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ARTS

Wilmington StarNews

Drive or walk down the 700 block of North Fifth Avenue in downtown Wilmington's Brooklyn neighborhood, and you're bound to notice a few curious sights.

In the large, beautifully landscaped median that dominates that part of North Fifth, a colorful ceramic figure wearing sneakers sits atop a stone bench, while others dance and play next to a ceramic tower nearby.

Look around, and it's not too hard to trace where all this whimsy emanates from. Might it be the blue house where a lanky little sculpture with tiny feet sits on the steps, with a few of his friends arising from the ivy in the front yard?

Your suspicions will be confirmed when a man with a bushy white beard, a shock of white hair and rainbow suspenders emerges. It is, of course, the man who created this colorful array, longtime Wilmington artist and photographer Arrow Ross, who puts his age at "85 and a half.

"It's like going back to childhood," he said. "That half year is very important now."

Ross, a native of Denmark, has been in Wilmington since 1994, and is a well-known presence on the Port City's visual arts scene. Ross has been known as a photographer for most of his time here, and for many years he had a darkroom and studio at the Acme Art complex next to where he lives.

A decade ago, Ross started taking pottery classes at Cape Fear Community College, something he likens to "going back to kindergarten" as an artist.

He's had a few ceramic sculptures outside of his house for several years now, but his work has only begun to expand and populate the median relatively recently, inspired in part by a neighbor whose hobby is keeping the roomy medians landscaped with all manner of plants.

Ross said his production of figures really ramped up during the pandemic.

"I didn't want to live alone," he said. "So these two characters sat on my sofa for two years to keep me company."

In front his house, Ross introduces a couple of visitors to a skinny guy named Mr. Longfellow, so named because of the character's tiny feet at the end of his lanky body. You build ceramic pieces from the base up, Ross said, and "I thought (the feet) were big enough."

A lesson to younger artists, perhaps, many of Ross' works incorporate and even celebrate "mistakes" he's made in the process of learning ceramics. He calls one of his early works Mr. Armstrong because Ross didn't yet know how to make a ceramic figure with arms.

Mr. Nobody came from when he lopped the head off the sculpture of a woman because he thought the face looked too masculine. Now, the head sits atop a pair of hands that lift it out of the ivy covering his front yard.

There's Cleo, "who sings me love songs," and Captain Fred from Beatles film "The Yellow Submarine," a white-bearded character who looks a little like Ross himself.

Then there's the triple stack of characters in front of his house that Ross calls a self-portrait of sorts, depicting the artist in youth, middle age and old age. He said he created the intricate beard of "old" Arrow by squeezing clay through a garlic press like the sprouting of hair in a Play Doh salon.

For the pieces that sit outside, he's mindful of drainage, and of spots that could collect water. A couple of different times he's found bills tucked into different sculptures, something he likens to "a ceramic tip."

"I'm trying to come up with more ideas," he said, for what he calls "my green gallery."

Ross, who moves around well despite undergoing a knee replacement a couple of months ago, makes his art where he lives on the art-strewn second floor of a house he bought at auction for $8,000 and spent a year and a half fixing up. It's got big windows that let in the sun, and feels like being in a treehouse.

Before moving to Wilmington, Ross spent 20 years living on a commune in the Ozarks in Southern Missouri with his wife, children and six other families. It was there, he said, "I learned to finish (the house) before you move in," otherwise the work never gets done. One wonders whether he's recreated, out of clay, the commune on Fifth Avenue to some degree.

He's got a small kiln he's currently repairing on his back porch, one that was passed down from Wilmington artist Dick Roberts, who got it from Wilmington artist Gayle Tustin. Ross maps out future projects in crisp detail at the station where he glazes his pieces, which is also the room where he sleeps.

Saying he thinks that "some ceramics are boring" when they only use earth tones, Ross said he gravitates toward creating colorful figures, inspired by how Wilmington potter Steve Kelly uses color in his striking pieces.

"Everybody makes cups and bowls and different things like that, and they're very good at it," Ross said. "I like color. I like to dress colorful."

On this day, he wears orange pants with an unbuttoned purple button-down over a faded red T-shirt, his trademark rainbow suspenders peeking out as always.

"People say, 'You're crazy, you can't put these colors together,'" Ross said, admitting with a smile that he's had no training in color theory. "I say, 'I can.'"

These days, Ross said, the only photography he does is photographing his own pieces.

"I can't just go around snapping photos anymore. I've done that all my life," he said. "I need a project. You have to have some creative idea in your head," and sculpture gives him "a whole other way of seeing," in 3-D, with 360-degree angles.

Ross' work has captured the attention of some local art patrons, and one family commissioned him to depict their brood in clay. For the most part, though, "I don't have to worry about what sells," Ross said. "That gives you freedom."

Besides, he's got his own gallery right outside his front door, and "my gallery's open all the time."