LOST AND FOUND
BRIDGEPORT ARTIST CREATES SCULPTURES FROM FOUND OBJECTS
Susan Tabachnick found an industrial pipe flange on the road one day while walking her dog. She later purchased an old copper toilet float at an estate sale, combining them with other items to create two pieces of art resembling male and female figures.
“We’ve always called it ‘The Lovely Couple,’” said Tabachnick, who is known for making art from found and repurposed objects. She later added a third figure made from recycled items, which she named “The Other Woman,” to the unique display.
Tabachnick has always had an interest in old and discarded items. When she was growing up, her father fixed things around the house, while her family recycled objects. “There is a history to them,” she said.
She buys used items at estate sales, industrial retail stores, vintage stores, salvage yards and online sites. Some objects are given to her. She simply finds other gadgets — like the flange, a lipped ring that connects piping or machinery.
The objects are assembled without being altered to make artwork, from outdoor garden sculptures to heirloom shadow boxes. “If you look at them with a different set of eyes, you see something else,” said Tabachnick, who’s always been interested in “the history of form and function.”
A business associate once told Tabachnick, “You collect things and figure out how to connect them.”
Tabachnick, 68, grew up in Stamford. She was taught how to embroider at a young age by her mother. The 1970 Rippowam High School graduate soon learned to weave, knit, crochet and sew.
“For a long time, I never thought of myself as an artist, because I don’t paint or draw much,” she said.
A successful marketing director at a Norwalk-based events organizing company, Tabachnick eventually left the position to reduce stress and begin pursuing other interests, including gardening and art.
Tabachnick realized she could be a professional artist when a college art instructor acquaintance told her she had talent. “Some people have it and some don’t. You do,” the instructor said to Tabachnick.
A Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County workshop about the business side of art was “transformational,” as Tabachnick learned how to market and sell her work.
Her home in Bridgeport’s Brooklawn section is her studio. Old objects are stored in various rooms while she works at the large dining room table, aided by abundant natural light.
Tabachnick said she’s attracted to tools and industrial gadgets made of wood or metal that are well-crafted and once considered essential, including “things that I have no idea what they are,” she said.
Shape, color and texture are factors Tabachnick considers when obtaining and incorporating objects into her art. Her creative process is spontaneous. “It’s very opportunistic and evolutionary,” she said. “I don’t start with a vision of what I’m going to make, but with an object I’m interested in.”
A friend gave Tabachnick engineering and architectural tools, including protractors and slide rules, that had belonged to older family members, so that Tabachnick could use them in her art. She made a pattern with the tools on fabric inside a shadowbox, presenting the finished product to her friend as a keepsake.
Wooden bands and drum shells used for making musical drums were obtained from a closed drum business in Fairfield. The bands became part of hanging mobiles. Skeletons of old lampshades have been turned into art resembling human figures, revealing the inner architecture of a common product. “It’s another way of saving things that were just going in the trash,” she said.
Tabachnick said she’s excited about the art revival taking place in Bridgeport, with artists opening studios and new art-related events being organized. “The caliber of art has really improved,” she said.
While the pandemic has limited inperson art exhibits —and although she misses personal interaction with art enthusiasts — it’s led to more of her work being shown online through gallery shows.
This allowed an elderly aunt in California to view her art. “That wouldn’t have happened before,” Tabachnick said.
Most days are spent working on art, whether designing or constructing. “There are days when pieces come together quickly and days when I struggle,” she said.
Finding old tools and other unusual materials is becoming harder as fewer people use them or save them, and estate sales are rarer.
Today’s throwaway society frustrates her. “I just see amazing waste,” Tabachnick said.
Visit SusanTabachnick.com for more information.