Twister - Charlie Lucas

Charlie Lucas (b. 1951 in Prattville, AL)

Twister, n.d. (Found Metal, 98 × 48 × 96 inches)

Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Gift of Ron and June Shelp

GMOA 2014.197

Charlie Lucas (aka “The Tin Man”) grew up in Alabama, where the metalwork of his grandfather inspired him to create his own pieces. His work is a combination of scrap metal that he finds alongside the road or in junk piles. He began this practice with his grandmother, a story he tells in the video above from MMFA. Given his family’s influence on his work, it is no shock that his pieces tell their stories, from American enslavement into the Civil Rights era. Every scrap object is some story used to create the sculpture.

Discussion: Charlie Lucas likes to work with "Found Metal," metal that others have discarded and he fits to his own purposes to tell a story, as he talks about in his |NPR interview|. For example, you can see a used bike tire in the middle of the horse. What scrap objects around your house might you turn into a piece of sculpture to tell a story about your own life?