Middletown Artist's Palette: Creating a Legacy in Steel and on Canvas

After 14 years of creating art, Rick Tierney, an iron worker by trade, has a body of work that fills the inside and outside of his home and has even spilled over onto his neighbor's property.

According to the Middletown sculptor, his neighbor is one of his biggest fans so it's not a problem. Tierney started salvaging metal from construction sites many years ago and began to put together the original and whimsical metal structures that popped into his fertile imagination.

Now, he says, he has created over 1,500 metal sculptures and has branched out to other mediums. He has produced hundreds of acrylic paintings on canvas and has designed and built about 50 pieces of furniture.

In addition, he has shown in hundreds of exhibitions and has even curated a few exhibits for various gallery shows. Tierney says he has 3,000 pieces of his own artwork in, and around, his Leonardo home. Most of them never get shown so when he discovered Facebook, the social networking site, he started posting photographs of his work.

“I got shut down by Facebook because I put up too many pictures," he said. "But I was so happy to be able to post my pictures that I guess I got carried away. It was fun because I would wake up in the morning to 20 messages and 30 notifications on my computer. People were appreciating my work.”

His grand obsession takes up a lot of space. “I work two or three hours a day in my studio, which now encompasses the whole downstairs of my house, the driveway, backyard and garage.”

When Tierney is not working on a piece of art, he is thinking about art works and projects that he wants to create. He explained that he is motivated by “imagination and emotion. All of my pieces are original; there is not one copy of anything.”

In addition, he said, once he has an idea, he does not procrastinate. “I act on it. I have to complete it because there are 25 other ideas waiting to click. It’s like they are backed up in my mind.”

Tierney explained that from the beginning, when he was a teenager, he wanted to leave his mark on the world. As a young man growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, he was part of a group of boys who were bored and added excitement to their lives by painting graffiti on the sides of subways and various cement walls.

At first his tag was Fury then he changed it to Oz. His tag could be seen on buildings and subway trains in three of the five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn.

But it was after he became an iron worker that he realized art work created out of iron and steel would last longer. “Every piece that I make is like a tomb stone and will live on long after I’m gone. Stainless steel will last longer than the pyramids,” said the Middletown resident who lives on Florence Avenue, as near to Italy as he has gotten so far, he said.

However, those graffiti artist roots still show in the playful style and vibrant colors that he uses for his sculptures as well as in his painting. Tierney seems to be amused by everything he sees or experiences.

That sense of fun, or absurdity, is reflected in every piece of art that he executes, many of which are painted in bright, basic colors. Tierney said he started sculpting during a down time at a previous job, but his need to express himself was there many years before.

When he began working with steel he realized that he had found his medium. He found that he loved working with fire and molten steel. In addition, he said, he loves the unforeseen in the finished product. Whatever accidents motivate his pieces, it is Tierney’s skill as a welder that makes it all come together. The design in his polished steel pieces are produced by the way he rubs over the grain.

He said he likes to make the steel shine like a diamond. Although he doesn’t paint the steel sculptures, he does paint the metal pieces with enamel paint so that they will last, especially those that are meant to be installed outside.

"These days, I’m making them lighter so that they are easier to take to shows. You get smarter as you go along,” he said. And that’s important because he has been in too many shows to count over the years. He is an exhibiting member of the Guild of Creative Arts in Shrewsbury and the Art Alliance in Red Bank. He has also served as vice president of the Sculptors’ Association of New Jersey.

One of his stainless steel sculptures is on display in the lobby of the Middletown Library on New Monmouth Road. Called Helping Hands, it is a piece that he created as a model for the 9/11 memorial contest that was held in the early years after the World Trade Center devastation.

He didn’t win the contest, so he lent the piece to Middletown. It is 30 inches tall and took him three years to complete.

The artist is married with three daughters and has lived on Florence Avenue for 25 years. He started welding when he was 19 years old, but never took an art class in his life.  Lately he has been working on a photo documentary of his work as well as video shorts.

He has also been writing poetry and taking elements from his large canvases and painting something new on a smaller scale.

His painting, Baby Face, is one example. It is an element of a larger painting called Richelob. “I take photos of elements in the large paintings that I have done over the past 10 years," he said. "When I painted them, I sometimes put 30 or 40 elements inside one painting. I have done hundreds of these smaller pieces.”

Tierney’s artistic output is extraordinary. He explained: “I can’t stop. I told my wife that someday it will stop. Someday, it will be finished.”

Although, he said he does not want to show in groups any longer, he will be showing with a small group of artists at the Martin Gallery, 535 Bangs Ave., Asbury Park.

Called “Color Burst,” it begins on May 7 with an opening from 6 to 9 p.m. and will close on May 29. He will be showing with three others: Richard Cooper, an Australian; Lineea Tober- Murphy, photography, and painting; Yvonne Yaar, glass artist and Olympia Hostler, abstracts.