Some artist materials are reserved for professionals and some are reserved for crafters. Rarely does kids crafting material make it to the gallery. A “joyful expression” is how Lawrence-based artist Pete Tormala describes his work. Using pipe cleaners makes that pursuit that much more fun.
“When Joanne's got private-equityed out of business,” Tormala said, “I was raiding stores and getting the pipe cleaners that I could get out of there when they were on deep discount.”
Tormala also goes by the nickname Pipe Cleaner Pete. Walking through his exhibit, he explains in detail how he crafts intricate sculptures made entirely from pipe cleaners.
“It's a sun pig, stylized, cute pig face, like a very cylindrical section nose, the high cheeks, lines for smiling eyes, a curved line for a smiling mouth, and rays going out … golden … with white edges on the rays,” Tormala said. “I'm calling it cutealism.”
Tormala is using the building blocks of art for his expression, but the labor is not always fun and games.
“The problem with this reflective material and why I don't do it a lot,” Tormala said of a piece, “is because it is hard on the eyes. It will make my vision soft, and I will lose detail on vision.”
Tormala often starts without a sketch if it doesn’t seem too complicated.
“Basic process is always make a frame, fill it in,” he said. “But if there's something more complex, if there are moving parts to it, then a sketch can help.”
Tormala, who started making art when he was five, has been doing this for over 40 years. He acquired the skill from his grandmother and is working on a piece for her.
“Her name was Agnes,” he said. “The sun's name in the piece, in the garden of fuzzy delights, the piece is named Agnes because it all comes from the sun, right? Without the sun, there's no source of anything. So, the sun is Agnes.”
Agnes inspired Pete to make his own toys.
“She was making pipe cleaners with crochet yarn wings, pipe cleaner bodies, and I just saw those,” Tormala said. “I was like, ‘Well, I don't have the toys I want. I want to have a bunch of tiny guys fighting on cereal boxes with like rope bridges in between them. I could make what I want to play with.”
Small glimpses of that youthful past may be present in pieces that he makes today.
“Some of the pieces at Fish House,” Tormala said, “with the rougher visual texture on the pipe cleaners themselves that look like they've been worked over, those were multiple pieces before they got to that point. This toy got where it's going to go. I can take it apart, make a new thing.”
Pete points out that creating, destroying and repurposing is a common artistic practice.
“A painter reuses a canvas if they're like, ‘Well, this picture did what I wanted, but I could do something else with this canvas,” Tormala said.
Tormala says good feelings are worth the effort and is happy to see positive responses at his showings.
“I think that making someone feel better is worth the effort,” Tormala said, “even if it seems very frivolous on the surface.
“When people look at my work, I tend to see people smiling pretty big. So, I think that's worth doing.”
