The Beauty of Junk

Any Greenwich Villager who spots a discarded sewing machine, old drainpipe, truck fender or pile of angle irons these days knows just where to take it; to the cold-water flat of Sculptor-Welder Richard Stankiewicz, 34, who with little more than an acetylene torch, a welder's tools and his own vivid imagination turns junk into sculpture. Says he: "I take material that is already degenerating, flaking and rusting and then try to make something beautiful out of it. It should hit people over the head and make them ask, 'What is beauty?' "

Sculptor Stankiewicz came by his love for junk naturally. He was raised in one of Detroit's toughest districts, used a foundry dump for his playground. During a World War II hitch in the U.S. Navy, he found himself whiling away time in the Aleutians by whittling caribou horn, decided to cash in his G.I. Bill on an art education. He studied with Hans Hofmann in Manhattan, polished off in Paris with Painter Fernand Leger and Sculptor Ossip Zadkine. Back in Manhattan he set out to shape his future by reclaiming the flotsam and jetsam of "the sea of junk around us."

In Manhattan's Hansa Gallery on Central Park South, 22 of Stankiewicz's rusty iron weldings are on display this week in a one-man show. What they lack in elegance they often make up in wit. To the surprise of Manhattan critics, they also follow the rules of good sculpture. A case in point is Stankiewicz's The Warrior, which is armored with a hatmaker's discarded boiler, has a butane-bottle head and a boiler-plate shield. The Warrior's spindly steel rod legs, girded with buggy wheels, and its limp crest of dangling BX cable give it'away. Says Stankiewicz: "It's most menacing from the front, but it's futile in spite of its posture."

To prospective buyers worried about the rust. Stankiewicz declares: "That's the big thing about it, the convenience. You just leave it out in the rain and it becomes even more beautiful."

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