Joe Eddy Brown is a thingmaker. It says so on his business card. He makes things. He collects things. He talks about things. He loves to share his thingmaking thinking, experiences and spirit.
Why, in 1980, he ”set out to take a journey” with two friends to New York City, he recollects as he leans back in a plastic junior high school chair and downs a Snickers candy bar. (Joe Eddy is also an art teacher, from junior high to college grad classes.)
The three of them stayed eight days, shot 3,000 photographs, slides and black-and-whites of artists, gallery owners, street people, panhandlers and significant others. No one knew they were teachers, he says grinning, because they juggled on the streets for money. (Joe Eddy also teaches juggling, including teaching Ronald McDonald.)
But the best part was that they brought back 250 pounds of things collected from streets, sidewalks, gutters and anywhere that was fair game. Later those things were crafted into a 6-by-10-foot sculpture-collage-assem-
blage thing called ”New York Wall” that adorned the College of Du Page campus for about two years.
Although the ”New York Wall” was built mainly by Willard R Smith III-the wall was Smith`s dream, says Joe Eddy-Joe Eddy, as usual, seems to be able to capture the living beauty in all things: ”The real art was in the people,” he says.
One of Joe Eddy`s favorite things to talk about, and perhaps his most spectacular of creations, is Rayfield Whimple III.
The 24-foot-long Rayfield thing-invention-assemblage dates back to 1969. Joe Eddy was working toward his degree in design under R. Buckminster Fuller at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Although Rayfield certainly took more than a hefty amount of design genious, it was, in fact, an art project.
Rayfield was a machine that you ”put a quarter into and it blew up three TV sets, set itself on fire, took a picture of itself, painted four 30-inch-by-36-inch paintings and then committed suicide,” Joe Eddy says. ”It fell over and burned.” Thus endeth the reading on Rayfield.
Not all Joe Eddy`s creations are as big as Rayfield, however, and most of them will probably last decades longer. He is widely known for his thing jewelry making, and this is nothing to scoff about. Two of his pieces appear in a textbook used in college classrooms called ”Jewelry-Contemporary Design and Technique” by Chuck Evans. And one of the pieces has the distinction of being owned by Robert Rauschenberg, ”probably the most well-known artist in the United States today,” says Joe Eddy.
His ”whimsical jewelry, artifact-like wall hangings and assorted playthings,” as they are described in his biography sheet at Mindscape Gallery in Evanston, have attracted a hearty list of regular customers who want to be notified when new Joe Eddy things arrive. He has supplied at least 250 things to Mindscape alone since 1980.
He also has pieces of art from places like the Del Mono Gallery in Los Angeles to the gift shop at Eastern Illinois University. ”I made 89 pieces for galleries in 1988,” he boasts.
His creations are ”for people who enjoy collections of things,” said Laura E. Demb, sales manager for Mindscape. ”They are pieces that have meaning besides just a stone in a setting.”
Case in point: Demb related the story of the time Joe Eddy was driving down the highway when he saw a flash of color along the shoulder. He pulled over, found a chunk of glass and created an entire thing around his new-found treasure that ended up in the gallery.
Joe Eddy related the thing-finding story to the gallery when he submitted the piece; gallery sales people repeated it to the customer. A typical scenario.
One never knows what might constitute the nucleus of a Joe Eddy original. A gentleman brought Joe Eddy the stem of a wine glass he and his wife drank out of the first night they met. He wanted Joe Eddy to create a 15th wedding anniversary gift. So that`s exactly what he did. He took the blue, spiral piece of glass and fashioned a ceremonial tribal-type necklace around it.
The gentleman`s wife, a gallery owner in Lake Geneva, Wis., then wore it to a Shirley MacLaine lecture. Joe Eddy said MacLaine spotted it, went down into the audience, adorned herself with it and wore it all during her lecture. Transistor radio parts, gems, Cracker Jack prizes, coins, stones and untold doodads are all inspirational materials for the master thingmaker.
Each thing comes with a Joe Eddy Brown Certificate of Authenticity and Owners Manual, which reads: ”Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a unique handmade 3-D experience. Each piece is an experiment in constructed metals and assorted objects, both found and fabricated. This authentic cosmic artifact accompanying this certificate is a `one-of-a-kind` and any resemblance to anything living or dead is purely coincidental and highly unlikely! Now Enjoy!”
The name of the piece and its ingredients are also listed on the certificate.
”These `Neo-Rauschenberg Nouveau Cosmic Combines,` as he calls them, have been shown in his 1977 `Joe Eddy Brown-Thingmaker` show, his more recent `Relics from an Alien Institute` exhibition, and in numerous jewelry seminars and workshops held about the state,” touts the Mindscape bio.
So what does Joe Eddy do when he`s not creating things in his apartment studio or somewhere else in the galaxy? He assumes a full-time art-teaching position at Glen Crest Junior High School in Glen Ellyn.
”I invent all the projects that we do,” he says proudly. ”None of them come from books or anything.”
His art-teaching room is a giant collage of things that triggers the creative juices. Things made of straws, spider webs made of metal, paper objects, mood lighting . . . there`s even a cage where kids deposit their shoes or textbooks for the privilege of checking out art tools. And colors, colors unlimited.
There are bins of supplies: paper, yarn, magazines, Styrofoam, film, thin sticks, just stuff, but mostly there is Joe Eddy`s very catching enthusiasm and bountiful encouragement.
”I teach the kind of classes I wish I could have taken when I was 12,”
he says. ”I give them (students) a place to laugh at themselves. What this world so sorely needs is a place to laugh and be a kid. A place where kids can act their age.”
The bell rings. Students scramble in, very unlike your average math class. Joe Eddy turns on the mood lighting and begins juggling miscellaneous things at the front of the room while students settle themselves.
”Remove all extraneous materials from your learning environment,” he says.
He also says things like:
”Be a winner, not a wiener.”
”Draw a rectangle a little bigger than a Snickers.”
”If you don`t get caught up and you are falling behind, it`s all right. You will be okay.”
”Trust your mind.”
”If you goof up, it`s okay. You are still okay.”
”Be a force, not a fossil.”
”Life is just too interesting to make boring looking letters and boring projects.”
”Be a hard trier, not an Oscar Meyer.”
”Be someone I can thank, not a Ball Park Frank.”
”You are what you think about.”
As he hyperactively darts around the room, his warm, brown eyes sparkle and twinkle. He smiles. He teases the students. They like his dumb jokes. And wouldn`t we all like to be told several times a year, let alone an hour, that we will be okay if we mess up?
Students say about Joe Eddy: ”He is more funner.” ”He lets you listen to the radio.” ”He doesn`t put you down.”
A testimony in itself to his teaching abilities is the fact that nine colleges are sending student teachers his way.
Carol Voegeli, a 15-year fellow teacher, said, ”All the children are over-anxious to be in his class. He allows you to explore with materials and your creativity that part of your brain which hasn`t really been tapped very well.” But he also holds them accountable, she added.
Perhaps one of the keys to Joe Eddy`s success is the way he unites whole- heartedly all the elements of his life.
”When I quit living this (design and art), I will quit teaching it,” he says. It`s no wonder he was a 1979-80 runner-up for Illinois State Teacher of the Year.
Believe it or not, aside from being a teacher by day and being a jewelry thingmaker by night, Joe Eddy wears several other hats.
Supervisor: ”I am also the lunchroom lady,” he says with a grin.
Official: For the past eight years he has been a judge for the Cardboard Boat Regatta at SIU.
Author: He has had articles in Omni in the games section and has published three pieces in ”Omni Book of Games.” His work has also appeared in the Co-evolution Quarterly, a magazine published by Whole Earth Catalog.
He has compiled his own manual sold at creative workshops entitled ”Joe Eddy Brown`s Cosmic Class Room Experience Manual . . . an Electric
Curriculum” and is currently working on a book project about 3-D thinking.
Lecturer: Joe Eddy fulfilled 35 speaking engagements in 1988 including addressing teacher-parent groups, conducting work shops for kids, holding creative teaching seminars and addressing the Illinois Gifted Children`s Conference.
He was a featured speaker at a regional art conference held in Raymond, Ill., Joe Eddy`s high school town. The audience included several of Joe Eddy`s teachers throughout the years.
Joe Eddy Brown sees himself as somewhat of a black sheep in the world of jewelry creating because he uses stuff instead of stones. Following is Demb`s response as to whether she sees him in that light or not:
”He may see himself as more of a black sheep. I see him as more of a renegade. A black sheep is negative, and there just isn`t anything negative about him.”
