive rearing horse’s head he’s been hard at work on for an exhibition this fall at the New York Studio Gallery—the piece already includes some very expensive golf bags and an old saddle. Or, it may become a member of the motley school of fish, each a spectacle of old shoes and colored glass, strung up and swimming from the ceiling. Either way, it will enter the world of whimsy he has sewn, hammered, and welded together. Wadzinski, quite simply, makes sculptures out of junk.
“Clutter and litter are all over,” the towering 47-year-old says with a streak of boyish excitement. “I just can’t pull myself away from it.”
Photo by Eric Moore
More than a decade later, his studio reveals a madcap menagerie of pieces both delicately and calamitously bound together by a singular vision and a whole lot of spare parts. Wadzinski, an avid fisherman and lifetime keeper of pets, makes the influence of nature and his love of animals obvious with his own recycled wild kingdom. And though he appreciates that reusing materials helps better the earth, Wadzinski insists his art isn’t quite meant as a “green” platform—he’s merely a pack rat scrambling to snatch whatever’s shiniest, a sculptor who holds that rare ability to see beauty in every object no matter how unwanted it may appear.
“I don’t have to worry about having enough material,” Wadzinski says. “I just have to worry about how to put it all together, to evoke more of an understanding. My cornerstone might be a twisted piece of plastic, something so mundane or something very valuable—I’ll let the viewer make their own decision on what it’s about or what to do with it.”
Commissioned by friends and strangers, freelancing for businesses and backyards, Wadzinski sculpts his pieces to be put just about anywhere. “I enjoy seeing something I had made for somebody that now has moss growing on top of it,” he says. “People will buy something and worry about how it might hold up in the weather. I say, ‘Time will tell!’” Wadzinski lets them know which horse limb might rust, and what wheel will eventually squeak. But nothing is ever “too nice” to be put outside. He often stores projects outdoors, sometimes during winter, just to see what happens. In a world like Wadzinski’s, it’s usually something extraordinary.
Haily Gostas is an editorial intern at Midwest Home.
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