Sparks Fly
Twenty five years ago, Paul Craig heard a small inner voice saying, ”Instaaall power in the garaaage. Instaaall power in the garaaage.”
The eerie otherworldly message kept echoing in the empty corridors of his mind. Finally, Paul understood it was too important to ignore and instructed the architect designing his family’s new home in Martinez to include plenty of electrical outlets in the blueprints for their two-car garage.
The reason for this need became fully apparent when Paul retired from his job as a professor of environmental policy at U.C. Davis and took up the hobby of welding metal sculptures in 2003.
The garage became his art studio.
His welding equipment shares elbow room with the washing machine and dryer. He and his wife, Kay, routinely park the family station wagon on top of his art supplies, large, thin sheets of stainless steel and aluminum strewn about the floor of the garage.
When Paul is welding together one of his sculptures, he works out in the driveway.
“Sparks fly,” he explains.
Paul Craig creating a sculpture.
Paul began his sculpting hobby with a pretty skimpy skill set.
“I have colorblindness, no formal art training and no talent. It just feels good to take old pieces of iron and make something out of them,” he says.
What Paul does have is the ability to learn from his mistakes. Over the years, his technical skills have improved through self-guided lessons on how to weld together pieces of sheet metal.
“I like learning through error,” he explains.
Paul also has enjoyed plenty of lost time.
“When time disappears, that’s a good use of time,” he waxes philosophically.
Paul claims his sculptures are non-representational and yet they evoke curiously insightful comments from gallery visitors.
“Every dog’s dream. To sit on a pile of balls,” one astute lady said of Stickeen on a Glacier, a three dimensional representation of John Muir’s short story by the same title that is about a dog who, with Muir’s help, conquers his fears of leaping over a glacier crevasse.
Stickeen on a Glacier, stainless steel, 2006.
In 2006, a handful of Martinez artists got together with the idea of creating a co-op. Founders Cathy Riggs and Casey Rasmussen White recruited Paul to become a member of the Martinez Gallery.
“I am happy to be in the gallery. It is accepting and idiosyncratic. That’s a plus,” states Paul, the wacky creator of Cyberiad, another sculpture inspired by a book, Stanislaw Lem’s science fiction story of a space alien making an interplanetary stop over on Earth and the inevitable consequences of looking so very different from humans.
Paul Craig is now a recognized art talent in Martinez. Several of his metal sculptures can be found around town outside of public buildings. He is a long time Martinez resident.
By Jen Copeland
Photos by Warren Rose and Paul Craig
mARTinez Gallery 