Danny painting on a bucket face. Click to enlarge.
Cleveland State Community College is presenting a demonstration workshop at the college Art Department by Polk County Folk Artist Danny "Hoss" Hoskinson on Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12.
The demonstration workshop will be conducted from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. both days. The public is invited and it is free to everyone.
While at Cleveland State for the workshop, Hoskinson will demonstrate his way of making whimsical sculptural form using his "melted plastic bucket" techniques. Danny now has two types of plastic forms that he creates. One is made using the "stretch" technique, and the other the "melted solid" technique. Danny can take a 5 gallon plastic bucket and begin heating it with a glassblower's torch to soften the plastic, then he can push and pull the softened plastic into a "face" or animal form that has earned him the reputation of being one of the best of the folk artists. In fact, Danny "Hoss" Hoskinson has been compared to the late, world famous folk artist Howard Finster. The faces that he began creating led to other experiments in melting the plastic down to a mass much like clay, which he manipulates into animals such as life-sized alligators, lizards, turtles, and even human-like, life-sized figures! At the workshop, Danny will make a solid "totem pole" about 6 feet tall from melted plastic buckets, and will also demonstrate how he makes a "stretched plastic" totem pole, which will be hollow. He'll also demonstrate other types of sculptural folk art forms.
Danny "Hoss" Hoskinson resides in Polk County in a rustic cabin that he constructed on an "as needed" basis. His art making of sculptural forms began by using plastic picnic forks, knives and spoons. He was sitting at a Lake Lanier picnic table with a butane cigarette lighter and started melting the plastic utensils together, and his new folk art form was born. After several years, the manufacturers of plastic picnic utensils changed the formula and it no longer served the purpose - it wouldn't melt together anymore. Since Hoskinson had been a house painter, he turned to the plastic buckets that the paint came in, and a new type of art form is the result.
In the recent past, he constructed a workshop/studio space adjacent to his cabin, but it has been too cold during the winter months to work in the studio, so he moved his folk-art operation into his cabin. The heat from the torch was welcomed during the winter months, but the fumes inside taught him to begin wearing a respirator mask hooked to a machine that pumps warm, fresh air to his face.
Danny "Hoss" Hoskinson has become a fixture at most of the South's top folk art festivals, including the Athens Fest, Finster Fest, Kentucky Art Fest, Atlanta Artscape, and he will be at Burning Man, an internationally known festival for radical self-expression in the Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada. An added treat for local art and folk art enthusiasts is that Danny "Hoss" Hoskinson will be the featured artist at the 2003 Dogwood Arts Festival held in Knoxville, where Danny was born. The two-day Arts Alive on Market Square, Gay Street, will be Apr. 15 and 16, from 10:30 a.m. -3:30 p.m. Hoskinson will be located in front of the East Tennessee Historical Museum.
Since Danny feels that he is not only contributing to the art world, he also feels that he is making a contribution to saving the environment by "saving the plastic from the ground". He asks that anyone who has plastic buckets to dispose of to please donate them for use at the workshop. He can use paint buckets, food grade buckets, dry wall buckets, etc. Not suitable for use are petroleum buckets. Bring some plastic buckets to the workshop and watch your donated "trash" become fantastic folk art forms.
The Danny "Hoss" Hoskinson Demonstration Workshop is sponsored by Cleveland State Community College, and the CSCC Art Department, with a grant from Arts Build Communities funds - A program funded by the Tennessee General Assembly and administered in cooperation with the Tennessee Arts Commission and the Southeast Tennessee Development District
For more information, please contact Jere Chumley, CSCC Art Department, 423 473-2431, or 1-800-604-2722 or email him at jchumley@clevelandstatecc.edu
Danny's gator