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Bret H. Hart  -  Rust Sculpture
428 Patrick Street
Eden, North Carolina
27288


Begun July 2002.


    In May 2002, my wife and children moved into our first house, a Southern "plantation-style" monolith that dated from 1927 (read: 'fixer-upper'), which sits on about a 1/2 acre in-town.  While chopping brush in the way back, I spied several rusty pipe-ends sticking out of a tangle of blackberry and honeysuckle.  These 'several' pipes actually numbered near 100.
    About 20 hours of sweat, nasty blisters and lacerated calves later, I successfully got all of it out of the ground... Ranging in length from 6" to 32', I excavated about a ton of assorted steel plumbing and iron scaffolding pipe, aluminum conduit, and all manner of rusty valve, spigot, pump handle, and elbow joint.
    Here we are in another ill-handled millennium and I'm completing a circle begun as an undergraduate Sculpture student cutting up car chassis with an Arc welder and making the chunks into angular heads and profiles in 1977.
    Each sculpture serves a dual purpose:
        a)  3-dimensional visual object
        b)  percussion instrument
    Since moving into this house in May, I have learned that the physical structure is well- grounded.  Twice, lightning took out my computer and once all of the phones. One of my free-standing tripods on the back-periphery of the property will hopefully be more attractive to Mother Nature than the metal rods on the chimneys... and I hope I'm looking if this occurs. Everyone likes fireworks.
    In making these pieces and deciding what to put where, these assemblages balanced - pretty much the way you see them - without any of the wire and other supports I lashed things together with later to combat wind, ice, and rambunctious children.

Rust Drum
(two views)
 
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John the Baptist
Biblical hero
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hand-bent, tripod-based, pipe assemblages
Executed 7/27-8/12/2002
These photographs taken August 12-14, 2002, upon completion of 8th tripod.
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This Defiant
(four views)
  
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Grandmother
dedicated to Irene Henry Hart [1897-1991]
(two views)
 
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Grape Trap
(four  views)
 
 
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House of Many Disappointments
(eight  views)
     
 
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2 Elephants
(two views)
        
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