Different kind of musical composition
The slides and bells from about a dozen trombones are stacked like cordwood in the wall sculpture “Seussaphone.”
Tarnished parts of old cornets, trombones and other instruments are built onto an old Royal typewriter in “Royal Office Piano.”
Parts from an actual 1965 Plymouth Barracuda work in tandem with those from a guitar to create “Slant 6-String Barracuda.”
And a Herbie Hancock record serves as the body of the “33 1/3 Strat-o-caster” with turntable parts serving as the fingerboard and head.
These inventive, detail-rich deconstructed and reconstructed musical instruments are the work of Brian Riegel and are on display through Dec. 31, in the exhibit “Out of Tunes” Downtown at the Cultural Arts Center.
“I wanted to be a musician growing up,” said Riegel, 50. “I had friends in bands and I tried with the trombone, viola, but I usually ended up being the lyrics guy.”
Several years ago, Riegel, who had taught art for 21 years at Worthington Kilbourne High School, began collecting old musical instruments and broken instrument parts. He used them to conjure up new instruments that may or may not elicit any sound and certainly would not be found in any band or orchestra.
These guitar-like or brass band-like creations are handsome, curious, often humorous and always intriguing.
Riegel, who lives in Powell and works from his garage studio there, said he has a load of musical instrument parts that he’s collected or that people have given him.
“Nobody wants to just throw away a musical instrument no matter how beat up it is,” he said.
His sculptures, he said, are intended to pay homage to the original instruments and those who played them as well as to repurpose them.
“I always felt there was some sort of
creative energy in there from the people who played them,” Riegel said.
In addition to the mashed-up instruments, Riegel’s exhibit includes a new series of works that pay tribute to the early days of hip-hop.
As a college student at the Ohio State
University, Riegel worked as a deejay and while earning his master of fine arts degree from the University of St. Francis School of Creative Arts in Fort Wayne, Indiana, wrote a thesis focused on street art.
Both come into play in an installation
that travels around three walls of the Cultural Arts Center’s Main Gallery.
On more than a dozen works that depict New York City transit cars are photographs of street art — graffiti and imagery that pay homage to musicians and cultural icons. Between them are wall installations: “Megablaster,” a huge boombox made from stereo components, and “Techriegel Turntable,” a larger-than-life turntable that offers hologram projections of early deejays and rap artists such as Grandmaster Caz.
These works, Riegel said, are intended to show how hip-hop is a place where “movement, sound, style and culture continue to push the boundaries, experiment and entertain.”
Which is a good way to describe what Riegel has done with the art on view in this exhibition. “Out of Tunes” makes you want to drop off an old horn, guitar or turntable on the artist’s front porch, just to see what he would do with it.
negilson@gmail.com