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Design on His Mind
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2021/03 – March
“To be an inventor you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” -Thomas Edison. This Month’s Feature Artist, Jonathan Langberg, has taken Mr. Edison’s advice to heart.
Jonathan Langberg was a redeemer of tossed things when repurposing wasn’t cool.
Now he’s celebrated for his trash-to-treasure designs: clocks reconfigured from old TVs; paper-covered hanger wire lamps suggesting kites of light in the sky…or at least in the ceiling;
Jonathan’s mother, also an artist, noted his talent early on and began nurturing his sculptor’s eye for line, shape, form.
Marrying the mechanical (utensils, tools, gears, wheels) to the organic (creatures and all things growing) is Jonathan’s passion.
The end result…an owl with fork tine feathers and spoon bowl eyes or an octopus with flatware legs and a head made of a sugar shell spoon.
Even though Jonathan has been drawn to the arts his whole life, he laughingly says, “I am a semi-retired (as of last year) cardiologist at Emory University. Currently, my career is Art and my hobby, Cardiology.”
Doctoring is a whole lot of left brain calculation and stress. Art is right brain, imaginative work. There’s not a lot of cross-over. You can’t repair an aorta with a repurposed vacuum cleaner part. Jonathan’s medical and art skills satisfy both sides of his brain. And he puts a lot of heart into his operation.
Most of Jonathan’s artwork is functional: clocks, lighting, weathervanes, furniture, coat racks. Like most artists, he wakes up with design on his mind and races to the studio, his beagle Charlie, aka Little Big Mouth, tottering behind. He’ll pass his wife along the way, she launching her day with canvas and brush, painting an abstract. Occasionally they collaborate on projects, the whole often larger than the sum of its parts.
As Edison suggests, Jonathan amasses laurel branches, barn doors, silverware, cardboard, bicycle parts, and much more for his inspiration. He’ll get in a clock groove and crank them out for days. Or furniture will be the focus of the week. He goes with his artistic flow.
The cool thing about retirement is he gets to make clocks at his leisure, without having to punch them.
Catch Jonathan at Highlands Marketplace or email him at [email protected].
