http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sectio ... ryID=65887
Poetry, music, art -- by the Wireman
Originally published October 04, 2007
By Lauren LaRocca
News-Post Staff
Frederick News Post
What: Mark “Wireman” Coburn
When: 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. (two sets) Saturday, Oct. 6, during the First Saturday Gallery Walk
Where: Blue Elephant Art Center, 4A W. Fifth St., Frederick, Maryland
Tickets: No cover charge.
Information: http://www.myspace.com/phantomdwellingplace; to see examples of his sculptures, go to www.soweboarts.org/markcoburn.html
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Mark Coburn became Mark "Wireman" Coburn years ago, at a bar in Baltimore.
Oh, you're the wireman, the owner said when he walked inside to pick up his wire sculpture. He's been making them since the '70s and has developed a reputation. Not many people know he's also a writer and musician.
He was scared to perform for some 20 years, until he got up in front of a crowd at a Baltimore bar during their jazz poetry night. He did his poetry several times thereafter.
"I just got hooked," he said. "I got a rush like nothing else in the world."
He described his singing, poetic style as a cross between Jim Morrison and Tom Waits.
He'll play two sets with Raga Celtic Delta Blues Band at the Blue Elephant Art Center this Saturday night, bringing along his electric tabla and electric tambura and his Indian wood flute, as well as Jamie Wilson on percussion and Ralph Reinoldi on guitar. (Coburn said they'll be doing it "gallery style," meaning, no bassist. "We don't want to overpower the art show.")
From the Jack Kerouac school of spontaneity, he'll spout out what he calls his all-inclusive beat poetry, in between harmonica riffs and electric tambura solos, all while underneath or inside or near his own art installation, made up of several of his wire sculptures for which he got his name.
He doesn't know, off the top of his head, of any other people in the area doing this sort of thing -- the poetry, the electric tabla and tambura (which he heard about, then researched on the Internet, then recently bought) -- but he doesn't doubt there are people out there doing similar things. He just wants his work out there.
He watched a video on Woody Guthrie the other day and took note of the musician's attitude on people stealing his work, which was, basically, "You're welcome to it, and you're my friend," Coburn reported. "If you hold back, you're never going to get it out there to the people," he continued.
He always wanted to combine performance with art.
The sculptures, usually portraits, are a hobby that resulted from his jobs doing construction, working with iron and steel. He typically uses 16-gauge wire, then details down with smaller gauges.
"I started making faces -- Rastaman and hippies and whatnot in the '70s," he said.
Prior to that, Coburn had created welded sculptures, which he learned from a guy named John Duffy who lived in D.C.
Working with 9-inch pliers, he began his wire sculptures by working from photographs, translating the pictures to a new medium; over the years, he learned to do that with his mind. He said he sometimes, on the job, comes across a piece of wire that looks like something specific to him. Recently he recognized a coiled wire as being a perfect headdress to a Queen. He snatched it and it became an Empress of his imagination.
"It's an old surrealist technique," he said, paralleling it to a child finding cloud pictures.
"Your studio could be right here," he said, sitting outside Downtime Cafe with his laptop but no wire on hand.
His art was on display at the cafe on East Patrick Street a few months ago, and he has a T-Rex currently on exhibit at Gallery Neptune in Bethesda.
Right now he's working on sculpting a wire mermaid, writing down poetry, and practicing his new found electronics.
