Riverview Artist Welds Castoffs Into Career

There is nothing particularly attractive about artist James Oleson's medium.

His studio is little more than an open shed surrounded by wood fencing, tucked behind Winthrop Town Centre off Bloomingdale Avenue in Riverview. Piled haphazardly around the shed are worn lawn mower blades, greasy machinery gears, discarded steel doors, beat-up car door panels and other junkyard finds he's found worth salvaging.

The cast-offs once destined for landfills inspire Oleson's works of art. From ugliness Oleson creates beauty. From near-worthless bits of debris Oleson creates sculptures that command thousands of dollars and are displayed across the country.

Characterizing his style as industrial art, Oleson said he inherited his interest in junk as an art medium from his grandfather, Bud Oleson. Bud Oleson is best known for creating the horse sculptures on Bayshore Boulevard from garage doors he cut into stainless steel bands and wrapped around a frame, a style of sculpture that became his signature.

"I learned a lot of my techniques from him," James Oleson said. "And I still use a lot of his equipment."

He tried a more traditional career in art after winning a commercial art scholarship to Tampa Technical Institute. But about eight years ago, Oleson said, he found he preferred fine art to commercial.

He also preferred his grandfather's chosen paint brush: a welding torch.

Instead of a painter's smock, Oleson dons a welding helmet. With his torch, metal cutters and heavily gloved hands, he transforms bits and pieces of aluminum, steel and iron into figures of animals, humans and sculptures with titles such as "Waiting" and "Strength in Weakness."

The bigger the better.

The husky 33-year-old who barely breaks a sweat while lifting mammoth steel doors into the bed of his F350 pickup truck isn't afraid to think large when it comes to art.

His latest work is 14 feet tall. Named "Big Business," it portrays a man wearing what appears to be the Superman symbol but actually is a dollar sign standing on the wheels of industry holding a globe and a briefcase. The kinetic sculpture is made out of large machinery gears, car parts and oxygen tanks and continually rotates, representing big business' constant movement.

The sculpture was among 75 outdoor sculptures from across the country entered into the recent ArtLoud contest, sponsored by the city of Tampa and Crew Tampa Bay to showcase the city for the Super Bowl last month. Oleson's sculpture was among 15 chosen to be displayed for a year.

It received second place and a prestige spot at the intersection of Tampa and Madison streets in front of the Colonial Bank building.

"It's a great place," Oleson said. "Tons of people walk by that building every day."

That's not his largest work of art. Oleson has a 45-foot-long mustang horse sculpture on display at the Gulfport Industrial Arts Center, where he teaches a found materials sculpture class. Appropriately, it is made from the panels of a Ford Mustang.

The Brooksville native found his way to Winthrop Town Centre when its developers, John and Kay Sullivan, were looking for outdoor art to decorate the neotraditional community. Oleson was recruited by artist and friend Bryant Martinez, Winthrop's town artist.

He and Martinez created a number of sculptures for the community out of old bike parts. One of Oleson's sculpture horses is displayed in the courtyard of the business district.

He's working on his most ambitious piece to date for Winthrop: a 37-foot-tall horse. When completed, Oleson said it will be the tallest freestanding steel horse sculpture ever created. Oleson recruited an engineer to help him develop plans for the sculpture so it will withstand strong winds.

While he may have inherited his grandfather's preference for horses, Oleson has developed a technique that's all his. He uses melted metal punch-outs like a sculptor uses clay, molding the metal for detail.

"I also use my grandfather's technique of wrapping and tacking stainless steel bands, but I've been told by museum directors that I've definitely developed my own technique," he said.

As for the subject matter, Oleson isn't going for realism.

"I want my pieces to have a presence, to show movement, to evoke a reaction," he said. "And there is nothing fragile about them. I encourage people to touch my work."

In the process of creating beauty, Oleson also has the satisfaction of knowing he's helping the environment by keeping debris out of landfills.

"I see no reason to spend money on new when you get so much inspiration from things that had life somewhere else," he said. "This proves you can put a lot of ugly things together and make something that's beautiful. It's all how it's presented."

For information on his work, visit www.jamesoleson.com.