Moveable Heavy Metal Art

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 counterintuititive 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 out-board 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.

GETTING TO WORK

In jeans, laced-up Doc Martens and a biker bandana JJ looks ready to mount his sleek, scarlet Harley, but instead, he’s got an afternoon of plasma-cutting and welding ahead of him. As he settles in to work, Miss Nitro – “my junkyard cat” – rubs against his legs, before darting off to stalk the jays and cardinals JJ feeds.

Working with an old metal mesh satellite dish he hauled down from Georgia, JJ is welding together wings for his latest creation: a giant Florida mosquito.  Emerging from a hissing cloud of sparks, he pauses to inspect his work, then grins.  “Of course, it’s going to be able to move,” he says, gently jiggling a giant wing.  “They all  move and have motion.”