By Doris Faltys
George Kurzman creates from recycled materials. He has a small house on the East side of Olympia. Outside the back door on the way to his attached workshop we pass flowers, a vegetable garden, and a few chickens. The shop is his work space as well as the storage place for his collected materials. The room is full top to bottom and across the ceiling with tools, large equipment, scrap wood, and possibilities. George says that he has been collecting for years.
“I was appalled by the waste in our society,” he says. “So much material that was not being used or appreciated.” When he first started, friends who were building contractors would call when there was demolition work to be done. George would come and assist with the deconstruction in order to find interesting materials to collect. He stock piled for years. Generally, he only took wood.
These days he keeps collecting to a minimum. He has not had time to use all the materials. There is so much. Currently, when he does collect, he looks for pieces of wood with lots of layers of paint on them so that, “when you sand off or plane off there is a layered effect with interesting details.”
George’s wall-mounted art work frequently features a collage like assembly he calls “paintings.” They are abstract in nature but take on the look and feel of landscapes. He usually starts with the central object and adds to it considering arrangements of form, color, line, and shape. He does not normally add any paint. Sometimes he uses charcoal from the wood stove to add black.
“I use the shotgun approach,” George tells me. “Shotgun,” I question? “You know, a little bit of everything,” he replies. “Oh, as in buckshot I guess,” I respond. “Yes,” he says, “I cast a wide net.” The last few years he has started incorporating crushed metal cans, “only the ones that have been driven on 100 times.” “Like the sardine can in the painting of the same name that hangs at the Matter! Gallery,” I ask? “Yes, like that,” George responds.
George was born in Washington, D.C. He studied studio arts at Wesleyan University. “My mom taught me how to draw,” he says. His grandmother and aunt were artists. He grew up around art. Living in Washington DC, they were close to many fine museums. Visiting museums was recreation for George’s family. He moved to Olympia in 1989.
“Do you have any ideas for larger work that you might want to tackle when you have a chance?” George says that he would love to do large architectural pieces using cut up boats. A few years ago he created a public art piece from a cut up boat for the Port of Olympia “Here Today” project. Old boats are,” beautiful in their own right.” He sees sculptural forms in old boats. He would like to team up with an architect to place one of these sculptures in a building lobby.
At one point he had a project in mind that would have utilized a 2,000 pound iron ballast keel he salvaged from a boat he cut up. For a long time the keel sat in his yard. “It had a beautiful shape. I thought of it mounted on a pedestal. But in the end, it was more of an undertaking than I could take on at the time and I ended up scraping it. It is a direction I think about going, but have not made any progress in yet.” “So you would be interested in another boat to cut up then?” “Yes,” he replies, “I would identify which parts of the boat could be used sculpturally and modified in artful ways. The Matter! Gallery in Olympia has a shelf unit, and a retail desk that I made from sections of a sail boat,” he says.
George previously served on the board of the Sand Man Foundation and was out on the water driving the 100 year old Sand Man Tugboat ferrying Olympia past and present Mayors Doug Mah & Stephen Buxbaum and Port Commissioner Jeff Davis out to review the arrival of the canoes for the Paddle to Squaxin 2012.
He is interested in creating art for public installations and plans to apply for grants in that area.
In the meantime George spends his days doing a variety of carpentry related work, such as wooden boat repair, demolition, remodeling, cabinetry, and custom furniture. “Would you be interested in creating furniture with a nautical flare for beach cabins,” I ask? “Sure,” he responds, “I would.”
George’s work can be seen in downtown Olympia at the Matter! Gallery which features artists creating fine and functional art made from recycled and reclaimed materials. The gallery represents more than 100 artists creating sculpture, paintings, furniture, lighting, jewelry, garden art, and metalwork. Visit the Matter! Gallery in its new location 422 Washington St SE, Olympia, WA in the historic Capitol Theater Building. 360-943-1760
George Kurzman can be reached at george@doriak.com.
