by Manuel Gonzales

Ah, Dirty Martin's. There is no finer establishment in which to speak of philosophy, religion, great literature, and art. Just as there is no finer mix of ingredients -- a perfect blend of grease, salt, and butter with love and art and life.

And so, there I was, eating a greasy, buttery hamburger on toast and chomping down some onion rings, golden and glistening, and chatting with my good friends Meredith Phillips (editor and writer extraordinaire) and Barry Margeson (writer and owner of the Clarksville Pie Co.) who introduced me to Scott Rolfe, who shall henceforth be called "Superfly TNT Smooth Up-and-Coming Artist." Look here, people, he's about to explode, and if you're not careful, when it comes to Scott's art, you might just get hit by shrapnel.

We're talking about found object art. The name's self explanatory, but for our benefit, I asked Scott to clarify: "Essentially, you use everything as a medium, from traditional paints and inks to whatever you can find -- rusty metal on the side of the road to toys to paper or whatever -- and make it all into something interesting." Talk about interesting. If you happened to catch the "February Found Object Show" at the Laughing at the Sun Gallery down on South First, you would have seen what Scott meant by "something interesting." Take his "Fishin' in the Styx." A hanging sculpture made of mixed media ranging from a three-foot long branch fixed across the top of the piece to a foot and a half, three-inch chain drooping down the middle of the canvas to pieces of pipe and plastic and paper, all painted purple and black and brown, with which he develops a muddy color and a morbid, nearly inaccrochable picture.

Hailing from Maine, Scott graduated with a Spanish major and a Graphics Design minor from Connecticut College, and then, on a whim, he moved to Austin. "I don't know why. I just did." During the week, he works as a graphic designer for the Texas Railroad Commission and he does free-lance graphic design work (most notably for Barry Margeson and Clarksville Pies).

The Laughing at the Sun show is only his first in Austin, but after this show, I feel confident that we will see his work with greater frequency. In the show, he exhibited ten large pieces and a number of small, found object refrigerator magnets. In his pieces, he reveals his dry wit and his uncanny ability to tell stories with his found pieces of scrap metal and shingles. His most telling pieces were "Pig versus the Machine" and "Rhino versus the Machine," found object and mixed-media pieces in which he pits, respectively, a small toy pig and a small toy rhino against two separate machines. "The fan in the rhino piece actually works, too." The rhino and the pig stand comically defiant against the looming machines, which are conglomerations of metal and plastic and motor put together by Scott. The constructions are 3-D boxes, hollowed out, with two-inch borders. They hang from the wall like canvases, maybe four-inches deep, and the hollowed sections are three-inches deep. There, in the center, the pig and rhino ready themselves to battle the two machines, but in each piece, it seems that the two sides are at an impasse. "If you look closely, though, you can see the edges of the box look corroded," Scott said, and then shrugged.

It takes anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to a year-and-a-half for Scott to finish a piece ("Fishin' in the Styx" took from the beginning of '95 until February of '96, and has been, so far, his most ambitious piece), and for anyone who wants to buy a portable, affordable, and small work of Scott's art, his tiny magnets are perfect little patches of his talent-colorful and exact and usually the size of computer chips.

During the Laughing at the Sun opening, a man walked into the gallery carrying a bottle of red wine. He browsed through the exhibits, looking at this person's work and that person's work, scrutinizing each artist's found objects and considering how they were made into art. As people are always drinking wine at art openings, no one paid him too much attention, but just as he was leaving, he stepped up to Scott and handed him the bottle of wine. "This is for you," the man said. According to the gentleman, he frequents art openings and gives a bottle of wine to the artist he believes has produced the best work of the show. If you're reading this article, and you are the man with the wine, Scott would like to say thank you for his first rave review. He enjoyed the wine, and he's glad you enjoyed the show. As for the rest of you, get on out there and see some of Scott's work, listen to the stories in his art, and play with his magnets. It'll do you some good.