(wondrous music) (suspenseful music) - "Eye On Education" I'm Fred Martino.

Upfront this week, art and education come together in Carterville.

We are thrilled to present this documentary provided by John A. Logan College.

It's called "Untitled", the art of Aldon Addington.

(upbeat folklore music) (welder sizzling) (upbeat folklore music) (joyous music) - What I've got is what I work with, and I treat a scrapyard, a salvage yard as my art supply store.

And so, what I find there determines what I make.

Because otherwise, if I had to buy all this stuff out of a catalog, each piece would have to be a masterpiece, and they would all be on a pedestal scale because the material itself is so expensive.

And if I decide that something isn't going to make it at all and it's just more scrap, then it still has value.

Even the pieces that fail still have the intrinsic value of the metal.

Well, sometimes, I'm digging back into stuff that I bought 20 years ago, and so I look at things and reevaluate them.

I'm like the guy on the beach looking for coconuts, and you find a pile of coconuts, and then you start doing something with them.

And so, I'm always looking for coconuts or whatever, we're always looking for something.

I try to avoid titles as much as possible because I feel that titles tend to tell people what to look at or what they're looking at, or what to think about what they're looking at.

And I prefer they just figure that all out on their own.

So I make the pieces, I don't explain them.

(joyous music) - We're having all of our students, all of our welding students, our construction management students, our art students, they're all coming together to help on this project.

We are blending the comprehensiveness of what we teach here on campus and putting it together to help create these beautiful spaces that we can see this art.

- And it's important to have administration be as excited about that and understand the cultural importance, the aesthetic importance, and the community importance.

So I feel really grateful that we're moving in this direction.

- Well, I see these pieces as being really centerpieces for a lot of different things that our students can do.

For one, they're gonna be placed in really, really neat places, and it'd be a peaceful place for people to go, and sit around, and just do their writing, meet with other students, have a cup of coffee, just look at the piece, really enjoy that, right?

But then, I think our folks in our programs like our English program or our writing program, they can send them out to get inspiration from the pieces and bring it back to the classroom.

- My experience will be sort of two different elements, because my art appreciation class, we actually talk about sculpture, we talk about the materials, the assemblage method, and the different materials that can come together.

And then, there's my art history class.

And after interviewing Aldon and Aldon talking about the artists that inspired him, they're all artists that we talk about in class.

And to think that after they see these artists that inspired Aldon and then to see someone from our community and how they were inspired by the materials and experienced by that body of work, and what he created.

Each experience, each class that goes out, there will be a different experience, but they're both very exciting.

- You've figured out what you want to tell young art students, then those are things that you have to have accumulated through some sort of experience, or research, or something.

Can't just get up there and read a script.

You've got to actually show people what's going on.

And so, I found that if I could do an adequate job of expressing the possibilities for materials, and what you could do with the materials, how to use the materials, and how to use machinery to make things, passing that information on was about as important as anything I could do.

And I enjoyed that.

- One of the exciting things about having Aldon's work here on campus is the way that Aldon, as an artist, visualizes his own pieces.

When I look at his artwork, I can see the elements that he is choosing to integrate.

And I can also see that he allows the viewer to experience their own ideas about things.

- I had 15 years of construction, so the first time I saw Aldon's pieces over at his place, it was this like blend in my heart of all of the things that I've done in my lifetime.

So he has some really, really neat pieces on his campus over in Carbondale.

Some of them look like, they look like pipe.

And when I was in construction, when I was an electrician, I was up underneath bridges putting this pipe together, right?

And looking at the pipe, it just gave me this inspiration of where I came from.

- This art project's been really good for the welding program, and the construction management and art, a lot the students are getting to work together along with the instructors to figure out how to design, build, and install the artwork on John A. Logan property.

- Whenever he said that, my teacher Grover had asked, "Would you be willing to help?"

I was like, heck, yeah.

So I came up to the school, and I met Aldon, and we went about basically putting it back together.

And then, we actually ended up adding some more pieces to it to bolster it, to kind of thicken it up some, and to make it a little bit more robust and structurally sound as it were.

But it was a really nice and cool experience.

To have the art here and how it was constructed, and the fact that he had put it together the way he did, I mean, it's showing another aspect that it's not just a dirty, grimy job that's a necessity for modern society, that you can actually end up creating things that are art.

And it's really nice that we actually have something that represents our field here on campus now.

I think one of the things that I, my takeaway from this is, one, that there's so many awesome careers that can come from welding.

And I myself would like to continue along the metal path, as it were, I would like to eventually go to SAU, they have a metal smith program, and eventually, become a teacher myself.

Essentially, it's limitless, it's really the only thing that basically is gonna hold you up is your imagination.

And I have a vast imagination.

- If you really wanna make art, you'll figure out a way to do it, and you'll figure out that that's more important than some other things.

So you have to make decisions all along.

And sometimes, if you just decide that, by golly, I'm an artist and I'm going to keep making art, you'll figure out a way to do it, or not, you know?

(joyous music) - And joining me now in studio, the artist in that documentary, Aldon Addington.

Aldon, thank you so much for being with us today.

- Happy New Year.

- It is great to have you with us.

I so enjoyed watching that video and watching you at work, and the experience of working with students at John A. Logan College.

Not just art students, but there's welding students construction students installing the sculptures on campus.

What did you think of that process?

- I was amazed at the whole process.

It turned into a seminar on Egyptian construction methods where you have a lot of people intent on doing something and it happens right there before your eyes.

And so, we unloaded the piece from the trailer, the 20 foot sculpture that's now installed.

And it was amazing just to see it on top of all these students' shoulders as it headed over to the spot where it was finally installed.

It was amazing.

While I was standing there trying to figure out what we were going to do, it happened, it's unbelievable.

So it's a great crew over there, and they jump in and they do what needs to be done.

- I'm sure a lot of people watching that will be inspired seeing it.

And to me, it really seemed like a model for getting more students involved in the arts, if not personally involved, learning about arts, and the process, and appreciating the arts.

- Well, those folks are learning all sorts of skills related to the particular area that they're interested in.

But I think what they learned from participating in this project was that if they all got together and cooperated, they could do incredible things.

And I think that's the way it went.

I was thinking in terms of heavy equipment and things like that necessary to do what needed to be done, but they just all jumped in and did it.

- You mentioned in the video that you use material from salvage in your sculpture.

- Repurposed, repurposed.

- Repurposed, yeah.

- If architects redo a building for something else, they don't start with junk, they start with repurposing.

That's what I did.

I repurposed materials from our industrial society.

And the reason for that mainly was economics.

Because if I order a 20 foot piece of stainless steel, it's going to cost a fortune.

By the time it's shipped to me, every piece that I used that initial shipment for would have to be a masterpiece, and they would all probably be about two foot high.

- Yeah.

- But if you're scrounging around recycling material, you can find gems, and you put those gems together to make what you wanna make.

- That sounds like it gets to my question that some people might look at using repurposed stuff as a limiting factor.

- [Aldon] No, no.

- But others would say, no, it's not at all, you get ideas from it maybe, right?

- The basic rule that I follow is that I don't use anything that had a useful life as something else.

I don't use things that are readily identifiable as gears or other parts of something, things with bolt holes in them, things that have been welded.

I use the stock, I use what the shops call those things drops, when they cut a piece with a saw and the piece that drops down on the floor is tossed in the bin to be recycled.

- So you thought you needed 20 feet, but you only needed 18, two feet drop-off.

- [Aldon] Well, yeah.

- There you go.

- Exactly.

- Okay, good, and so that- - And there's nothing wrong with that piece that wasn't used to make whatever was made.

- And I would imagine having to use material maybe from several different sources, as opposed to being a limiting factor, it might give you ideas.

- It gives me ideas.

I'm the guy on the beach picking up coconut shells.

"Mosquito Coast" is one of my favorite movies, you know?

So the idea being that the things that you need and can use you can find, and the interesting thing about using salvage materials is to go to the scrapyard, and you see something there, you probably should grab it right then because it probably won't be there the next day or the next week.

- Yeah, you probably learned that by experience, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So it's not an art supply store where things are on shelves and like that, you go in there, and you dig it out of the pile, and it's your treasure, and you throw it in your truck, and you collect that with all the other stuff you've collected, and you find a way to make things.

- I see a little smile, a little light in your eye as you're talking about that.

This sounds like this is part of the fun.

This is part of the fun, right?

- Sadly, that's something that's kind of gone away because I've only located one recycling facility in the area that will allow me in and sell me things.

And that's up at Newton, Illinois.

They've got a little shop or little operation up there that stays open three or four days a week.

And I can call ahead and make sure they're there, and they'll sell me whatever I want.

But the price has quadrupled since I had Gary's Metals over at Carterville.

So, metal prices have gone way up, and particularly stainless steel because it has all of those neat things in it like chromium and nickel that are quite expensive and getting more rare all the time.

So, my material has gone up in price and the intrinsic value has increased.

And that's something else about working particularly with stainless steel, it always has an intrinsic value.

So if you end up with your own scrap pile, it still has a value, you don't throw it away, you recycle it.

- You mentioned in the video, and, of course, it's part of the title of the video, "Untitled", that you do not name your works.

Tell me, usually.

- Well, usually.

- Tell me about that decision and how it came about.

When did it happen?

- The thing is, I haven't strictly refused to put tiles on things.

Sometimes, in agreement with wherever the piece is going to finally be installed, I come to a satisfactory agreement with the folks that, okay, we'll call it this or that, but mostly I don't put titles on it.

Because I have the feeling that if I put a title on something, then I'm telling the viewer how to look at it and what to think about it.

And I'd prefer that people just see the thing and come to their own conclusions.

- Yeah.

- And the thing is, with a totally abstract piece, you can see different things at different times.

But if you see a horse, for example, it's always gonna be a horse.

But if it's a collection of materials that are reacting to the atmosphere, and the time of day, and all of that, then the thing is totally changing all the time.

- Yeah, when did you make that decision?

Was it very early on?

- I never liked hanging titles on things.

And so, I always felt that I'd let the viewer decide what they were looking at.

- I enjoyed hearing you talk about that and now expanding on it in this conversation.

We also notice in this video that you have art in your yard, on your home, your home itself is actually an art project.

Tell me about that decision and then the reaction in the neighborhood when you decided to do this.

- [Aldon] Oh, well, I built the house in the neighborhood with the material from this local scrapyard, and I was able to find things that I could cut apart and reuse to make, well, the house is nine foot up in the air because it's a flood plane that I live in.

And so, I thought it might be a good idea to elevate it.

So I found some units that were manufacturers especially for Ford Motor Company to enable them to haul engine blocks on railroad flat cars.

And so, I saw these things and I thought, I can use those things, I can build something with those.

And so, I just bought the entirety of the, I don't know, 180 something that they had.

And I asked the guys in the office if they would deliver them for me.

This is a scrapyard, they don't usually offer delivery services.

But they brought the total 184 out to my lot over in the Northeast section in town and just dumped them off in a big pile.

They were all Ford blue, and people wondering, what in the world's going on?

But I had a neighbor down at the end of the street who had worked construction.

He understood how to build things.

And so, I explained to him I had a model of what I wanted to do, I showed him the model, and explained what I wanted to do, and he understood that.

And he was able to be my ambassador in the neighborhood.

And he explained exactly what I was going to be doing with all that material.

So they knew right from the beginning that I wasn't going to put in a car wash or something like that.

Because the thing is, you have a construction crew out there, they're not wrestling steel pipes around, it's hammering nails in boards.

But in the beginning, they were a little bit curious about what was going on, but once they saw that I was welding the whole thing together and they knew that I could weld and had welding equipment there, then all sorts of things came to me.

People would drag their broken lawnmowers and whatnot by.

And so, I was then not some suspect individual from outside, I was one of them, I could stick lawn mower parts together if they were broken.

I could do all sorts of things.

- So they wanted to actually donate stuff to you to actually expand your work.

- That happened too, yeah, yeah.

- Interesting.

You say in the video, I like this too, that if you really wanna make art, you're gonna figure it out.

And you work with a lot of students over three decades of teaching at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, do you have a story that you can remember, a favorite story of a student who figured it out in your class?

I'm sure you had many, but.

- The house project was a time when I was able to work with a lot of former students.

I always worked with people that had taken my class, I never, ever worked with a student that was going to get a grade from me.

I've kept track of the comings and goings of a lot of those students.

And they know where the house is, they worked on the house, and they come by to see what's going on with the house.

And they tell me on the internet that, when they're in town, they come by to see what I'm doing.

So I've kept up with a lot of those students.

And they've, without exception, done something in the arts.

They may be working in a commercial foundry or doing something else to keep the lights on, but they make their art, whatever it is that they wanna do, they've figured out ways to do it.

- Do you have a favorite example of a student that might have been in your class and not really sure about how they were gonna express themselves in the arts, but they figured it out in your class?

- Well, I don't know that any of them had an epiphany in my class, but the experience of going through the program in the art school, and we got a lot of really innovative things going on in the fine arts.

And they came through the program, they may have decided at some point they wanted to be in some particular program, and by the time they got through, they had a totally different idea of what they wanted to do.

When I came to this school, everything in the world was going on here.

This was the center of the country, and the word got out that you could come to this school where everything was going on.

You'd be 300 miles away from mom and dad, they wouldn't be dropping in on the weekend unannounced.

And so, you could come down here, and it was a magical place.

We had incredible things going on in athletics.

Buckminster Fuller was here.

There was lots and lots of stuff going on.

And this place was just magical, it's incredible.

You walk across campus and there's Bucky Fuller under a tree with 20 students, and then you walk back later, and there's 40 students.

So there was magical things going on around here.

- It must have been so wonderful.

Well, tell me, I wanted to ask you about the magic of art.

And, unfortunately, as you know, a lot of public schools for younger students have cut art programs.

How do you think parents can help fill the void when there there isn't an exposure to art?

- That's unfortunate.

We've been making things ever since we started stuff on the cave wall, and we haven't figured out totally why that was done, but it was an important part of what was going on.

And that's been going on for a long, long time.

As long as somebody's not starving, they think about decorating the cave wall or something of that sort.

And it goes way back.

Those places like Stonehenge and Gobekli Tepe, those places where people were using rocks to shape rocks, that was an important thing.

And the notion that art is some kind of frill that you may or may not need you, I don't agree with that notion at all.

We've always been artists and we've always continue to be artists.

And the notion that making art or something that's not essential, it's silliness.

- Well put, well put, and a good way to conclude our talk today on the importance of arts and the importance of it in education.

Aldon, thank you so much for being here.

- You're welcome.

- It's been great having you here with us.

I appreciate it.

And thank you for being with us as well.

My guest was local artist Aldon Addington.

That is "Eye On Education" for everyone at WSIU.

I'm Fred Martino, thanks for joining us.

Have a great week.

(wondrous music)