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G

ary Gresko has long taken things that have been used for one purpose, and changed their form in to sculptures. Discarded dock planks and rigging wire have been transformed in to his Wave Forms, some of which can be seen on display on South Water Street in Oriental.

This coming Monday, July 4, another of his works gets a bigger showcase.

The model and part of the final piece. Gary Gresko with “Service” outside his studio near Oriental.

Gary spent several months this winter and spring creating the sculpture, “Service,” which will be dedicated as part of the new North Carolina Veterans Park in Fayetteville. The park, and the various sculptures within it, aim to honor North Carolinians who served in the military. Though it’s in Fayetteville, home of the Army’s Fort Bragg, the park commemorates all five branches of the military: the Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard, as well as the Army.

The 7-foot high and 15-foot long sculpture is made of recycled aluminum on a green grate base. Semi-cylindrical — and partially cylindrical — forms are linked and turn toward the center of the sculpture. Gary says he wanted to show the “common purpose” and working together of people coming from different directions.

“It symbolizes people coming from all over, all walks of life,” he says. Individuals who he says may have different reasons, but who come together at “a common central focus point… a common interest to defend the land.”

New LIfe From Military Surplus.

The marching orders for the project were that the materials used had to have been used in the military. “We had to get the materials at an approved military surplus place.” Gary went to one in Kinston. “All this came from there. I found what I needed.”

Gary Gresko’s studio outside Oriental. At right is part of the sculpture, “Service”.

Gary points to one and then another of the semi-tubular forms that rise as high as seven feet in the air. “Some of those were fuel tanks,” he says. “That was some kind of pontoon. This is part of an army truck fender… off of a big truck.”

Gary’s no stranger to taking items made for one purpose and then reworking them in to his art. “I like working with used materials. You can see something in the material before, and then you give something another life.”

Gary Gresko and “Service.”

In this instance, while the officials with the NC Veterans’ Park wanted the artists to make their pieces from material already used by the military, they also wanted a real change up. “They didn’t want anything representational.” Gary Gresko says. Instead, it had to be “totally abstract in theory and feeling. If you took a part it had to completely change its form.”

Gary Gresko wet-sands the surface of the sculpture, “Service” which is made of military surplus materials. A lot of the pieces of came in “the actual diameter” of what Gary was looking for. “Others, he says, had been “crushed flat and I had to bang them out.”

Gary says he chose aluminum for the sculpture because it would be easy to maintain by the caretakers at the NC Veterans Park. He doesn’t usually work with aluminum. (When it came time to take off the paint that covered much of the metal he wanted to use, there came a reminder of aluminum’s relatively lower melting point. A torch melted the aluminum beneath the paint, he says, while the paint itself just dropped in a sheet to the ground.)

A view from above of the repurposed aluminum, part of the sculpture Gary Gresko was working on in May.

Gary hired someone who spent two weeks grinding the aluminum free of the paint. “He ground the metal raw,” It was not quiet work, says Gary. “It’s loud when you work with aluminum. It’s a loud material and vibrates.”

Under the tarp near Gary Gresko’s studio, military surplus of the sort from which he fashioned the sculpture, “Service”. “Believe me,” he says, “the military has everything. They’re not lacking for any parts.”

Even The Kitchen Grate

The aluminum rises from a stretch of grid-like metal. A closer look reveals it’s a grate, the kind used to give an elevation above wet, cement floors. “The thing is out of a kitchen,” Gary says. The grate, which once pulled KP, now provides a solid base for the upright part of the sculpture. It’s painted a Rustoleum forest green and represents, says Gary, the land and country soldiers fight to protect.

A view from below shows the grid of the grate and the curve of the aluminum in part of Gary Gresko’s sculpture, “Service.”

There are no sharp edges in this piece honoring military service. It’s all curves. Along the edges of those aluminum semi-cylinders are strips of rivets, something that Gary added to the sculpture. “The rivets represent the common bond military service people have. That’s why I wanted to rivet it together.

Detail of the rivets. (The hole was there in the aluminum before it became the sculpture.)

Plus,” he adds, “it’s freakin’ strong.”

Design On A Dashboard

Gary Gresko is a veteran himself — he served during the Vietnam War — and he got word last Veteran’s Day that he was one of artists getting a commission for the Veterans’ Park. While it took about three months to build, he says it took longer to get a design approved. One committee liked an initial design, another did not. A general was involved, and the ball was back in Gary’s court to bring them a new design.

Gary Gresko in his studio, and just outside, part of the sculpture, “Service” which is now installed in Fayetteville at the NC Veterans’ Park.

Gary says that the design deadline was looming when he had to go to New Orleans for another job. He worked on the design on the way back to Oriental. “We were driving home and I’ve got my sketch pad and paper and we’re driving thru Alabama and I’m rolling pieces of paper. I tore the paper because I didn’t have scissors. I’m gluing and taping and playing around.”

He gestures in front of him, “finally, I built the thing on the dashboard of the car.”

He got back to Oriental a day later and set to work building a model. Two days after the dashboard moment, he emailed a photo to the decision-makers, with just an hour to spare before a meeting of the design committee. They liked it. Or, as Gary puts it in characteristic self-deprecation, “maybe they just gave up.”

Portion of “Service” outside Gary Gresko’s studio.

Gresko, who has sculptures installed not only in Oriental, but in a range of outdoor spaces, says he is happy to be part of it the State of North Carolina’s new Veterans’ Park. There is “nothing representational whatsoever,” he says of the other work there. This is going to be more more far out. Everything is abstract and super contemporary.”

“It’s not,” he says, “your normal memorial park.”

Posted Sunday July 3, 2011 by Melinda Penkava