The Shield Maker

Marty Lovins, Shield Maker

Marty Lovins has been making shields for more than three decades.

Being that I seldom leave the house without one of his shields

protecting me, you might want to take a look.

                                 Jim Bodeen

TALKING ART WITH THE JEWELER

            for Marty Lovins, Shield Maker

The artist wants to cause problems

Tell Karen what can’t be put into words

Tell Karen, anything you can get away with

An idea, like Picasso says,

but a vague idea

This photo, taken 1938 Coney Island

An over-crowded beach full of white people

A thing I found

And all these white people on the beach

Cancer on the way

Obsolete wire

Obsolete gloves

            Those stars

                        three black holes

                                    in space

            three missing stars

Karen knows all this, she’s a maker

Karen makes things

Things that can’t be put into words

           

Here it is again.

Eye and tongue at cross purposes.

Shape, texture, memories

This can opener. It’s texture, its feel

In the old days we opened beer cans with it

Drank the beer and threw cans out the window

Jim Bodeen

20 February 2020

If you view them as stars they make up the three

in a line from the constellation Orion, The Hunter.

(His belt.) But that’s real personal because of something

I experienced. You might see it as part of the design

to balance the composition with the red stripes.

Stars would never enter into your viewing. These

dots repeat the circles of the flute and circle at end

of black strip. But that wire-wrapped glove and a packed

beach of people is the main image I was trying to form.

“You have to like the mystery,” From a found poem

by Jim Bodeen

Statement by Marty Lovins
20 February 2019

ALL IMAGES BY
MARTY LOVINS

Earlier today, visiting my jeweler
he showed me goggles that hadn't quite
made it into an assemblage

they were my size
and might work for me
on the mountain

If I had money I would write him the check
that one, the one matching the value
I hold for each piece of work

These shields have protected me
for three decades and when I mentioned
earlier that I seldom leave home

without wearing one, an artist
asked, Really? Really, which made me
think I could show him a few pieces

right here, pretty easy,
made me almost forget about Karen
sitting beside me as we ate

Here a few are then, belt buckle,
medicine bag, fetish, elk tooth,
they're all shields, some pinned

to vests Karen makes for me.
I'm not allowed to tell you
what's in the medicine bag

anyway it changes
depending on dangers
anticipating pleasures and joy

Jim Bodeen
Storypath/Cuentocamino