Israeli streets inspire artist

A man with a salt-and-pepper ponytail explained the process and visual appeal of the circular patterns hung on the gallery walls.

The patterns were rubbings made from manhole covers found on roads and sidewalks — day-to-day objects most people pass over without a second thought.

“They must have a grip surface,” said Perry Olds, the artist who created these rubbings. “While making a grip surface, why not make a pattern pleasing to the eye?”

“The Art of the Israeli Man Hole Cover” exhibit launched at The Venue Fine Art & Gifts last Friday and a more in-depth look at the artist’s working process was offered at the gallery Tuesday night.

During the presentation, Olds shared both technical information and personal anecdotes with the audience.

It all started with an overseas family visit. Olds and his wife, Irene Joslin, flew to
Israel late last year to see their daughter and week-old grandchild. They ended up staying seven weeks, traveling the length of the country.

Olds and Joslin, both of whom are involved in the Bloomington arts community, toured historic sites in Eilat and Jerusalem but spent most of their time in Tel Aviv.

It was on his long walks around the modernized city that Olds, a photographer and a former mechanical engineer, noticed the intricately designed manhole covers along the streets and sidewalks.

In addition to the elaborate patterns, most of the covers contained text in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English. One had the English word “hot” in bold, capital letters across its front.

With Olds’ artistic mind honed throughout the years, he realized the art was in the texture of the manhole covers. He decided to go down the path of creating pastel and graphite rubbings from the covers instead of simply taking photographs of them.

“You’re not creating a new design per se,” Olds said. “You’re copying someone else’s work. But given that, you have control for how you do it. You can change the colors, the detail. You pick up more detail in one area if you want and emphasize things differently.”

To create the visually attractive pieces, Olds used various “rubbist” tools. He carried three to five sheets of paper similar to those used for drafting, used masking tape to keep the sheets to the ground and transferred manhole cover designs to paper with graphite, oil pastel, chalk or wax.

“There’s so much detail,” he said. “You’ve got to figure out what the detail is. You’ve got to go after the details and search them out.”

Olds spent 30 minutes to an hour crouching near the ground along busy streets to create each rubbing, his only comforts the cushions to pad his knees and a folding chair for rest and safety.

But Olds faced a bigger problem in the form of suspicion from locals. 

“Some of the people made a very wide arc around Perry rubbing the manhole covers,” Joslin said, laughing.

Olds shared an anecdote about watching a group of soldiers shoot holes through an abandoned briefcase they feared contained a bomb.

“They are very suspicious,” he said. “There were times when I would be walking down the street with my roll of paper and people would look at me and stare. And when I encountered those people, I would take the roll and point it up like a spyglass, show them that, ‘nothing here but paper!’”

During the seven weeks of touring, Olds created 30 rubbings, some of which he reproduced in different colors.

The Venue gallery owner Gabriel Colman said he chose to carry the show for its fresh and unique subject matter, and Olds was able to extract beauty and art from something seemingly mundane.

“I’ve heard of other shows that exhibit rubbings from gravestones and things like that,” Colman said. “This was the first of its kind, as far as the subject matter and how it was presented. As far as a person could sink their mental teeth into, it’s got good qualifications.”

Olds said he appreciates the support and artistic input his wife, an acclaimed artist and cartoonist in her own right, provides him with.

“Perry has such a good eye,” Joslin said. “I don’t think he realized it himself. Oftentimes he would create a piece, and it always turned out to be the beginning of a show.”