Grid Magazine: Light Show, March 2010
Download Article (.pdf)Look closely at one of Warren Muller’s spectacular light sculptures and you might spy some familiar items: old metal lunchboxes and canteens, colored glass vases and chipped teapots, tin funnels and candy molds, shovel handles and wire baskets.
In Muller’s exuberantly creative version of recycling, cast-off objects get new life as illuminated art. He has made “chandeliers”—as he calls his fantastic creations—out of wooden ladders and abandoned bicycles. A new work, the nearly 40-foot-long “Dream Time” (recently installed in the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History) features rusted lawn furniture, kids’ tricycles, old metal toys and the grille from a Jeep.
“I pretty much work with things that are forgottenand discarded,” says Muller, who sees something poetic in these everyday objects. What intrigues him is their “hidden history”—the impossible-to-discover story of the places they have been and the ways they’ve been used along the way to the trash heap. There is also a practical element to his choice of medium. “These are inexpensive materials to work with,” he explains. “Because nothing is precious, you can drill holes through things without worrying about it. That makes it fun.” Tall and lanky, with a shaved head and a serene demeanor, Muller has been a part of Philadelphia’s art scene since the 1960s. Originally a performance artist and dancer, he has collaborated with Group Motion co-founder Manfred Fischbeck, choreographer Karen Bamonte and artist Isaiah Zagar, among
others. Zagar, whose elaborate mosaics made from discarded crockery and broken bits of mirror cover walls all over the city, was a particular influence. “From Isaiah I learned about chaos,” says Muller, who first began exhibiting his light sculptures in 1996. That was the same year he opened Biello-Muller Studio and Gallery in Old City with lighting designer Michael Biello. In 2002, Muller launched Bahdeebahdu, a studio and gallery (originally on Cherry Street) with his partner RJ Thornburg, an impish interior designer who calls himself an “anti-decorator.” Two years ago, the pair moved Bahdeebahdu to a building in Kensington where Muller devises his light sculptures with the aid of his long time assistant, Rebecca Pulver.
In the shop, floor-to-ceiling shelves brim with the flotsam that inspires Muller’s work. His collection is meticulously organized by material and color. One section is crowded with metal objects—coffee pots, pitchers and the lunchboxes he finds so useful for hiding electrical junctions. There is a section for green and blue glass, one for clear glass and a shelf lined with an eccentric assortment of ceramic statues, including horses, elves, a bust of Elvis and more than a few versions of Rodin’s “The Thinker.”
“I find stuff on the street and sometimes people bring me things, but I get most of it at flea markets,” says Muller. In spring and summer, he and Thornburg make a weekly pilgrimage to a flea market near their weekend home in the Poconos, loading up a barn on the property with the treasures they acquire. “I’m always way ahead of RJ at the flea market,” says Muller. “He moves slower and he sees things I don’t see. He has a different point of view.” Muller has experimented with neon, fiber optics and low-voltage lighting, but claims that only incandescent bulbs provide the kind of warm light he favors. He works entirely on commission, making pieces for public spaces (Center City’s Philadelphia Building, the Stonewall Country Club in Elverson) and for clients’ private homes. “Sometimes people will bring me an old chandelier that they’ve dismantled and ask me to use the parts,” says Muller. “Or people will bring me collections of things that mean something to them. What I always say is, I can promise you I’ll use all of it, some of it or none of it.”
Thornburg, who calls Muller “a big kid in the biggest toy box,” has described his partner’s artistic method this way: “He takes all of these unrelated disparate things—discarded, orphaned, lonely, ignored, dull, heinous even—and begins the process of connecting them.” For Muller, making those connections, learning to trust that he’ll find exactly the right object for the piece at hand, has become something of a metaphor for life. “The things that you need are always presenting themselves at the right time,” he says. “It’s just a matter of recognizing it when that happens.”•
A retrospective of Muller’s career as a “luminary” can be found in the photo-packed book Wink: Warren Muller published by E.C. Graham and Kevin Hanek (Bahdeebahdu, Philadelphia, 2008).