Stanley Szwarc wasn’t totally pleased when he saw three of his creations in last winter’s Outsider art survey at the Chicago Cultural Center.
One of his stainless-steel constructions, a jewelry box whose polished lid was decorated with a human face, badly needed cleaning. Worse, the other two pieces–a small cross and a vase covered with Szwarc’s characteristically elaborate patterns–were early efforts not up to his more recent standards.
He was deeply flattered at being included in the show, “Outsider Art: A Survey of Chicago Collections,” which was co-sponsored by Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. But the two older works embarrassed him. He wanted to give their lenders replacement pieces that he felt better reflected his current abilities (and he did).
That was entirely characteristic of Szwarc. He is modest, even flippant, about his talent.
“I have never considered myself an artist,” he says. “I’m just a clever handyman.”
Szwarc’s collectors wouldn’t agree. Even the old pieces that bothered him demonstrate what they find so appealing–complex geometric surfaces and extravagant ornamentation in which his imagination takes flight.
As he layers panels of metal with bits and pieces of spot-welded stainless steel, sculptural forms emerge. Occasionally the patterns are figurative.
Szwarc’s scale ranges from earrings to floor-standing urns. He turns out key fobs, paperweights, mailboxes, stamp holders and other utilitarian objects along with the boxes, vases and crosses. Most of the pieces are buffed to a high sheen. He paints some with enamels after welding them together–a bit of a heroic gesture considering the corners and crevices into which he has to fit his brush.
The materials are mainly recycled, brought home from the metal shop where, semiretired, he still works four to five hours a day and where there is, he says, plenty of scrap.
Szwarc started making art in the late 1980s, partly to keep busy at work.
The work’s singularity extends to its artistic labeling. The boxes and crosses and key fobs show far too wild a decorative imagination to fit in comfortably at most art fairs or on the shelves of arts and crafts shops. At the same time they are probably too funky to pass for high-art craft and too utilitarian for most galleries to feature as sculpture. Moreover, while Szwarc clearly works apart from the art-world mainstream, his pieces don’t fall into established folk-art genres like whirligigs or quilts, nor does he have the persona or history usually associated with Outsider artists.
The Polish-born Szwarc came to the United States in 1977 and started working at a metal shop in 1980. In Poland, he had been a bookkeeper and, in his off-hours, a musician like his father.
He played trumpet and accordion in a professional Dixieland band. The tapes that he keeps in his basement study reveal polished players, and his photo albums show an ensemble of Eastern Bloc hipsters (sharp suits, narrow ties and tinted glasses).
In the U.S., he played accordion for 11 years at a German-American restaurant in Glendale Heights and at other venues around the Chicago area. He has sold his accordion.
“When you are old you have to give up some things. I don’t miss playing music. I can’t believe it. It was a very important part of my life.”
Szwarc has four children from two marriages, with 13 grandchildren in the U.S. and Europe. He shares a Lyons bungalow with his wife, Josephine, and one of those grandchildren, 11-year-old Jason, whom he is raising as a son.
His basement is filled with photos, clocks, souvenirs and scrapbooks, as well as metal toolboxes he has made for himself. He pulls his inventory of boxes out of drawers, shelves and cabinets in every corner. There are carrying cases full of crosses and jewelry in a study, and vases line a bar next to the laundry room, where he paints his creations.
The assembly is done in the garage, which means Szwarc suspends production in the winter, though in earlier years he would wear three pairs of pants as he worked through the cold months. As long as the weather holds out, his production is unrelenting.
He averages about 20 boxes a week, he says, though vases aren’t so abundant. A single example can take six hours.
His first sales outlet was the indoor/outdoor Casablanca flea market on Cicero Avenue. It was 1988 or ’89, his prices were low and his intricate artwork out of place amid the tube socks, car parts and adult videos.
Szwarc says William Miller, a Hyde Park writer and photographer who came across him at the Casablanca, encouraged higher ambitions for this work. “He said the stuff didn’t belong in the flea market.
“No two pieces are the same,” Miller says. “The boxes may be the same shape, but that’s as far as it goes. I don’t think he could do two of the same. Each has its own personal touch.”
With Miller’s assistance, Szwarc placed his work in more appropriate settings, including the Illinois Artisans Shop in the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop.
Szwarc’s earnings from his artwork remain modest, however. Those six-hour vases sell for around $80, boxes range from $25 to around $60.
“If I see somebody who likes my work, it’s given me a lot more satisfaction than the money,” Szwarc says. “If I count my time, it’s no profit. But it’s something new for me; it gives me a lot of satisfaction. It sounds crazy but it’s true. If someone likes my work, I say take it. I’m very good for work but lousy for business.”
Szwarc’s metal-work is sold at several shops, including: Illinois Artisans Shop, 100 W. Randolph St., 312-814-5324; Lindsey Gallery, 111 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, 708-386-5272; Fourth World Artisans Cooperative, 3440 N. Southport Ave., 773-404-5200; Bricole, 902 Green Bay Rd., Winnetka, 847-441-6310.
