Taking its name from a 1976 song by Tom Waits, Brad Chapman Bleau’s first solo exhibition, “Step Right Up,” like the forementioned composition, is offering something for everyone in, “An exhibition of Junk Paintings and Assemblage Sculptures” at the Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery at Worcester State University, where he is a gallery curator and adjunct professor of art.
Entering his second-floor workspace at the Worcester Center for Crafts, in an area that also hosts Worcester State University Visual and Performing Arts classrooms as part of their partnership formed in 2009, atop a worktable, sits a large coil of barbed wire that he found 10 years ago. It’s joined by a work-in- progress featuring a backdrop of ghoulish looking cutout “holding” a wooden tray containing a toy gun, plastic skull, a box of Band-Aids, an animal bone and pack of Newport cigarettes.
The borders of the room are filled with plastic containers filled with future work pieces, each labeled for careful discovery: hanging hardware, screwdrivers, bottles, animals and body parts. He’s currently working on a sculpture inspired by McDonald’s artifacts; he has a hug box of ephemera to work with. “It’s my childhood obsession,” Bleau explained. “These are some of the toys that you got for free. I especially love the little chicken nuggets-shaped toys that they created.”
There was a time, approximately 15 years ago, that it seemed there was so much found object art assemblages being shown in galleries that it was hard to feel there was a personal connection to much of it, as if the creator had just gone to flea markets looking to cash in on the latest craze. That’s not Bleau’s goal, and he strives for uniqueness. “It’s the painting aspect that makes it my work,” he said. “I struggle with how not to make it a bunch of people’s objects put together.”