I don’t love junk metal art. The idea of turning scrap into art is usually better than the results. But occasionally a maker brings enough imagination and creativity to the work that it transcends its lawn-ornament origins. Tom Every and his epic Forevertron in Wisconsin is one of the more famous examples of this.
Jack Barker, whose metal art filled his Essex, Illinois, yard, did not work on Every’s monumental scale — physically or conceptually — but his creations were if anything weirder than Dr. Evermore’s. Barker’s use of materials could be disconcerting, as could his imagery. The ways he figured out how to use his materials, which included industrial plastics as well as metal scraps, resulted in creative magic and an offbeat intensity unexpected from the unassuming ex-machinist
Much of Barker’s work was figurative, but many of his sculptures were quite abstracted, and some entirely abstract. It all added up to a mind-boggling environmental conglomeration. Its impressiveness, though, came at the expense of each individual piece’s impact; it could be hard to pick any one artwork out of the crowd. Fortunately, some of the more sculptural pieces were set off in the side and back yards away from the concentrated mass in front.
Barker was born in Essex, about 80 miles southwest of Chicago, in 1933 and lived there his entire life. He was a machinist and operated a gas station and body shop for many years. But it was his 1993 layoff after eight years working at the Braidwood nuclear power plant that led to his art career, according to an article that same year in the Joliet Herald-News. He was unemployed and bored, and making animal sculptures seemed like a good hobby.
At that point he had yet to sell any art. “Not a bad way to make a living,” he said, “but I don’t know if I could come up with that many things to make that often.”
As it turns out, he came up with a lot of stuff, his yard in later years packed with sculptures large and small.
Like many self-taught artists, as Barker reported to the Herald-News, he learned from others what to call his vocation.
“I don’t know where this comes from. When you start making this stuff, then people start to worry about you…. Some of the people I grew up with think I’m crazy. Then the people stopping by say I am an artist. I don’t know what to think.”
More specifically, according to a 1997 Chicago Tribune article,
One evening Barker and his wife came home from a restaurant to find several cars parked in their driveway. “They got out of their cars and asked, ‘Who’s the artist?’ Heck, I didn’t even know I was an artist until then,” he said.
Barker died in 2012. His remaining artwork was auctioned later that year along with other items from his estate.
These photos of the Jack Barker metal art environment are from two 2011 visits.
Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Here’s a short video of Barker from Roadside America.
Atlas Obscura has an entry for Barker.