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Artist Statement for Wolfe Bowart
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WOLFE BOWART
Artist Statement
History
The New Mexican desert junkyard was filled with bullet-holed tin cans and car parts - sun bleached bones, wooden chairs and the rare and coveted doll head and rusted Tonka truck. At six years old this was my Mecca. A place that I still dream of. Today my junkyards are the thrift shops, antique stores, and dumpsters of Los Angeles: those great equalizers, where a janitor’s toaster sits next to the movie star’s paint-by-numbers painting.
Each piece of the palette brings with it a history – and questions. Who used it and how it was used is hinted at only by a broken handle or crayon mark, or an area worn smooth by a thumb and forefinger.
These were other people’s things – used, loved, depended on by them – and part of those people are still here.
I grew up nurtured by several generations of artists in my family. My greatest influence came from the giant abstract expressionist canvases of my grandfather, Edward Dugmore.
Dug had a way of moving things around on the table when he spoke – the salt shaker here, then the glass of vodka there – a jar of flowers at the edge of the table and a pencil at the center – all moving like chess pieces, like a Calder mobile. I remember that constantly moving kinetic sculpture of shapes.
Process
Some of the work takes years, eating away at me, parts not quite working together. Others are sketched out first and then the elements found and assembled. Some come together like magnets, like long lost friends.
Some pieces have a message while others are simply there as pretty pictures.
Some are serious, others humorous.
A grandpa’s garage, a grandma’s attic, a scrapbook of lives, of families, of the past century –with a twinkle in the junkyard eye of a six-year-old.
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