Poe Dismuke
One of my earliest recollections is of standing on my grandfather’s workbench in his basement in Fairfax California, while he built a birdhouse using materials which we would now call recycled.
School and I never took – I spent most of my time daydreaming and drawing cartoons. It wasn’t until I walked into a clay lab in high school that I found something that I could really sink my hands into. After a couple of years throwing pots the use of clay alone became too limiting and other materials started creeping into the work until the clay gradually disappeared.
I continued my education in a somewhat unconventional manner by never actually enrolling in the art classes I crashed and by bribing the janitors so that I could come and go as I pleased. After doing this at three different colleges I struck out on my own and in 1982 rented my first studio. I started showing in the Bay area and had the first one-person show at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art museum, called "From Vaudeville to Carny-ville". My work continues to evolve with diverse influences from Marx Brothers to Marks Toys, Calder to Keaton and from Rube Goldberg to Andy Goldsworthy.