After falling and hitting his head on the ice in February, Woodstock artist Lenny Kislin has recently returned to his passion: making sculptures from primitive early American antiques.
Last week, despite the fog of anti-seizure medication, Kislin started making sculptures again. This Saturday, he'll make an in-person appearance at a new gallery show featuring his sculptures alongside the photography of Catherine Sebastian in Roxbury on Saturday.
Left: "Weather-Beaten, Angry And Disillusioned, Blitzen Flies No More," by Lenny Kislin.
Kislin is a longtime fixture on the Woodstock art scene. On February 9, he slipped on the ice and hit his head outside of his Woodstock home. Kislin was on his way to a gallery opening and didn't immediately notice that he was injured, until he found himself behind the wheel in the middle of an intersection with no idea where he was.
A few days after he fell, Kislin began to have seizures. There were also other odd symptoms.
"At one point, I felt somebody petting my head," he said in an interview this week. "I turned around to look who it was, and it was my own left hand. It's called 'alien arm syndrome.' My hand was not part of my body."
Since then, Kislin, who is 68, has been in and out of the hospital while taking heavy anti-seizure medications. Slowly, he is healing. He said that his doctor says he will be back to driving in a few months.
"I'm foggy-minded with all the medication I'm on," he said. "But this week, I said to myself, 'I have to get started again.' I have to do it, because I don't want to just stay in my house and not do anything anymore."
Despite the brain injury, Kislin speaks clearly and passionately -- especially about his art.
"I use primitive objects, and then make either narratives or conceptual pieces out of them," he said. "I'm an untrained artist, although I've learned a lot from selling art. My entire life, I've been an antique an art dealer, and in my hunting for material to sell, I've found all kinds of objects that were really entertaining to me for either their surface quality, their rarity, the colors ... These are things that clearly showed that they were almost ancient. They were early American objects, from the 19th and early 20th centuries."
Kislin's style is whimsy mixed with antiquarianism, all of it given a droll gloss by the carefully composed titles he gives to all his pieces.
"Weather-Beaten, Angry And Disillusioned, Blitzen Flies No More," is the title of a sculpture resembling an irate reindeer made out of an antique wooden taxidermy form sporting two wooden spoons for years and and old dog muzzle on its snout. "Way Past Their Expiration Date" is the name on a glass jar stuffed with human heads recycled from old drugstore mannequins.
"I sold that one to a psychiatrist," Kislin said.
At "Images & Objects, Stories and Sounds," which opens this weekend at the Orphic Gallery in Roxbury, visitors will be invited to honk a Kislin sculpture made of antique car and bike horns.
Right: "Nipple Rings," by Lenny Kislin.
They can also use a short wooden stick to play "Nipple Rings," a wall-mounted cluster of circular bells with a distinctly mammary appearance that Kislin recycled from a broken 19th-century music box.
"I like my art being touched," Kislin said. "I also enjoy communicating with the people who are looking at the pieces and the objects. I want people to see things they've never looked at before."
Some of those visions are dark. "The Dulcimer Takes Prisoner," also appearing at the Orphic Gallery, features a set of disembodied arms pulled clawing their way out the from of a wooden dulcimer. Kislin himself is sunny now that he is sculpting again. He's working on two pieces right now, both featuring horses. Once involves mounting his prized collection of clockwork toy horses on a board. "It's a kind of horse roundup," Kislin said.
The new sculptures don't yet have names.
"That's the last thing I do," Kislin said.
Kislin is good spirits. During an interview with the Watershed Post, he played a piping version of "God Bless America" on the nose harp, or "humanophone," over the phone, a performance he will reprise at the opening of the gallery show on Saturday.
Just like his sculptures, the instrument is an antique that he bends to a modern purpose.
"It's from the late 19th century, and it's made out of tin," Kislin said after his impromptu telephone concert. "It's a really interesting form, and it works."
Images & Objects, Stories & Sounds. Opening reception, 5 - 7 p.m. Saturday, June 7. Orphic Gallery, 53525 Route 30, Roxbury. 607.326.6045. For more information, see the gallery's website at orphicgallery.com, or the websites of the participating artists at catherinesebastian.com and lennykislin.com. The Orphic Gallery is a Watershed Post advertiser.
