For Wayne Kern, scrap turns to beauty

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Wayne Kern's calloused hands are dancing to the tune of rain trickling from the ceiling.

At his scarred workbench, with the chill of a wet, gray afternoon pulsing through an open window, Kern bends and twists a thick rope of electrical cable anchored to a metal vise. Later today, or maybe tomorrow, the silvery strand will become an ornamental tree, with barren branches reaching out like a mother's arms.

"Most people look at this stuff, and they think of it as flawed," he says, referring to the objects scattered about his workshop.

Slabs of chipped glass. Torn window screens. Metal guts from clocks and cars. Balled-up pieces of copper wire.

Flawed? Not to Kern. To him, each of these things represents the beginning of an art project. The screen? The fins of a fish. The copper wire? A dancer's tangled hair. The car and clock parts? A whimsical mobile.

From his modest studio on a North Sacramento street favored by drug dealers and prostitutes, Kern takes scavenged "junk" and recycles it into objects that grace homes and galleries around the region.

Yet Kern is reluctant to label himself an artist. He has never taken art classes, he's quick to point out, nor trained under any great masters. He's not comfortable dissecting his work, or promoting it.

"I don't know any artists. For a long time, I thought 'Art Deco' was a person," he jokes.

Wrought from a life

But Kern's creations, mostly sculptures crafted from things that others throw away, have found an appreciative audience.

"He works with such raw, hard, sharp materials," says Abundio Montez of midtown's Phoenix Gallery, which shows Kern's industrial art. "He takes these things, and he turns them into works of beauty, whether a female figure with a flowing gown and a hat, a mermaid, a fish. It's all so soft and eye-pleasing."

A couple of years ago, with a nudge from Montez, Neiman Marcus in San Francisco commissioned Kern to create oversize butterflies to feature in its windows during the Christmas season. Kern never got to see the display, he says with a shrug, but he heard it was a hit.

It was another midtown gallery owner, Diane Tempest of Blooming Art, who "discovered" Kern in the early 1990s.

He was living in an apartment on Capitol Avenue, caring for a longtime partner who was dying of AIDS. To take his mind off his troubles, he would sit outside his building, twisting pieces of wire into various shapes.

"He had this vivid array of metal sculptures on his balcony," recalls Tempest. "Fabulous ball gowns, figures with hats and big bows. I asked him if I could sell it in the gallery, and he said yes."

Blooming Art featured his work for eight years, until Tempest temporarily relocated to San Francisco. Then Kern struck an alliance with the Phoenix.

A few miles away from that gallery, prospective customers can stop by Kern's North Sacramento studio and see his works in progress.

His workshop offers little to distinguish itself from the industrial buildings, bars and fast-food joints that define the neighborhood. Its only identifying feature is a hand-painted sign on the door. "Bent & Twisted," it says in red letters.

A long and twisted road

Erika Sorci, who lives in the area, remembers spotting Kern's colorful sculptures for the first time as she took a shortcut home along a grimy little street called Boxwood.

"I had no idea what those buildings were, but I saw some sculptures hanging outside and I thought, 'Those are really neat,' she recalls. "I kept driving by, and after about the 10th time, I decided to stop."

A stocky man with a shaved head, black work boots and a bemused smile that revealed a few missing teeth invited her inside.

Sorci ended up buying a sculpture of a fish that reminded her of the koi that her parents kept in their pond back in the Midwest. Fashioned mostly from metal screens and painted shimmery colors, it seemed almost alive. At $30, she thought it was a steal.

Again and again, Sorci ventured back to the workshop, sometimes bringing her husband, Justin, or a friend. Each time, she learned a little bit about Kern's hardscrabble life.

About the writer:

• Call the Bee's Cynthia Hubert, (916) 321-1082 To see more of Wayne Kern's art, go to bentandtwistedartbyhand.com.