THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 31, 1995 TAG: 9505310014
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEAR GRASS, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
JOHN MARTIN remembers the first time he thought of making chairs out of discarded automobile gas tanks.
``Weeell, a friend of mine, he was having an art show,'' began Martin, speaking on the telephone in a Tar Heel drawl as thick and slow as molasses.
It was the spring of 1991, and his pal was staging a temporary exhibition in a storefront in Plymouth, N.C. The idea was for folks to bring in eccentric tidbits to place on the store's shelves.
``Kind of make it like a store, but with art objects.''
So Martin wandered around Plymouth, the Washington County city where he lived at that time. He came across a service station that had just closed down.
``I went looking through their junk to see what I could find. And there were two old gas tanks. So I took 'em home.''
Back home, he plopped on the sofa to watch television. He started thinking about those gas tanks, thinking how much they resembled his couch seats.
Being a man of action, Martin didn't miss a beat. He hopped up and headed to his backyard and started fiddling with the tanks, imagining how he could put it all together.
There arose the question of arms. What sort of arms would go with gas tanks? So he traipsed around town, and ran across some empty freon tanks at a store that sold air conditioning units. Perfect.
He toted them home, and began welding.
``I didn't know then that gas tanks were really dangerous. That's one of the worst things in the world you could weld.''
Some folks think the metal is porous enough to retain some gas even after the gas appears to have evaporated, and that it would explode if a torch went near it.
``But, I never had any problems.''
The chair, which he painted hot pink, was a big hit. He made a trade with a salvage yard owner - a couple dozen trashed gas tanks for the pink chair.
Martin was off and welding. Since then, he has made more than two dozen gas tank chairs, and more than half have sold at galleries and art shows along the East Coast, including the Fall Foliage Festival in Waynesboro.
A race car driver in Charlottesville owns one. An Ohio attorney had Martin ship one to him. And there's a coffee shop in Greenville, N.C. - the Percolator - with a few of Martin's chairs on display.
``The business part of it is really hard for me. I'm just getting into that. Making the chairs and designing them is what's fun.''
At first, he was charging way too little. After tallying up the high shipping costs, he figured he was coming up short.
These days he charges anywhere from $350 to $650 for a chair, and calls it ``a really good price. It's a handmade piece of furniture that'll probably last forever, if you take care of it.''
What's more, he guarantees no aroma d'petrol.
``After I take out all the different filters and tubes, I let them air out a few weeks. So all the gas evaporates. Plus, after sandblasting and painting, there's just no odor at all.''
He's developed various models. There's one with large metal mailboxes for arms, so the chair occupant can read a magazine - then stash it away. Another style places a rotating world globe at the arm's end, for fidgety sitters.
He's planning to replicate his most popular designs. ``I'm going to make a whole bunch of those. Kind of like making a car. I'm going to have a dealership of chairs.''
Still, a hard metal gas tank doesn't sound so comfy. Au contraire, according to Martin.
``Well, the first ones weren't that comfortable,'' he admitted. ``Then I started hammering out a lot of the wrinkled things, so that the backs and the bottoms would be more contoured to the person. And I changed the angles of the back and the legs, so it's more like a real chair.
``Now, it's like sitting on a couch. You fall right into it; you become part of it.''
Martin, 41, is not exactly a bohemian artist with loads of time on his hands. He is the art teacher for two Martin County schools. He spends mornings at Bear Grass School, a high school in the rural town of Bear Grass where he and his wife, Susanne, and three young children moved in early May.
Afternoons, he's at the middle school in nearby Robersonville.
Martin figures he came by the impetus to create honestly.
His mother, who grew up in the North Carolina mountains, came from kin with an inclination to build things. His maternal grandfather had been a coal miner in Big Stone Gap, Va., but turned to blacksmithing and carving when the family moved to North Carolina.
``I remember he made a wagon for us one year, and it had carved wooden wheels. He didn't use saws or anything. He just split the wood.''
As a kid, Martin used to sit out in the yard with his granddad and cut designs on branches or carve animals from larger chunks of wood.
His paternal grandfather ran a sawmill and also liked to make things.
``Well, it was just good to have them around. Their work ethic was always really good. They always completed everything they started. They were honest about what they did, and they enjoyed what they did.
``Their morals about life really influenced me to always do my best.''
As a young artist, he was drawn to sculpture, and ended up earning an MFA in sculpture ('86) from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, where he met his wife, Susanne, a papermaker and book-binder.
With the gas tank chairs, Martin is taking what is considered waste material and transforming it into high design.
Yet, if he had the money, he admitted he would go out and buy brand new tanks, to eliminate the terrible task of cleaning the old ones - and his fear of an eventual explosion.
So, he's not in it for the environment? ``Well, I am a little. I'm recycling the tanks. I'm taking something that nobody wants, a discarded piece of junk, and creating something out of it.'' MEMO: For information about John Martin's gas tank chairs, call the artist in
Bear Grass, N.C., at (919) 792-6645.
ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/Staff color photos
John Martin's gas-tank loveseat is a perfect perch for his son Sam,
5. At right, John and Ben, 3, near their Bear Grass, N.C., home.
Photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
One of John Martin's chairs places a rotating world globe at the
arm's end, for fidgety sitters.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY SCULPTURE
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