As a frustrated student, Dwayne Szot Felt like an "art machine."
Now he makes machines so people of all abilities can create art.
How to trace the genesis of an idea ... For artist Dwayne Szot, several images melded
into the work an that is his life's work- a piggyback ride, a machine built with a
rotisserie motor, a spin in a wheelchair and one long blue line.
Back in the '80s, Szot was a student at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids,
and he was frustrated with the commercialism of art: "I was studying to get my bachelor
of fine arts, and I was focused on the purity of art. When I was at Kendall, I began
to feel like I was an art machine. They push you hard, which is what a school should
do, but I felt like a gear in a machine," he said.
Szot went shopping at a downtown Goodwill for the parts of a moving sculpture that
would express his ambivalence about his art education.
He bought a rotisserie motor
and a golf caddie and crafted a homemade paintbrush. He darn combined all of these
things into an electric machine that "painted a very fine blue line, like calligraphy."
The art machine moved in a prescribed pattern and painted the same design over and over
again on a long canvas. Szot called it his self-portrait.
One day, as Szot was working in the basement sad his selfportrait was obsessively painting
its one careful design nearby, the little contraption hit a crack in the concrete and went
flying, painting a long blue line all the way across the floor until it unplugged itself.
"I wasn't expecting to see that line in space. I was expecting to see that repetitive
pattern on the floor," Szot said of that moment. "It opened for me new unforeseen
possibilities as to what a tool could be. I could create tools that enabled me to
create beyond my own fingertips and even beyond my own thought."
Around this time, Szot was pondering his experiences
8 up in the home of his foster patents, Raymond and Dells Hulbert. '"The foster home was
a kinesthetic learning environment," the artist said of his years building things with
Raymond. It was also as inclusive environment at the Haltxrts.
"I grew up with people of all abilities,"
Szot said. A particular memory stood out for him: "I remembered grabbing one of
these kids and throwing her on my back - piggyback-because
she couldn't make it to the bas on time on her crutches."
At some point Szot's memories fused with the part of him that delighted in
tinkering. "Even at Kendall I was
more of a builder," he said. "I began to create a series of these machines that
would work as extensibas; I was pushing the idea of what a tool could be" The
machines paint rollers, chalk rolls and paint poles - enabled people of different
abilities to express themselves artistically The artist was giving piggyback rides
into the world of art.
What Szot experienced when he test-drove a power wheelchair took this t even further:
"It was like choreography. It was fluid. It was a part of me. I began wandering if I
could create a pWnbg wheelchair." Szot's art machines - when hooked to a wheelchair
.or used fieehand while standing - allowed people of all abilities to leave artistic
markings on a canvas, a sidewalk or a piece of paper "very much as you and I run across
and leave our footprints in the sand," he said.
"When I co-chaired Festival in 1986, my co-chair, Fred Bivins, and I saw Dwayne's
work," said Cat Timermanis. "We brought him to Festival " Szot's debut, staged behind
the old amphitheater, was a big success, she said. "People were so intrigued with his
machines.'
After graduating from Kendaf in 1986, Szot went on to the Crranbrook Academy of
Art, earning a master of fine arts in 1988. A 1989 grant from the National Endowmentt for
the Humanities (NBH) helped him to found "Zot Artz: Arts for All," a mobile art studio
that brings Szot's machines (along with workshops and in-service training) to schools,
community agencies and festivals. In 1997, Zot Artz was adopted by Very Special Arts, a national
program that brings the arts to people with disabilities.
Dwayne Szot is now 39 and lives in Ashland
Wis., with Marianne, his wife of 10
years; and his dog. This month he is bringing
his machines back to Michigan,
where his
self-portrait unplugged itself and unleashed
his imagination. For the second straight year,
Szat will spread his canvas down Fountain
Street. Kids can paint on the canvas or on a
big mural with his rollers. "Chalk Walk and Roll'
allows children to do just that all along the sidewalk.
Or they cam use his "Pogo Paint Poles" to dab stencils
into paint and onto the canvas or long sheets of paper.
Festival is one of the largest events of the 100-pIus
programs Szot does each year. "We have this beuatifull mixing
of abilities from one year to the next as it grows with the Festival,
as people become aware of the `Arts For All' spot. For me now it's
not just about me as a sculptor in his studio making things. It's about
shaping a vision and then making that vision a reality."
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