Aaron Kramer's salvaged whimsy
Everyday objects with the patina of time and wear serve as the raw materials of the artist's sculptures. His work is the focus of a solo show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum.
 "Assorted Gourds" by Aaron Kramer, 2006-09, woven recycled street sweeper bristles and recycled hardwood over armatures, automotive bearings, red powder coating. (Craft and Folk Art Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum / May 21, 2010) |
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When Aaron Kramer was a boy, he would ride his bike through the streets of his Chicago neighborhood on the evening before trash pickup, trawling for interesting discards.
"Thursday night was my gold mine night as a kid," he recalls. Settled in Santa Monica for the last dozen years, Kramer, 46, still keeps an eye out for underappreciated treasures, such as the wooden brooms he noticed poking out of garbage cans, their handles worn from repeated use. Whenever he saw one, he'd throw it in the back of his van, and after a while, he'd collected enough to create a headboard out of them.
Everyday objects with the patina of time and wear pack his studio and serve as the raw materials of his sculpture: chairs encrusted with used wine corks; hanging lamps woven from wooden coffee stirrers; small, wall-mounted boats pieced together from sections of wooden salad bowls; gourd-like vessels shaped from the slender metal bristles of a street sweeper. These and more make up the artist's first solo museum show, "Salvaged: Aaron Kramer and the Secret Life of Objects," at the Craft and Folk Art Museum through Sept. 12.
Now, he says, "Stuff kind of finds me. An object has to speak to me before I can use it in a piece, but also, given a thousand of something, I can probably figure something out."
Aaron Kramer's salvaged whimsical artworks - latimes.com
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