Inside The Studio
by Diane Daly
Artist: Troy Neiman
Media: Metal, Clay and Paint
Studio Location: BICAS; Tucson Museum of Art School Ceramics Studio
hhh…Listen. Do you hear the clang of the axes, the howl of the mob? They’re coming to bludgeon an Ogre and its name is Sixth Street Studios. The news broke with fury: a contractor has declared the warehouse a “death trap.” (Or rather he said it’s on it’s way to becoming a death trap, or actually he said ten years ago that it was on its way to becoming a death trap back then, but only fools talk nuance in the first paragraph of the story, so don’t bother too much with the details.)
To complicate matters, hundreds of artists still spend three-quarters of their time at Sixth Street Studios and the remainder of their time in a two-mile orbit of the place. A building with sagging roofs, water damage and exposed wiring, which should send any card-carrying sane person tearing toward the hills and their homes of stucco, instead draws these dusty young people like a magnet. Despite leaks that ruin their work, warnings of disaster and demand that they fix what they do not own, these people wade in the drool of the Ogre like lumps in the cream sauce .
One of these artists is Troy Neiman, 25 years old, formerly of Madison, Wisconsin. Troy was already skilled in welding, ceramics, and what he calls “the bike thing” five years ago, when a friend steered him toward the Tucson Gem Show while the two were traveling the U.S. They had visited countless places by then, but something in Tucson “sucked me in,” Troy says now, and it wasn’t the turquoise; it was the trash. Art like the garbage cans made from bicycle forks in front of Epic Café calls to artists such as Troy Neiman like The Ring calls to Sauron. Troy made inquiries about the trash cans and was sent to the place they came from: BICAS, the bicycle recycling program that has operated out of Sixth Street Studios for about ten years now.
When he got to those Studios, he became a Tucsonan.
Today Troy is the metal man for BICAS, and finding him is easy: just drag some old bike skeletons into that parking lot on 6th and 9th, click your boots together and say, “Turn this into something special.” Cue a burst of welding sparks and then a fresh-faced young man will emerge from a tin shed like a fairy godbrother. He’ll talk to you in that self-effacing way only young Midwesterners have, placing phrases like “or whatever” and “kinda thing” at the end of every sentence that requires your decision. Then he’ll wipe his forehead with a pink handkerchief, stuff it back in the pocket of his khaki green twill pants, and weld your junk into a cart, or a bike, or a scorpion whose back arches up on plates made from saddle guts. (That means bike seat parts to the rest of us.)
October and November are busy months for Troy. Most of his conversations this month start out, “Hey man, you taking orders for carts?” and end with four- or eight-wheeled coalescences of metal glinting in the sunshine. These carts are the foundations of the floats that will roll in the All Souls Procession. One of his carts last year became the Whirling Dervish float, the gear crank of which spins a shaft inside a massive puppet wearing a fez; the year before he built the 20-foot-long banner cart that carries flags bearing the names of the notable dead. Troy is also your man if you want “artistic assistance”, as it’s called on bicas.org, in making bike part art for BICAS’ Annual Art Auction in mid-November. You just rifle through BICAS’ bins of parts and bring him a saddle spring, a chain, and a dream. Then close your eyes when he fires up the welder (unless you want to smoke your own pupils). Crackle…pop…crackle…and you’ve got one hot lizard with a moving tail.
Troy moonlights as a monitor at Tucson Museum of Art School’s Ceramics Studio. It’s located at the historic Romero House, thankfully less than a mile away from Sixth Street Studios or he might turn into a pumpkin. One of his signature styles involves throwing a pot and then hand building stairs, caves and “cliff-dwelling type carvings” on top for the plants to wind through. “It’s more like ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ than like houses,” he says, and when he mentions that series for young readers it’s easy to see him as a fuzzy blond boy in Wisconsin, recreating the labyrinths of Choose Your Own Adventure: The Treasure of the Onyx Dragon with legos.
However, it’s that two-mile radius comprising the Warehouse District that channels his boyish creativity these days. “So many people are involved in making art. Everyone’s got their projects,” he marvels about the district. He still visits his family in Madison sometimes, “but when I come back here it feels more like home, like more of a place I fit in.” As he rides to his actual home a block away from the studios, he is black with metal soot, white with ceramic dust, and satisfied, it seems, that though his warehouse’s structure needs serious repair, its culture has never been better.
The All Souls Procession winds through Downtown on November 3rd. The BICAS Art Auction takes place on Sunday, November 18, location TBA; submit or create art for it by calling them at 628-7950 or visiting bicas.org.
