On a dusty bluff behind the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, there’s a building made of wood palettes. It’s bigger than a shack, but just smaller than a barn. It looks handmade. The sheer size suggests a crew of builders at work. Surprisingly, it was built by one man: 27-year-old artist Wes Bruce.
"Just for the sake of really connecting with the ideas and the space itself, I chose to build most of it with my own time and hands and thought," says the boyish-looking Bruce.
Bruce is planning to fill the space with scraps of memory shared with him by strangers. He's translated their stories into imagined journal entries and calls the hybrid product "poetic memories."
If a modern-day Romantic movement ever sprouts in San Diego, Bruce would be a strong contender for its leader. His blond hair even curls above the forehead, Lord Byron style.
"I have a firm belief there’s poetry soaked and saturated into anything and everything if you allow it to be drawn out," says Bruce.
Today, one way to draw it out is through the internet. Bruce set up a website, asking people to tell him about the important buildings in their lives. "Whether it’s the house you grew up in or the place you work. The place you went to school or some place that you worship in," explains Bruce.
The buildings serve as the catalysts for memory. "It’s the experiences of human beings I’m interested in, as plain as any given day might be," says Bruce.
Bruce took all the letters and stories he's collected and wrote parts of them down, using a quill and inkwell. The memories/journal entries are written on weather-beaten scraps of paper he's has found all over the country.
Over the last couple of years, Bruce's artwork has been rooted in his fascination with abandoned buildings. In 2010, he built a 2,000 square foot fort inside the California Center for the Arts in Escondido. In it were hundreds of objects he’s collected from abandoned homes. "I think of [abandoned homes] as places that keep memories and experiences. All the objects in there act as mementoes," says Bruce.
"It had old Gothic-style stained glass windows that were are all blown out. The pews are still in the church but they’re all crooked and askew," says Bruce, still awestruck by the discovery. "I’d never been to a space that I knew without a doubt had been a sacred, spiritual, worshipful place."
Bruce received a Creative Catalyst Grant from the San Diego Foundation. With the funds, he partnered with Lux and decided to build his own abandoned structure. He's going to fill it with those found papers and "poetic memories."
Standing inside the building, Bruce waives his arms to show the expanse of the space. "It’s going to be kind of manic with tons and tons and tons of paper everywhere," he says. Papers will cover the walls and hang from the ceiling.
Bruce also collects old photographs. At a recent visit to his studio, Bruce and his friend Troy lean over a table covered with vintage photographs, some black and white, some color. Many have the white borders signaling a bygone photographic era. Troy picks up a faded color photograph of a man under a palm tree. He laughs, "This is, like, the original Instagram."
Bruce found many of these photos in abandoned homes. They will hang in his building alongside all the paper memories. "Just to have those two things rub up against each other feels like there’s some kind of poetic magic that happens."
And in the end, that’s what it’s really about for Bruce, capturing the poetry in life's moments both big and small. He sees poetry everywhere: in abandoned buildings, on street corners, in loose scraps of paper. And, especially, in people’s memories.
Wes Bruce's art installation "Structures Poetry Humans" opens to the public Thursday, October 25th. If you attend the opening reception at Lux, be sure to bring a flashlight and some hiking shoes.
