Welder-sculptor Mark Bulwinkle talks about art from his West Oakland Quonset hut.
For most masters of fine arts grads, the next stop is not the shipbuilding yard, but it was for Oakland artist Mark Bulwinkle. He happily landed at one of San Fransisco’s last shipbuilding yards after relocating to the city in the early ’70s, post MFA. Toiling away as a welder, though, didn’t stifle Bulwinkle’s artisitic vision, and before long, he began making graphic steel sculptures, many incorporated into his and his ex-wife’s Rockridge district home as well as in other homes and commerical spaces. By the mid-1980s Bulwinkle was able to leave the shipyard behind and devote himself to his art full time. This led to a degree of fame, a small fortune, divorce, and eventually a Quonset hut in West Oakland affectionately known as “Bulwinkleland.” It now serves as his empire’s world headquarters. I tracked down the cutting-edge artist recently to see what he had up his welder’s sleeve.
Paul Kilduff: I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “If you can weld, you can sculpt.”
Mark Bulwinkle: No, I’ve never heard it.
PK: You never heard that truism? What up?
MB: No. I wouldn’t say that’s true, either. I don’t know a whole lot of people who can weld. I was a welder, so I’m pretty critical of the whole thing. I was a professional welder. A professional is somebody who can go to work and do their best work even though they’re deathly sick. I think with art you depend upon inspiration and health. You can do your best craft while you’re sick.
PK: What I mean by that quote is that sculpture that incorporates steel beams has been around for quite a while now, and it doesn’t really do a whole lot for me. But you’re not doing that, despite having a ship-welding background.
MB: Well, I don’t want to do that. I don’t do that. I do what I do. I was more interested in being an artist. Does that make sense? I had created something that was absolutely new. It had never been done, cutting out steel like that graphically.
PK: One of the things that is distinctive about your stuff is the rust that comes to your work. Do you look forward to that aspect of it? Is it done when it becomes rusty?
MB: I always liked that oxidizing; the rust is simply what steel does. It oxidizes. It burns, basically. It’s very, very slowly burning. When you cut steel, you’re not cutting it; you’re burning it with an oxyacetylene torch. Even professionals who burn their entire lives and were good at it, they don’t understand that they’re actually burning the steel. It helps a little to know what you’re doing—know what’s actually happening there chemically. I never saw a need to arrest what it was doing naturally. People were desperate to figure out how to stop steel from doing what it did naturally. I just thought that’s what it did.
PK: Is sculpture something you don’t consider to be work, just something you enjoy doing?
MB: It’s what I do. My ex-partner said, and some other people have said, “Mark doesn’t really do art. He just does Bulwinkles.” And I do. As a young man, you go through the process of looking at other art. You go to museums; you go to galleries. And at a certain point—it was probably coming to San Francisco—you just decide to do what you do. And that’s it. You’re going to do what you do. The art that you do will reflect a lot of the other stuff that you looked at and you admired. You just sort of had a gut instinct for it. When I look at my stuff, a lot of it’s just shipyard. A lot of the aesthetic values that are in the stuff are that.
PK: You’ve been described as an “outsider artist.” Don’t take this the wrong way, but most outsider artists don’t have MFAs. You do. Can you still be condsidered one with that level of education?
MB: I don’t consider myself to be an outsider artist. I am sophisticated. It’s sort of like folk art. Many years ago, I always ran into the term folk art. And I thought, am I a folk? What does that mean? Whereas there is folk art that I admire tremendously, and I think a lot of the artists on the West Coast have admired and gotten inspiration and sustenance from so-called folk artists. But I’ve gotten old enough so that I don’t really care what people call me. They can call me whatever they want.
PK: What does the term “outsider artist” really mean, anyway?
MB: You know what it means? It means it’s cheaper. That’s what folk art means, too. You know what African art means? It means it’s cheaper. As opposed to real art. As opposed to sophisticated art. And most art that’s coming out of schools is just abominable trash. I just can’t believe what is called sculpture mostly. I just have no idea.
PK: When you first burst on to the scene, you were invited on to The Oprah Winfrey Show and you said no. Why? I mean, nobody says no to Oprah.
MB: OK, you’ve got to get the picture. I bought a an old “reefer” [refrigerated tractor trailer] box. You have to get into the country-and-western music thing of “She got the house; I got the trailer.” I got to live around everybody killing each other in what was a horrifying neighborhood. Well, I’m down here living in a box that I bought for $100. And I had a bed in it and stuff, and I owned the property. The property was worthless. In West Oakland you could just move in and live here. I had at least eight different galleries all across the country. And all of this is going on. So I also had a lot of press. And you have to understand that what I did had not started to be imitated yet. It was completely new. It was, “What is this stuff and who is this person?” And so I’m sitting there, it’s 1990, and I had just gotten out of the hospital. I was having a rough time mentally and physically and going through a hellacious divorce, getting my skin picked off my body, and the phone rings. And it’s the Oprah corporation. “Would you like to be on Oprah?” You’re talking to a guy who doesn’t watch television. It’s like, “Do I want to be on Martha Stewart?” And it was like, do I want to be on some afternoon program? Why? What have I done wrong? I just wanted to be an artist, man. I didn’t want to be a fucking celebrity. I just wanted it to be like it was in 1968.
PK: Do you think if Oprah’s peeps had contacted you at a different time?
MB: Oh, like now? Now I’d say, “Yeah I’m coming right down. When do you want me there?” Hey, maybe I can make a buck off of it.
PK: Well, I’m glad you didn’t turn me down because that would have been a huge mistake.
MB: I always turn to the back page to you. I read that. It’s very thoughtful.
PK: We’ve got to make sure we get that in.
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Age: 67.5
Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
Birthplace: Boston
Motto: Always be sure you’re wrong and then go ahead.
Book On Nightstand: “I wish I did. The last stuff I really got interested in was Charles Bukowski.”
Website: www.MarkBulwinkle.com
