There are many choices and decisions made in all creative efforts. In my case when starting out I was driven and consumed to create fish species as authentic and beautiful as the ones in my head. I couldn’t capture that by painting fish nor by assembling things found on beaches. Before I discovered the button world it was bottle caps, and to say that was limited and frustrating is putting it mildly, but it was part of the learning process that led to the discovery of the amazing button industry. The last century produced worldwide fashion like never seen before and the button industry was holding its place down with creativity and at the time the invention of plastic. My generation grew up with moms and grandmothers that had fruitcake tins under their beds with their odd and spare button collections at the ready for when family repairs were needed. Sadly, the button manufacturing industry moved to the far east following the clothing and fashion businesses.
Someone I knew quite well as a customer of my restaurant worked her whole life in the fashion business in NYC and knew of a 100-year-old button business that was recently sold in her fashion district building and she did me the favor of introducing me to a nice man that she had been friends with for fifty years. Over the course of a year, I was able to buy a lot of button inventory that has sustained my art these almost past twenty years. Try and imagine two floors of floor to ceiling shelves that stacked shoe boxes of neatly cataloged buttons in a building that you entered on 37th street and exited on 38th street. That’s a bit of a mind bender but it’s the way things were done back then. Dresses, shirts, coats, sweaters and pants made in NYC had backup extra buttons made and stored by large companies but as the years passed a lot of these customers after WWII wanted to change to ‘on demand’ ordering of buttons. Then came out-sourcing and the button business started to move to the far east. The business where I was fortunate in getting inventory early on was sold to a Columbian buyer and moved there rather quickly. The man that was very helpful to me, retired after the sale explained to me that his boss told him that the price of real estate in NYC was too expensive to store buttons and after a hundred years in business, they were no young family members who wanted anything to do with the garment district, after all they were spoiled and privileged, knowing full well the work-horrors of the garment industries.
During the time I spent going to my button source I learned how to dye certain types of plastic buttons, which I did when needed in my kitchen. If I didn’t solve my problems that way, I could usually match different paints to a button’s color. The size of the buttons used for a selected species and color figure into the selection choice. Those shoe boxes I mentioned earlier contained different sized labeled inventory bags which really came in handy when planning out the drawing of the fish on paper. So before transferring the exact drawing to a metal type I will be using I can pretty much make sure I have enough buttons. Sometimes there are a lot of tradeoffs at this stage before I cut the fish type out of metal. One tradeoff is learning how to operate a Plasma Torch to cut the metal in a well-ventilated space to avoid injury from fumes and burns from the torch. You have to practice this while wearing a safety mask and gloves with an instructor. Lastly before leaving this part with out full warning, I am screwing up. The tools mentioned are only as wonderful as their operators! Other wise they can cause harm to those don’t understand what they are doing.
Over time the fish have gone from 36” to almost 120”. The paper cut out of the fish is as exact as I can make it because the grinding of metal is my least favorite part of the whole process. When finished the Z-CLIPS are attached to the back of the fish for the hanging of the fish to a wall’s surface. This is a safety must do for artwork that is heavy enough to cause damage to humans and property if the artwork came loose from the wall it was attached to.
Painting with buttons is what I call my process from this point on. I self-taught myself by trial and error how to work with buttons and glue over time. Till this day I struggle with this. Going back and having to take apart work that’s must be changed for whatever reason is not easy when we are working with glued (Goop) and plastic buttons. The buttons do not survive being removed from any Goop that has hardened. That being said, I admit to having episodes of this kind on every piece I’ve worked on over the years, so to me its just part of the process. When asked how much time a project takes, I try to be honest about it and in the studio I try to always be working on different fish at all times because the work is tedious and you always have to beware of making Goop mistakes while doing the work. The trade off is you can do many amazing things with Goop and it’s properties but PATIENCE is a much-needed virtue when trying to be creative while working with torches, buttons and that gule.