Scrap metal forms beautiful works for Argentine artist

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- The artist sculpted his big metal T-Rex from old train parts and gave it railroad spikes for teeth. He used scrap metal to build the giant ants and the crocodile on display in his studio behind a train station.\nArgentine sculptor Carlos Regazzoni began taking castoff debris three decades ago from the Buenos Aires train lines and hammering the metal into larger-than-life shapes. A burly man, his gray hair flies wildly as he grabs a hammer to whack away, turning the rubbish of the railroads into large dinosaurs, farm animals and other more whimsical creations.\nHis studio is an abandoned rail warehouse tucked behind the Retiro train station, one of the biggest and busiest rail hubs linking Buenos Aires with its suburbs.\nThe 61-year-old artist is currently assembling a larger-than-life bull with horns from old metal tubing. He curses under his breath, hammering stubbornly on metal that refuses to bend. Nearby stands a huge iguana whose lifelike skin is really a mesh of rusty chains. Then there are odder sculptures welded together from scores of flattened typewriters and cash registers.\n"I am at the heart of it ... a metalworker, and this was very easy to get into," says Regazzoni, who sums up his calling as salvaging art from the junk heap of the "industrial revolution."\nLast century, the British helped build once gleaming railroads that packed Argentina's cattle off to markets, making this country one of the world's 10 wealthiest in the industrial era. But Argentina fell on hard times in a 2002 economic crisis that plunged 40 percent of its 36 million population into poverty -- and many of its once proud rail lines lapsed into disrepair.\nThat left plenty of scrap metal for the artist, who bluntly declares in one breath that art serves no real purpose -- and in the next -- that art approaches the sublime.\n"Art doesn't serve a damn. It's not practical in any sense," he grumbles. But then he qualifies his statement: "Art serves a purpose in the sense that people feel a sense of beauty. And if a person enters into that place, he begins to discover beauty and everything changes."\nRegazzoni says that both artist and spectator can encounter something powerful that transcends the mundane working world.\nTen of his giant ants have been welded in a line climbing a tall light post that towers over a busy elevated freeway crossing the train tracks below. The ants are on display for thousands of motorists who rush bumper to bumper from suburbia each day in long antlike lines to go to work, much like their counterparts on commuter trains entering Retiro station below.\nBut on a quiet rail siding, Regazzoni is removed from the commuter bustle, working placidly in his studio by day and retiring by night to a converted rail car he calls home. He cooks earthy meals on an ancient cast-iron stove and bakes bread in a clay oven, supplying himself with fresh eggs from hens kept on idled tracks outdoors.\nRegazzoni divides time between Argentina and another studio near a train station in Paris. His sculptures along with his many paintings in demand at home and abroad. He has exhibited works as far as Japan and recently, he says, actor Antonio Banderas bought some of his art.\nAt home he makes TV appearances, recently hobnobbing with Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona on his talk show. And in Patagonia, where he spent some early years, several of his scrap metal dinosaurs -- called "Los Petrosaurios" -- rise up above the barren landscape.\nDespite the attention, the artist says he is no "solitary artist" working in isolation.\n"I used to talk about those kinds of things many years ago but it's just not so," he says. "One time a drunk came up and told me he could improve one of my paintings and ... you know what? He actually did make it better!"\nRegazzoni enjoys having people mill around, like the assistant loading photos of his works into a laptop and another bringing him junk in a wheelbarrow. Students also come to learn sculpture, along with guests and curiosity seekers.\nStill, when he's had his say, he makes a fast exit. He rushes from his studio with barely a goodbye, leaving visitors alone to ponder the dinosaurs and other denizens of his scrap metal menagerie.