styleNorth

I’m sure more than a few of his neighbours will be happy to see the back of artist Werner Schmidt when he packs up his “junk” and moves on in June. After 28 years as a tenant at 919A Ossington Avenue, Werner has been told to vacate the premises in order to accommodate the building’s new owner.

The 60-something Schmidt is a classic, outsider artist. He takes found scrap and junk and fashions it into sculptures, which he then uses to decorate the property (along Essex Street). Schmidt’s work is perched around the yard, tacked up on the walls and propped on windowsills; some of it’s quite simple and some is tremendously elaborate, even frightening.

What’s really scary though, is the state of Schmidt’s yard, which–there’s no other way to say this–is a hazard.

“I’m an iconoclast,” says the artist, a remark so plainly obvious that I laugh out loud. Schmidt takes my jocularity in his stride and further describes himself as a “lyrical imperisist” by which I think he means that his art is guided by his senses and his gut rather than by his rational mind.

And yet there are conceptual motives at the root of some of his work. “Many of my sculptures-in-progress are totems,” he says, “some of them are inspired by the heads on Easter Island and by Mayan motifs.”

Schmidt trained as an artist and designer at a variety of institutions including OCAD, Sheridan and George Brown colleges, even the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Netherlands. He has collaborated with more-famous artists like Toronto’s Istvan Kantor and California’s Angelo Garro, but he typically works alone in his basement and backyard shop. Like most outsider artists, Schmidt is not represented by a gallery.

It will likely require a construction bin to rid the yard of Schmidt’s detritus. And while the decluttering will no doubt leave the neighbourhood more placid, it will also be a lot less interesting and inspiring. I say good luck to Schmidt, wherever he lands.