Islander Profile: Kit Marcinko

Visualize Jackson Pollack. In place of paint on canvas, see hot, molten metal on sand. The result is awesome, free form sculptures created by Kit Marcinko. He has access to about ten pounds of molten brass at the end of a pour from Anacortes Brass Works foundry.

Sculpture by Kit Marcinko

Studio Gallery, Sue Roberts Studio
5424 South Shore Drive, Guemes Island

Reception, Saturday, April 17, 6:30-10:30 pm

Gallery open Saturdays and Sundays through May 23 and by appointment. 360.770.6140

Kit considers himself a Puget Sound native, born in Tacoma and growing up and attending school in Olympia and Western Washington. He attended graduate school at University of Oregon. He’s always been an artist. As a kid he drew posters and helped others' art projects.

Although he grew up in Lacy, Washington, he had not spent much time close to salt water.  When he came to Guemes and discovered the beach he was inspired by the beautiful patina on wood and metal. This is when he became a monochromist. 

He audited some foundry classes during his last quarter at University of Oregon and moved to Guemes Island in 1970. In partnership with Glen Veal, Kit got the Anacortes Brass Works foundry going and began casting. Thus began a lifelong relationship, both social and business, between the two men. Their vision was to cast work for artists and they did, including work for Phil McCracken and others. 

Kit  built his house and studio on Guemes in 1980. He moved off island fourteen years ago but comes to the studio every day. “I do something every day, even if it’s wrong,” says Kit. “I classify myself as a minimalist and a monochromist. Three dimensional art  is my love”. "I try to elevate the mundane. My art has puns and humor - Dada with meaning”.

His show at Sue Roberts's Studio in April will be a “mixed bag” says Kit and he assured Sue the art he displays will be from the “new millennium”.

Kit sculpted the back of the medallion for the Save Guemes Mountain campaign.

Kit tells me for the “past twenty-five years I have been the chief curator and collector of my own work”.  He neglected to tell me how well that pays.

He doesn’t mind not showing his work.  He says he is “searching for a thread that ties all of it together.  I think I’ve found it, but if I were to take one piece out and someone were to buy it for their gallery I am afraid the story won’t get told.  I’m kinda writing the great American Novel in these works. For myself. Only I can read it.” 

He says there is certain amount of design and balance that he has in his pieces. After his travels in Europe, he realized how important "artful presentation” was with sculpture. You don’t buy a piece because it “matches the couch”.

Kit last painted in 1999-2000. One particularly cynical painting  entitled Screw Landscape will be displayed at his Guemes Island Show.

Kit spent his time in the army as a cook. He does not credit that experience  with his joy of cooking. He cooked eggs for three hundred people.  He cooks every day now for his partner and himself. Because of this connection some of his pieces are called “kitchen art”. Baked goods as sculpture. Many of these pieces have literary as well as visual context.

 

Kit had both hips replaced, one in 2008 and the other in November 2009, when he wore out his good hip on a visit to Europe. The pain restricted his work considerably.  The operations were a success and he feels and looks good.

When Kit built his studio he wanted to have a place to work and a place to display his art in a “show situation”. He values his solitude and privacy and he respects the privacy of other island artists as well. This is the first time he has had a show on Guemes that was not in his studio.

Kit  is a man who really loves his work and his art reflects that love.

- MJ Andrak

Frosty Morning on Guemes Island is a view of the valley from Guemes Mountain.

 

 

Kit's house and studio (above) and work outside and inside his studio (below).


Previous Islander Profiles

 

Allen Moe

Victor Garcia

Janice Veal

Dorothy Bird

 

Carol Pellett

Tim Wittman

Joost Businger

 

 

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