Jay Behrle
Mixed Media Wall Sculpture
Waterloo, IL

With a technical background and a passion for art and design, Jay has spent seven of his first 12 years as a full-time artist designing and fabricating contemporary metal furniture. He exhibited throughout the Midwest and Florida at juried art shows and galleries. Custom-made pieces can now be found in homes across the country.

Interest and experimentation in painting on rigid supports led to current work contemporary mixed media wall panels incorporating machined and handcrafted metal components. A mixture of materials such as silica, perlite, plaster cloth, oil-based enamels, acrylics and fiberglass resin is applied to a lightweight, rigid panel. Ancient cultures and relics inspire the work.

Primarily I want the work to appear to have substance, a heaviness to evoke a feeling of stone or forged metal. Secondly, the work should seem ageless, as relics from an ancient culture.

In the last year, Jay’s work appeared in Aspen, Chicago, Key West, Miami, Santa Fe and St. Louis.

Creating the mixed media wall sculptures has been the most exciting, challenging, and the most rewarding creative endeavor I have experienced. The work starts with creating wood supports and is constructed with paneling, furring strips and sometimes masonite or pressed board. I use liquid nails, wood glue and a pneumatic nailer to assemble the pieces. The rigid support allows me to apply myriads of materials to create textures that emulate granite or marble, carved stone, rusted or forged metal. The materials used can be silica, cement, perlite, polyester resin, fiber glass resin, plaster cloth, sculptamold, oil-based paints, metallic paints and acrylics for tinting and antique effects. The rigid support also enables me to affix machined and hand-crafted metal components to accentuate the substantive effect of the work. The metal is usually aluminum and almost always starts out as new material and then distressed or aged with an arc welder by increasing the voltage and dragging or scraping the electrode across the surface of the metal. Brass, aluminum, copper and other metallic paints solidify the effect of actual aged metal for the accents. The ultimate goal is to create work that appears substantial in weight as if it really is stone or forged metal and that it quite possibly could be a relic from an ancient culture.