My name is James Kitchen, and I'm a sculptor.
I've learned over the years to trust my gut, my intuition, because what I do to get into
that zone, or whatever you might call that, is I play with the metal.
You realize certain parts just are similar, or a shape suggests something, and often something
I never would have thought about, except by just playing and juxtaposing the pieces.
I tell people I'm a clumsy magician, because sometimes it happens, and I'm almost a witness
to putting the pieces together, and I'm always surprised myself.
I always feel like I'm part historian and part archeologist.
I find these old hunks of metal.
My favorite are the old farm pieces.
I grew up in Wisconsin, around farms, and there's some kind of connection there.
You find these old pieces, each one has a narrative, each one has a history, and they're
all worn, and some of them are handmade, some of them are 200 years old.
So here, let me start it up for you.
Every day, I walk an hour in the morning, and it started out as just exercise and whatnot,
but I realized that hour, I spend thinking about things without any interruptions.
There's no phone, nobody's bothering you, you're walking, the blood is pumping, you're
getting oxygen.
It's the best time to think things through.
I tend to think about what I've read, and in the case of creating the universe, I just
read a biography of Albert Einstein.
I fell in love with this guy.
When I grew up, I thought there's just this old guy with white hair, and you know, let's
you think of Einstein, but when you read about him, when he was in his 20s and 30s, he was
something else.
The professor had a theory as to how they could land, but before he and the captain
would figure it out.
Well, he said, struck me, and I kept thinking about it and thinking about it.
And he said, imagination is more important than knowledge.
And I thought about that, and I said, well, you know, what does that mean?
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
And I thought, that is my strong suit, imagination, creativity, and he gave me the confidence to
think, I'm going to intuit the answer to the universe.
I went out and I've been collecting pieces of metal for years, and in one day, it kind
of just all coalesced.
There's no better feeling, except for when you wake up and then you think, now what do
I do?
Originally from Wisconsin, Wisconsin, you see that with an accent.
My whole family, actually, my sister is a very good artist.
My brother is a very well-known cartoonist.
My mother is incredibly artistic, she does oil paintings, cuts out little pieces of paper
and makes these little collage things.
Definitely, you can see a genetic connection, but I think it all goes back to Franz Margaret,
my grandfather.
He came from Hungary in 1903.
He was a metal worker.
He did these incredible Art Nouveau, and he did tables and lamps and all kinds of things.
And I feel just a real strong connection to his artistry.
I believe that his father and his father before him did metal work.
I was very fortunate at Paradise City last year.
I met Evan Platkin, and we talked about maybe putting a couple pieces at the building that
he owns at 1350 Main Street in Springfield.
I met James Kitchin about a year ago, and we have established a great relationship in
trying to develop a concept here where we create a gallery in the city, where the city
becomes sort of a gallery space for art to show off his incredible work.
It's all about public art and trying to create a new conversation about Springfield, a different
narrative about Springfield, and it appears to be working, because I think people are
seeing these wonderful works of art that are interesting and thought-provoking, and they
stop in their tracks to look at it.
Sometimes they touch it and ask questions, and they ponder it for a while, and then they
go on their way, and it's a memory for them of being here.
Springfield has not seen anything quite like this in a long time, or maybe ever.
He said, well, I also managed this building here 1550, and we took a tour through the
different places throughout downtown that he either owned or managed, and the 1550 building
was just, it used to be the federal courthouse, and it's incredible now, these big glass atrium,
it's gorgeous, the building's gorgeous, and I thought, oh my gosh, what a, I would love
to be there.
I look at her, and I say, Rapunza, Rapunza, let down your golden chains.
I can't find words to describe it, to take some old pieces such as the work that he takes
and turn it into these beautiful creations, which I am so proud to sell and have in the
gallery.
His artwork is here in Springfield, all on the various locations.
You walk past it, and they stop, and they look, and they go back, and they look.
We actually introduced our visitors to James Kitchen's work in 2004.
It was one of our most popular exhibitions.
It's still talked about today, and then six years later, in 2010, we featured his magnificent
work called Saturn, outside on our museum green, and again, a very popular work.
We had visitors screaming in always to look at the piece, spending 45 minutes to an hour
examining it.
And to have his work now in Springfield is just fantastic, because I think his artwork
is so appealing to visitors.
They find different meaning in it, depending on what you're looking at and what experience
you bring to the art, and it's really fun.
For people in the art field, that's really what you want to be promoting to your audience.
It's a three-phase process. The first phase was, I put 60 pieces inside 1550 Main Street.
The second phase, I put 30 pieces all along Main Street, in and around Main Street.
The third phase, which is actually pretty exciting for me, is I'm collecting metal from
the city of Springfield, and I'm going to make sculptures specifically for Springfield
out of local found objects.
And the tornado, which happened just over a year ago on June 1, one of the things that
happened is there's the armory building.
In Springfield, they had this big armory building, 50-foot high ceilings on this one building.
These incredible big arches, their tornado came, knocked them down, big twisted wreck.
The company that was taking the metal away took three 12-foot high sections, and the 12-foot
high sections each weigh 3,300 pounds. I fell in love with these, and I'm going to marry
the three pieces that I got from there together to make this really elegant-looking base to
some sculpture, and I don't even know what happens next because I have to get metal,
but I know I have the base. I'm excited because I don't know what's going to come on top,
but that's going to be one of the few pieces that I'm making for the city.
We're rebranding the city and rebranding the properties that I'm involved with, and it's
all in an effort to tell people that Springfield is on its way, and it's a very positive direction
that we're going in.
It's interesting where the cannon gets pointed.
I first put that cannon in Williamsburg. I put it on the Beacons Library lawn, and it
was facing across the street, and one day the vice president of the bank called me over
and said, is that pointed at us? It seemed concerned. It's okay. It's got a flower in
it that's love. It's a child of the 60s. It's okay. He said, no, no, it looks like it's
pointed at us, and he was concerned. They reassured him.
Where did it go? He became famous after he was at the Beacons Library. That's right.
He went on. He had a show in Springfield, and he started showing more in the craft
fairs and things like that. He loves libraries, too. That's the thing. I think it's not just
that he had his art here, but it was really special for him and for us, but special for
him because he really likes libraries, and he wanted to support the library. Later on,
he gave us our mom with the birthday cake over there in the corner, and we loved that.
Then he brought his work and had it outside here, and really went to Northampton. He wanted
to give us something. He gave the library that really lovely, really great donation
to us. She is so great. Some of his pieces are, just imagine what it takes to make some
of those pieces.
Sculpting for me is a very intuitive thing, so it's hard for me to articulate. I can tell
you that it starts with finding pieces of metal. I go to Douglas Auctions every week.
I'm a regular there. I go to junkyards. I'm on first name basis with all the transfer
station people, but my favorite place in the whole world, sometimes I'll find an old farm
where the farmer lives through the Great Depression. That guy never threw anything away because
you know, that guy knows you might need that piece someday. You'll go to this farm, and
there were transfer stations back in the 30s and 40s, and some corner of that farm is where
everything was tossed, and there's usually an old 38 Studebaker or old tractor parts.
To me, it's like St. Peter opens up the gates, and I'm in heaven because there's this whole
section of just rusted old metal. All the hand forged pieces that I find, somebody handmade
that hinge. They handmade everything. The wheel rims handmade. They still will work fine.
100, 150, 200 years later, they're still good. This is made from really old railroad spikes.
They age. They're all this beat up year after year of trains, and somebody pounding on with
this bike. So you find these things, and you honor that. They make this sculpture a calling
Days Can. It's a feeling we all have. That'll give you a school teacher or whatever job you
have. It's just, you're coming home from work, and it's called Days End.
Every sculpture I make, I always have the radio on, and I'm listening to music, and it's
interesting. I'm usually listening to public radio, and sometimes late at night, I'll be
listening to bluegrass. Sometimes it'll be jazz. The next morning I come out, open up
the garage door, and it's like, what was I making last night? And I can see I'm affected.
If it's jazz, or if it's classical music, I can kind of see that led me a little bit
one way or the other, and it's always interesting. But it's definitely, music is always a part
of what I'm doing. It's just infused inside of me.
He lived down the street from Jim, and he jogs every morning, and he passes my house singing
at the top of his lungs. I usually come out in the street, and I say, shut up already!
Jesus, the neighbors are going crazy here! And he just tells me about some new project
that he's got.
I've ended up with a lot of different professions in my life. I was a musician for many years.
I love old antiques. I love history. In Green Lake, Wisconsin, I had an antique store. For
a while I owned a moving company, Hernia Movers. I was the potentate of Totenfreight. I was
a poet for a while. I self-published some poetry books, did some writing. When I owned
my moving company, I told everybody I was a spatial engineer, and I could somehow get
everything to fit in the truck that nobody else thought I could do. When I married the
pieces together, and looking back, I realized I was just very good at spatial engineering,
and with music and poetry and assembling and finding connections, somehow I've had a lot
of disparate jobs, and they all kind of come together when I make my artwork.
I think he's found the right medium. I think that metal sculpture is exactly the blowtorch
and metal pieces is exactly where he needs to be in terms of where he's going to go,
and it's just exciting to follow his path. I think the last thing I heard, he did a bird
that was 36 feet in height. I don't know how he even manages that.
Evan Platten, I told him an idea of making a 30-foot-high bird, which ended up being
35 feet high, which I made with the help of Deerfield Valley Refab in South Deerfield.
We got recycled metal, and we bent pieces. You start working with big pieces like that.
It's a whole nother world, because I'm not just sticking things together. I'm actually
fabricating, and then the sheer size of it required a crane. It's going to be put at
1350 Main Street as one of the 30 pieces in downtown. I'm very excited. It's something
about the scale of that looking and walking around. It's pretty exciting.
We want to keep these consistent. Right. I had a small two-foot-high bird, and I said,
you know what? Imagine this happen. You know what? I don't imagine it. He had me do this.
I can't stop smiling, because this bird, I'm thrilled. The space fits it perfectly. It's
just as I imagined it.
Yeah, that symbolizes looking back and moving forward. It brings an eclectic mix, and a second
look at the city of Springfield. I really have to commend Evan Blackin, who brought
Mr. Kitchen with an idea of using iron and metal. We wanted to do a few pieces, so once
I checked it out, it was okay to do it legally on land. I said, go right ahead. I think it's
great that with the arts brings culture, brings an eclectic mix, and brings economic development.
So now, what's turned into James did a few pieces, 30-something pieces, which culminates
with the bird. When I said a good thing about this bird, you don't have to deal with bird
dropping, either. But look at the mosaic of the city of Springfield. I think his art is
quite varied. I think that he makes whimsical pieces, but he also does more serious work.
He makes figurative things, so that you kind of get an idea of what he might be trying
to make. It might be a penguin, or it might be something else, or a person. And then he
also does things that are totally just in the mind and abstract.
Ah. Ah, right.
His sculpture is truly universal at this point. I think that he's ever reaching out. There's
no telling where it'll end, you know? I think this is what we're seeing now in terms of
his work, is just kind of the beginning of where Jim is going to take it.
I find in life, you meet people and the connections, the same as with my metal. The things kind
of come together in ways you never would expect or anticipate. And it's always, it's a magical
process and it fascinates me. Again, it articulates how, when I read about physics and things
and how they describe the randomness and all these things, that's always part of what I'm
thinking about and then how things connect on all these different levels. I only know
the part that I'm really good at is with the metal and putting it together. That's the
part that makes sense to me. Everything else, I marvel at it. I marvel at it.
Drifting dreams, my feelings flow, for sure my memories roam.
The western wind, when will the thunder blow, and still me, safely home. Oh, the western wind, when will power blow, but the small rain down can rain.
Christ of my love, we're in my arms, and I'm mine. It hangs, and I'm mine.
