Enlarge Sci-fi art invasion: Plainwell artist Steve Curl’s robot creations gallery (4 photos) By Lynn Turner
Robots entered Steve Curls life through an aluminum coffee pot.
I turned a coffee pot upside down and saw a robot head, says the artist known around West Michigan as Planet Steve. Then I did a lot of robot heads for the next four or five years.
From the heads sprang bodies, which grew feet, arms or claws, made mostly from aluminum pieces. Robotic fingers and toes may have served as measuring spoons in a previous life.
Curl has been a sci-fi freak from childhood, which wasnt that long ago if you ask the 47 going on 9 artist.
Ive always been making stuff, he says.
With a photographer father and fiber artist mom, Curls artistic endeavors were encouraged as he grew up, he says. Curl has dabbled in areas including woodcarving and jewelry making.
Ill play with any material, he says.
Aluminum has become a favored medium for his robots. It can be glued, bent, pounded, scratched and shined.
Its very forgiving, he says. Its awesome.
Its also light, which makes it much more manageable to take around to art shows.
If it were bronze, Id have a fortune sunk into trucking costs, he says with a grin.
Curl has a room in the downstairs area of his Plainwell home that is primarily storage space for his library of aluminum pieces. His workshop area, to the untrained eye, is an unmitigated mess. To the artist, its a treasure trove with room for more supplies.
The garage has been given over to Curls work and, in the backyard, theres a dome-shaped shelter covered by a blue tarp that holds some of the bigger plastic pieces and tubing that are incorporated into his more abstract pieces.
A life-sized robot guards the front door. His two Manx cats ignore several robotic pieces decorating the homes foyer, including a small bat-like creature with a continuously spinning head.
Curl has been junking for the past few days and picked up several items that could be used in the home or pieced out as sculptural bits, including two tall 1970s swivel chairs typically seen by the bar in someones basement. Sure, theyre ugly, Curl concedes, but clean and usable.
If Sara, Curls wife of 17 years, decides she doesnt want the chairs in the house, the legs will come off, along with the round footrest, and theres new stock for another sculpture.
Most of the material Curl uses in his sculptures is picked from peoples trash bulk pick-up days provide a plethora of good stuff, thrift stores and flea markets. Salvage yards are no longer as amenable to letting people come in to look for parts because of liability concerns.
Sometimes friends bring me pieces, Curl says. The first time Sara brought me a piece, I was, like, Wow, you really get it about what I was doing. Its like buying new art supplies. I would have spent $100 for it, but its free.
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