The Recycled Face

On the campus of the local boarding school, this clever sculpture of recycled materials (or found objects) welcomes those who wander to the back of the campus. From every angle it's a delight. Look carefully and you will find something that makes you smile with recognition -- a tractor seat, sign letters, an old Tonka truck, garden art love birds, a wine bottle.
What makes detritus beautiful is the eye of the artist who can transform it into something new. The viewer sees the transformation first -- here a face, first in profile as I approached it from the sidewalk and then frontally and then from the other profile. Coming down another sidewalk, I would see the back of the head first. No matter the approach: the whole head is what any viewer first sees.

Then the viewer stops, if, like mine, her eye is enchanted. The "seen whole" then transforms to the "seen objects," and the delight the component objects bring: memories of the nephew who loved trucks and banging them about; of the basement where a father loved to tinker; of a country sales lot filled with concrete statues; of bottle trees; of the work of other artists with transforming eyes.

My friend Lonnie Holley, an artist known for his assemblages, once inscribed a painting for me: "To Robley: To see art is to see." I saw this sculpture, and I saw art. My eyes smiled.