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NEW HAVEN REGISTER

Artists in ‘Found Object Art 2003’ scour           the countryside for materials

  By Sandi Kahn Shelton    Register Staff

   CHRISTOPHER      CAPEZZONE of Deep  River has yet to meet a    junk pile he doesn’t love.        The self taught artist     has been known to root    shamelessly around at        people’s garage sales and   garbage pick-ups, carting off objects at which most of us would shudder.                 There was the day he was nearly killed near         the 76 Truck Stop in         Branford because he

“Edgar Simonneau” by Penny Weinstein of Branford

spotted the shredded remains of old
tires and just knew he needed them.
And there was the time he liberated
an old rusty metal dollhouse from
the 1960s in somebody's garbage
heap, and knew it belonged on top
of an old surfboard he had.
   To Capezzone, there is no junk that
can't somehow be made into art.
   He has plenty of company. Other
artists, too, are discovering that the
contents of attics, basements and,
yes, landfills, yield treasures that are
mesmerizing  when placed in just the
right spot in precisely the right
juxtaposition with other found
objects.
   The Guilford Handcraft Center is,
for the first time, honoring these
artistic pieces, with its show called
"Found Object Art 2003," opening on
Friday and running through May 11.

IF YOU GO

Exhibition: “Found Object Art 2003”                   Time: Free opening reception 6:30-8 p.m.                  Friday. Show runs through May 11.         Place: Guilford Handcraft Center, 411                          Church St. (Route 77), Guilford.             Info: (203)453-5947,www.handcraftcenter.org

   Some 43 artists from Connecticut, New
York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are
bringing in collections of very ordinary
objects that they have transformed into
extraordinary art.
   Harvee Riggs, a Guilford artist who
studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in
Los Angeles and Otis College of Art and
Design, says it was when he discovered the
art of box assemblage that he found his
niche in the art world.

 Please See Eureka, Page E5

“Queen of the Highway” by Christopher Capezzone of Deep River

NEW HAVEN REGISTER

LIFE/STYLES

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2003         PAGE E5

   "It's a mystical experience," he says. "I don't plan the pieces. They just evolve and grow. While I'm doing the piece, I'm telling myself a story, but once I'm done, the story doesn't really matter anymore. I hope that people seeing the art can make their own stories about it.                                "Riggs' piece, "Bingo Box," is made from an old pinball machine and contains a fish jawbone, faces of pocket watches, springs, a snow globe, old photographs  and even miniature dolls of George Bush, Michael Dukakis and Ronald Reagan.        He still regrets, he says, a keyboard that he once saw on the side of the road and which he didn't stop to put in his car.                                                    "It haunts me," he says. "You can bet that will never happen again. I pick up objects now whether I think I'll need them or not. There's a whole room in my house that I can't move around in, because it's so filled up."

   Wendy Walden and Betsy Gribble, both of Guilford, work in partnership — and their found art consists of jewelry they make from old Bakelite game pieces, such as poker chips, mah-jongg tiles, dice — as well as Scrabble pieces, tie tacks, old typewriter keys and plenty of antique buttons.                                                              "We both are designers," says Walden, "so we get together and design pieces together, and then we go off and make the things in our own studios, alone.                "They describe their jewelry as fun and colorful, conversation pieces that can be worn either with jeans or with dress-up clothes.                                                               Penny Weinstein of Branford makes found object sculptures, using antique found objects. She has two sheds and half of her garage filled with such objects as sprinkler heads, old signs, bottle caps, and old foundry patterns. Her piece on display for the show, "Edgar Simonneau," is actually a functional piece of furniture, consisting of an old sign from a purveyor of that same name, and an antique wooden cabinet.                                            

   "Some of my pieces are functional, though most aren't," she says.                       On display at the show is a chair, created from nautical objects, made by Rex  Prescott Walden, Wendy's husband. The seat of the chair is made of an old centerboard, the back consists of old paint sticks, and there are cleats, locks  and old oars serving as the legs and spindles of the chair.                                                                   "My husband proudly showed it to his father after he'd made it, and his father, an old Yankee at heart, took one look at it and said, in shock, 'Why, that's a perfectly good oar!' So that's the name of the piece: 'A Perfectly Good Oar,'" says Wendy.