Millions of toothpicks later, Chicago artist Wayne Kusy continues to build marvelous creations in wood
A toothpick is a humble thing, ubiquitous but so commonplace as to be ignored.
Not so for Wayne Kusy. For most of his 61 years, toothpicks — thousands of them, millions of them — have been essential parts of his life.
He has used them to create an astonishing and artful armada, a gathering of ships made of toothpicks and glue and his patient energies. They have been shown in galleries and museums and featured on television and in magazines. He should be famous, but he is not and that is OK with him.
“Most people wouldn’t recognize me on the street,” he told me a few years ago. “But I have become kind of well-known in the folk-art world.”
Kusy was born and raised in New Mexico and Rogers Park and for decades has lived in a third-floor walk-up in Lincoln Square. Like many youngsters, he played with Legos and, in grammar school, he used popsicle sticks to build a class project. In fifth grade his first ship sailed into his life when he used 3,000 toothpicks, give or take, to fashion a boat, a small boat.
“I was always fascinated by ships,” he said. “In part, it was their incredible size. They are, just think about it, buildings that float. I had to know, ‘How do they do that?’”
To satisfy his curiosity, he turned himself into a historian, searching out, finding and studying deck plans, blueprints and mechanical drawings. He read books, ogled photos and watched videos. Understandably, he also followed a more conventional higher learning path, studying marketing at Loyola University and later web design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has spent his for-profit career as a web designer.
He is, of course, a self-taught artist. Though there are now more than a few examples of toothpick artistry on the internet, when Kusy began, there was virtually nothing in the way of example or instruction.
On his own he became skilled at making toothpicks do what he needed them to do by trial and error, becoming an expert at using pliers to crush and mold toothpicks into pliant form. I first met him nearly 30 years ago, when he showed me his Titanic, a 75,000-toothpick ship nearly 10 feet long. It had taken him more than five years to make.
Then came a giant Lusitania, a 16-foot, 194,000-toothpick giant and a Queen Mary, 25 feet long and comprised of 1 million toothpicks.
He told me then, “What I do is never boring.”
But it is time-consuming, each boat taking years to create, in part because of Kusy’s attention to detail, such as the making lifeboats and handrails.
Now there are people (perhaps you, now reading this) who might think Kusy is nuts.
He is not. He is thoughtful and smart and self-effacing.
“I will tell you that during all these years I have thought of what I do as a hobby,” he said. “But recently I have started to really believe that I am an artist.”
Others were quicker to give him that label.
In 1994 when his Titanic was exhibited at a River North gallery, owner Celeste Sotola said, “Wayne is in the truest sense an artist because he’s a loner, he doesn’t follow anyone else’s lead, and the amount of time he spends on his art is a real symbol of his dedication.”
The amount of time was and remains two to three hours every day.
When he participated in the inaugural exhibition of the short-lived but wonderful gallery called Chicago Center for Self-Taught Art Museum, its director, Yolanda Saul, said, “The first time I saw the Titanic I thought it was amazing. I feel honored that he has agreed to loan us his work for the show.” There are other artists who work with toothpicks, Kusy told me without jealousy or pique, but few if any have been at it as long as he.
He has never been in this for the money. He did sell his Titanic for $15,000 to a Los Angeles museum and it now rests in the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Florida. His Lusitania is in the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Queen Mary resides in the National Museum of Ship Models and Sea History in Sadorus in downstate Illinois, near Champaign.
Though he has a sponsor, Franklin International, the makers of the glue that holds his sculptures together, surprisingly, no toothpick company has been wise enough to similarly endow him. He continues to buy his own toothpicks and admits he is currently having trouble finding them, saying, “I am jonesing for toothpicks.”
Long a guitar player on open mic nights and in some local bands (one called Heavy Mental), he recently created a wooden one: five musicians — each about a foot tall — formed his Wood Zeppelin, with is accompanied by a nifty stop motion animation music video made in his living room with a little help from his friends.
“This came about because I had been commissioned by the Village of Algonquin to build a 45-inch model of the SS Algonquin from 1841,” he said. “About the same time, someone had suggested I document the construction using time-lapse photography. I thought it was a good idea, and the Algonquin was a small vessel. It took three months, but I shot 4,200 photos as I built the ship. The end result is on YouTube. Doing that inspired me. I thought if I can get a ship to animate, how about some rock ‘n’ roll characters.”
That ship is now on display in Algonquin’s Village Hall and Kusy is laboring on another major work, a sculpture of the SS Bremen, a German ship built in 1929. He traveled to Germany to do research.
His apartment also has four smaller ships in various stages of completion. They have been commissioned by boat owners who admire Kusy’s work, found him on his lively and information-filled website and were able to pay his modest fees, which involve hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.
One of these is a boat owned by a woman in Florida.
“She had me come down so I could see and photograph her boat,” said Kusy with his typical enthusiasm. “It took me forever to get there but she flew me back on a private jet. Now that was something.”
