Text by Joseph M. Schuster

Bottle caps, broken typewriter keys, a vintage tin can—most of us would toss them out. But in the playful hands of Mark Brown, typewriter keys become insect legs and tin cans become top hats. “I look at useless things and see them for what they might become,” he says.

Friends always donate materials, such as a heart that became a head, (a) “My wife’s students collected jar lids for the robot’s legs,” (b) “People feel better giving me things instead of throwing them out.” (c) The artist in his Easthampton, Massachusetts, studio.

“Incorporating clocks gives the pieces a functionality people like,” Mark says. He likes materials that echo the past, and prefers analog clocks to digital. “Because we see the sweep of the second hand, it reminds us that we’re not just telling time, but also marking its passage.”

Mark began as a painter. influenced by expressionism, his early art was serious. “There was no audience for it, and I got terribly discouraged.”
Instead of giving up, he sought a new medium, discovering it almost by accident when he began looking in new ways at flea market merchandise. “Most people think of bottle caps as things that have already served a purpose, but I started seeing them in terms of forms and shapes,” he recalls.
When he began experimenting with humble, everyday materials, his work sprang to life. “When you’re using found objects, you’re not entirely the author of what you create,” he says. “That gave me a distance from the work, freeing it to become more joyous.”

Mark made this whimsical frog clock from an aluminum bread pan and measuring spoons, based on a design by his wife and studio mate, artist Susan Boss. Available for $95 (shipping not included) through bossbrownart.com.
(offer expire 03/06/07)
 

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