By Casey Gillis on Jun. 30, 2010

cgillis@newsadvance.com

When Marc-Anthony Polizzi was a graduate student studying glass sculpting at Tulane University, he began creating art out of found objects in his spare time.

“(The glass work) is very methodical and process-oriented,” says the artist, whose work will be on display at Riverviews Artspace for the rest of the summer. “I started doing stuff like this to blow off steam.”

He began leaving the pieces all over campus — a kind of guerilla art, if you will.

“Nobody knew it was me,” he says, “until the cops came.”

They were upset because he’d placed one of his pieces on top of a No Parking sign; no legal action was taken, but Polizzi had found a niche.

Today, his art, usually large-scale installations designed specifically for the gallery in which he is showing, incorporates found items he’s collected or been given over the years. He pieces the items — think furniture, stuffed animals, inflatable rafts, hard hats and even shoes — together into one giant mass, then paints them all the same color.

The work, he says, depends on the gallery space and “how trusting the curator is.”

The trust sometimes surprises Polizzi, who dabbled in graffiti art while growing up in Utica, N.Y.: “I’m used to doing things at night, when no one is around (and) without permission.”

Erin Stover, Riverviews exhibition and program manager, says they selected Polizzi knowing he would create something interesting.

“There’s no way to know what it’s going to look like until it’s done,” she says.

“My favorite things to have in this space are installations or large-scale pieces. I liked the scale of his work. I liked how different it was. And I liked that it was very organic and free-form.”

Polizzi used to sketch everything out in advance — “really anal retentive drawings,” he says — but now that has evolved into loose sketches. Going in, he always has a specific plan in place for the large objects, and then adds in the smaller ones somewhat on the fly.

For his Riverviews show, which will open with a First Fridays reception from 5:30 to 8 p.m., “I knew I wanted to hang a couch upside down from the wall.”

That couch is suspended from one corner of Riverviews, with a collection of other items piled on top of it. (One thing that always shows up in Polizzi’s installations: a box fan, as a tribute to his wife because “it was the only thing we could agree on when we first got married,” he jokes).

Across the way, he’s hung a piano eight feet off the ground. Four fluorescent light bulbs are staggered underneath it to give the effect that the bulbs are holding the piano up.

Everything is painted in a bright blue — the color chosen as carefully as the items themselves.

“I’m a big fan of whimsical, bright colors,” he says. “The last thing I’d want is for someone to think I take myself seriously.”

Sometimes, it's easy to walk into an art gallery, fall in love with a piece, buy it, have it wrapped and bring it home to meet the family.

For someone who likes purchases on the impulsive side, adding Marc-Anthony Polizzi's Moving Day to permanent collection would present a challenge. For starters, it would take several contractors, an understanding mover (ideally, one with an advanced degree in physics from Miskatonic University), and an extremely detailed set of panoramic photographs.

Polizzi's multimedia, monochromatic sculpture installation doesn't take up the back room at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. It takes over.

Moving Day takes the walls and central pillar and presses them into service. They're now surfaces for bright red paint and backdrops for three-dimensional doodles executed in long strands of electrical cord. (This does not excuse them from their regular duty of preventing the ceiling from becoming one with the floor.)

The focal point is an impossibly inverted pyramid of furniture (all in the same shade of scarlet) in one corner of the gallery. An upended chest of drawers "supports" a table, which holds up another table, which holds up -- Go see for yourself. Don't stand too close, though. That stack looks as though a sneeze within a six-foot radius could bring the whole thing crashing down on the sneezer.

Polizzi's website provides an excellent series of 3-D video mockups of his installations. It also gives this explanation:

These pieces consist of a loose narrative based on both my physical and emotional state. Personal situations and thought processes create a jumping-off point for these sometimes whimsical, often overbearing installations. The objects used in the Monochromatic series are stripped of their material, leaving only shape, size, placement and texture to influence the viewer. Each item is chosen for its relevance and emotional impact to the underlying narrative.

At first, it's difficult to find emotional content in Moving Day. But if one takes the cord doodles as a child's drawing, the image of a house on one wall provides insight. There are deeper jitters here: those that come with pulling up stakes and moving not only your stuff, but your life, into a new space.

You can't pack up Moving Day and replicate it in your garage, just as you can't recreate every detail of a previous life in a new home. No matter how close you get to the original, something's bound to be different: the light, the ambient sounds, the smell of the air.

Best to enjoy Moving Day where it is, then. You can't take it with you.