Michael “JJ” Adamcik:  The Art of the Steel

It’s a funny thing about Michael Adamcik’s hands.  You’d expect deep grime, criss-cross scars and missing digits on someone who does what he does.  Instead, they’re really clean:  long-fingered, neat-nailed, not banged up at all.

Visitors to Adamcik’s place may as well prepare themselves for such counter intuititive contrasts – the man is full of them.

A retired firefighter with the skill of a master mechanic and the soul of an artist, “JJ” has filled his five piney acres with junk reborn as sculpture.

A winged dragon guards his driveway, a giant magpie watches over his heart shaped pond and a massive Florida mosquito perches on an antique fire truck.  They all bear uncanny resemblances to their inspirations, though their components range from outboard motors to gas pumps to satellite dishes.

“JJ” assembles his pieces with raw materials vested from his staggering collection of castoff cars, trucks, appliances and God knows what else that sprawls in piles behind his tidy wood house.  Are there a dozen vehicles here, a visitor wonders, gaze sweeping over weed-choked Fords, rusting jeeps and shiny Cadillacs; no, there are more, losing count at 20.

With a MIG welder and a plasma cutter, JJ fits his pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle – except there’s no picture on the box, he says. “My grandma always told me, “what your eyes can see, your hands can do,” JJ says.

Getting a start

Born in Pennsylvania – “But don’t hold that against me;  we moved here when I was 6 weeks old” – “JJ” remembers a boyhood spent messing around on the Caloosahatchee.  “I think I had a boat since I could crawl,” he says.  The other thing that fascinated “JJ” was cars.

“I loved anything that had to do with mechanics and cars.  There was a junk yard just full of wrecked cars and I just loved that place,” he says.  “It was only five acres, but it seemed like a million square miles.  I’d cut through the woods to just stare at the guys as they worked, getting a little closer each time.  Eventually they let me help out.”

He  graduated from North Fort Myers High School in 1974 and got a job with the North Fort Myers Fire Department, retiring as Captain in 2008.

Over those years, “JJ” moonlighted – everything from plumbing to embalming, mostly skilled trades.  The sculpture started about a decade ago.  “I was junking out an old Corvair and some of the suspension components were nice little cones,” he recalls.  “I thought, ‘Hey, those look like breasts – I’m going to make a woman.”  And so, Ruthie was born – rusty, anatomically correct and topped with wavy  rebar hair.

In short order, she was joined by the dragon, a sea turtle and the magpie, which “JJ” posted in front of his lake, which gently curves and dips to form a huge heart.

Yes, he had it dug that way and yes, it was for a woman.  She’s no longer around, but that’s all right; “JJ’s got the love of his life.”

Though “JJ’s” not the first self-taught scrap sculptor, his is no tacked-together outsider art.  These are thoughtfully composed pieces revealing a sophisticated knowledge of anatomy and physiology (his dragon, for example, has a properly articulated repitilian pelvis); they just happen to be made of old machinery and car parts.

Whimsical and light hearted as “JJ’s ” creations may be, they come from a man who’s shouldered some heavy moments in his life.  “People joke about lazy firefighters just sitting around doing nothing,” he says, “but they haven’t seen what we see.”  They forget, that whether it’s a burned toddler, a bar fight or a truck in the ditch, firefighters are often the first to arrive.

After a while, JJ could tell when someone was beyond help.  “They are someone’s mother, someone’s son, someone’s sister and the last face they’re going to see is mine.”  “I’d look into their eyes, let them know someone is with them.  You want them to have comfort,” he says, “and what you can give them is a loving, tender hand.”