Saw Bird, 1979
Metal and Hardware, 48" x 48" x 48"
Barney Wiggle, 1991
Metal, Hardware, 52" x 64" x 23"
Mark Blumenstein was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1943. After studying agriculture at Pennsylvania State University for a year, he left to work for a photography company. In his spare time he began to make carved wood sculptures. In the early 1970s he moved to a farm in West Virginia. He bought a set of welding torches so that he could dismantle the discarded trucks and machinery he found on the property, and he began to weld the objects together; first into furniture for his log cabin, then into sculptures. The whimsical sculptures of birds and animals he creates from farm machinery, old tools and found objects are in art collections around the country. Blumenstein found in the old tools and machinery a history he felt should be acknowledged: he said, “I just couldn’t see discarding pieces of the past that so many hands had been involved with.”
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.