community ^ makers
Instruments by Art W alk through the front door of Meyer Music in Overland Park, KS, and you by Deborah Young
will see Marley there on your right. He’s a massive sculpture, about 6 feet tall and 165 pounds, crafted from discarded musical instruments. His head is a violin. The locks of his hair are guitar strings and chains from bass drum pedals. His eyes are conveyor ball transfers (the steel balls used to move industrial conveyor belts). His thighs are saxophones, his legs and feet trumpets. In the spring of 2016 Marley was just a vague idea in the mind of his creator, Robert Hurl- burt, a production designer for Hallmark. One of Hurlburt’s Hallmark colleagues asked him and other coworkers to create art pieces from unplayable instruments for an annual auction hosted by Band of Angels, a non-profit partnership formed by Fox 4 News and Meyer Music. Band of Angels provides band and orchestra instruments for children in need. Last year when Hurlburt went to Meyer Music to select instruments for his sculpture he had the vague idea of making a jazz man. “I didn’t need him to be bigger than me or ac- tual size. I just thought a musical instrument character that’s standing there or running or doing something,” he said. Initially Hurlburt chose one bass guitar for Marley’s body, but he decided the body would be too flat with only one guitar. Hurlburt’s nephew donated another bass guitar, which he decided to use. Then he had to figure out how to join the two guitars to create the body. He used a snare drum to connect the two guitars. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be weird to have these bass guitars looking as though they had been rammed right on through a snare drum but the snare drum still works?’ Hurlburt said. “So then it was, ‘How do I cut everything away and deconstruct it then build it back up, recon-
struct it, and put the drum heads back on?’
“Marley” stands just inside the door of Meyer Music in Overland Park, KS. Robert Hurlburt created the 165- to 175-pound jazz man for Band of Angels’ 2016 auction.
“Probably the hardest part was just trying to make that torso and neck area work, and once it was working I was home free,” Hurl- burt said. “Now it’s just, ‘What crazy looking head can I put on this guy? What kind of effect on his forehead?’” Once Hurlburt had made the head and attached the hair he thought it looked like dreadlocks and decided to name the sculpture Marley (after Jamaican musician Bob Marley). Marley took about 70 hours to complete, Hurlburt said. The media used for Marley included wood, bakelite, copper, brass, aluminum, and steel, epoxy, plastic and acrylic. Tammy and Rick Haddix took a simpler approach to creating their instrument art. They prefer to keep the instruments intact and highlight each instrument’s natural beauty. Like Hurlburt, Tammy works
30 VINTAGEKC SPRING 2017
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