A few years ago artist Kal Spelletich was working at a scenery-making shop for a boss he couldn’t stand. “He was just a loser,” he says. “He knew I had this little art career that provided something for me that a job or money doesn’t provide. He was obviously not a happy person and didn’t have his shit resolved and would take it out on the workers.”
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It was a hit with his coworkers, and it’s also a favorite at the live interactive performances put on by the Seemen, the loose collaboration of artists he’s led since 1987. “It’s fun because it will totally bust itself up,” he says. “If you run it enough it will punch its head off, or the arm will come off. It’s always a brilliant moment when it breaks. Then it’s even more fulfilling.”
He got involved in Davenport’s small punk scene as a teenager, and at the University of Iowa, where he enrolled in 1980, he booked punk bands and curated art parties. “I got into punk rock before I found art. Then I’d go to art shows and be like, ‘This is so lame. Art is so boring.’ But I wanted to do punk rock art that gave me the excitement and thrill and adrenaline like punk rock shows did in the late 70s and early 80s.”
Spelletich and fellow Seeman Jay Broemmel are currently touring across the country with 18 machines in a rented truck, including several new pieces such as a fur-covered electronic bull, which a couple is invited to fight, and the Sharkcage, in which a volunteer sits while a steel angel smashes against it again and again.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jonathan Castner.
