Spring arrives at art gallery

Jeff Man stands beside one of his pieces of artwork titled “Light Spring” at the opening of his art display at the Parrott Gallery in the Belleville Library on February 2nd. Photo by Miller Reynolds

By Miller Reynolds

Jeff Mann is an artist that uses car parts to expose art lovers to an important underlying message.

Mann creates sculptures and art pieces which are not only pleasant to look at, but stimulating to the mind. He said his work informs the public about how cars are shaping our world, with captions like “Cars kill over 200,000 animals on U.S. roads everyday.”

“The ability to realize the problem, and realize what needs to be done, and then to be able to take that and present that information along with the art, is important to me,” he said.

Mann has been welding car parts together and painting them bright colours since 2005 to create scenes like city landscapes and road kill. One of his first pieces using car parts is titled “Auto Puddle” and uses entirely clutch parts to depict a murky puddle with clutch parts painted to resemble autumn leaves.

Mann said he uses a car theme for his artwork because he believes the way people use cars is wasteful, while the parts used in the cars are beautiful.

“When I was an artist in residence for Southern Maine Community College, I took apart a van as part of a video project, and as I did that I saw all these great parts, and started working with them, and doing sculptures with them, and that’s where I started realizing I can take something that I regard as malignant and change it into something that’s benign.”

Jeff also offers workshops and classes for printing various fabrics and t-shirts using car parts, and currently has an art display in the Parrott Gallery in the Belleville Library until February 23^rd.

Anne Ireland, gallery assistant, said Mann’s work is stimulating, exciting and colourful.

“I think it’s important that the artwork be provocative and make you think, not just pretty pictures of landscapes and flowers or portraits which is what you often see in local art galleries. His work is making a statement, so it’s possible that through art you can make a difference in the world rather than just portraying the world,” she said.