visual art
BY ELIZA MURPHY
Variations of a Dream
Repurposed art enlivens local artist
F
rom a distance, the colorful fi gures presiding
over a yard full of wild mint on Alder Street look
like overgrown toys. A closer inspection reveals
ingenuous assemblages made from scraps — carved wooden
fi gures have Hobart kitchen mixer paddles for heads, the loin
cloth worn by a crucifi ed fi gure is a folded strap of rusting
bullets, another fi gure sports pipes for limbs.
Recently abandoned by their maker, they look forlorn,
especially two fi gures whose eyes weep tears of rust.
Failing health forced artist George Ernst von der Linden
into a nursing home, where he lives in a small room
crowded with his creations, many of which are fabricated
from cast-offs.
“I love junk,” von der Linden said during a recent
interview. “I always hunted junk since I was a little kid. I’d
fi nd junk all over the place and sold it to the junk man. I
love to make things out of junk.”
Dressed in his uniform of denim overalls and a hand-
painted T-shirt with the petals of a sunfl ower radiating
from behind the bib, a ball cap pulled snug over his head
of white hair, he sat enthroned in a wheelchair that he uses
more for convenience than out of necessity.
Born in 1937 in Pittsburg, Pa., the eldest of fi ve, von
der Linden endured regular beatings by his working-
class parents. As a teenager, he was institutionalized for
a year because the state determined him “incorrigible.”
During his tumultuous childhood, junk was his salvation.
Collecting industrial scraps he found strewn about town
provided him solace and instilled his passion for making
things out of broken items, something for which he had an
affi nity, feeling broken himself and in need of fi nding ways
to stay whole.
After leaving home, von der Linden served in the army
before a brief stint in Kansas, where he studied geology
and art at a junior college. He then lived an itinerant
life, moving between Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado,
supporting himself as a bartender, cab driver, millwright
and a derrick hand in the oil fi elds.
Even though von der Linden said, “I’ve been an
artist all my life,” it wasn’t until he moved to southern
California and set about “studying marijuana and LSD”
that he “launched a career in art.” He worked as an
engineer for Mattel toys in Los Angeles, where he was
given free rein to do whatever he wanted to do because
he knew “how to do things.”
A telephone pole washed in by the tide earned him
enough attention to set his artistic career in motion.
He fastened the pole to a staircase that was
coming unattached from a villa. Passersby
noticed his solution. “People went by and
marveled at it,” von der Linden recalled.
“Then people hired me to do showy
gardens.”
Since then, von der Linden estimates that he’s carved
more than a hundred statues, some of which are on display
on the Oregon coast.
He worked in Oakridge as a millwright for a few years
before moving to Eugene in 1970 to study art at LCC.
Essentially self-taught, college offered von der Linden
use of a shop he otherwise would not have had access to.
Because he actually sold art while he was a student, he
said that his teachers and fellow students saw him as a
“supernatural being, a borderline deity.”
Frank about the diffi cult life he’s experienced, von der
Linden acknowledged that he suffers from “lots of issues”
and a disabling bipolar disorder. Numerous people offered
him support through the years, and he now feels as if it’s
his turn to give back.
“I’ve given guys in their thirties tools and shown them
things and I know it has helped,” he said. After a pause,
he continued: “I have a way with animals, old people and
children. I’m the father to myself that I never had. I want
to parlay that on the kids. I have seven or eight foster kids I
help out. I want to make unfortunate children happy.”
Von der Linden handed over a stack of wooden panels, all
about the size of a clipboard. They are painted on both sides,
one side usually a simple rendering of a fl ower, and on the
other a landscape in thick paint, often a solitary dwelling set
in a mountainous landscape. “They’re all of a rural dwelling
you can live in, I call them ‘Variations of a Dream.’ I paint
them because I’ve never had a house of my own.”
With some effort, von der Linden lifted a sculpture
onto a table. This one he called “a bookmobile,” a clever
wooden cart he built that holds fi ve unique books. Far from
traditional books, these consist of wooden frames that face
each other with a hinge in between to make them open
like a book. Inside the book are diptychs he painted with
motifs he often uses –— whale, house, mountains, river,
forests, lighthouse and his signature rhythmic skies that he
acknowledged were inspired by and in homage to Vincent
Van Gogh.
Another carved fi gure, Cleopatra, has faces on two
sides of her head, a common characteristic of many of his
sculptures. Von der Linden said these faces represent the
“split personalities we all have.”
When asked about the signifi cance of the frequent
use of crucifi xes in his work, he dismissed any symbolic
implications and stated matter-of-factly that the geometry
appeals to him. “I have a theory about these shapes I utilize
— they instill a thought in the minds of people who look at
them that cause them to think. Of course there’s signifi cance,
but this way it grants the viewer the opportunity to decipher
the meaning, to provide the context.”
Accustomed to using whatever he had at hand long
before it became fashionable to turn trash into art, von
der Linden didn’t set out to make an anticonsumption
statement. Over time, he grew more philosophical about
his approach to art making, realizing that his repurposing
materials headed for the dump was a sound choice, maybe
even one to model.
“I have a philosophy of no buying,” von
der Linden explained. “Maybe this art will
teach people to recycle one way or the
other. Lots of salvaging defeats the
purpose of buying. I don’t buy paint
— they throw it away!”
ew
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