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Ken Blocker devotes a small portion of one room in his house for his workshop. In it, besides I paraphernalia needed for welding, are numerous bolts, screws, nuts. etc. At left, he is working welding the guitar strings onto the guitar. Below. Blocker works on the preliminary stages of guitarist. Here, he is trying different pieces to determine what will look the best. He states that gets many of his ideas for sculptures from just wandering around his place of business, picking odds and ends that he might use later on. Sometimes, when shopping with his wife, he may s something in the store which will give him an idea. Take some ordinary nuts and bolts, add a sparkplug and some welding rods, throw in a pipe wrench, add some tender loving care, include a ton of patience, a lot of skill--and add an understanding wife who allows you to "play" with your bolts and wires,-- weld them all together, and what do you get? Well, most of us would get a big mess and an angry wife. What Ken Blocker gets, is some of the best sculpturing in the area. Blocker, a blacksmith for the CTA in Chicago by trade, takes everyday items and welds them together into beautiful sculptures. You say you like scubadivers? Blocker has made one. You want a drummer? He's done that too. Flowers...chessmen...desksets... trains... Blocker has made them all. The chessboard and men on the front page and „ the guitar player shown here were both made by Blocker using nothing more than everyday items which most persons discard. How did this all start? "My wife and I were in Chicago and we saw some work which an artist had done which won first place in a show," he explained. "The artist had made an entire orchestra, but I didn't like them. To me, his figures didn't have enough detail." Blocker prides himself on the detail he puts into his work. It is the extra touch he gives each sculpture which makes his work unusual. Blocker began welding sculptures in Chicago. "I lived across the street from Lane Tech high school," he said. "I used to go over there at night and use the welding facilities." Pistakee Highlands, where he now lives, is a long way from Chicago, and Blocker now has his own workshop. His work area looks like a small garage at a car repair shop. But whereas repair shops use nuts and bolts to fix things, Blocker's nuts and bolts are used to make things. Blocker and his hobby have been displayed on television, but just about all the items he makes he gives away. "I do it as a hobby," he said. Blocker took about two hours to complete the guitarist shown on this page. He used a pipe wrench, a scrap nut off of a truck frame, some long bolts, a coil off of a brake, some brass welding rods, some copper welding rods, and a sparkplug. The guitarist shown here isn't finished. Blocker, ever the perfectionist, will add further detail to the caricature. Blocker spends much of his free time in his workshop, preferring working to watching television. His wife, Polly, doesn't mind "losing" her husband at night to some old bolts. "I just think it's wonderful," she said. The Blockers also have a son, Duane, 12, who is somewhat of an artist himself. Where does Blocker hope his hobby takes him? "I've tried to get into some art shows in Chicago, but have always been turned down," he said. "They always ask you there, 'who do you know?'? 'I never know the right people to get in." Perhaps his most famous work, and the piece of sculpture which resulted in Blocker appearing on television, was a train he made for a retiring CTA executive. "There were 783 welds in the train," he said. Blocker used a piece of rain gutter for the body of the train. He worked over ninety-three hours to complete the train, which was a miniature train car from the CTA. It was presented to a retiring executive as a memento. "I learned to work with metals in high school, and was an aviation structural mechanic during my four years in the Marine corps," he said Then, after driving a bus for five years, Blocker went to work as a blacksmith-welder, the job he has held for the last ten years. What one suspects, however, is that he probably can make a career out of selling his sculptures, if he ever gets the whim. He has been told as much by persons in prominent positions. But the CTA's loss would be the art world's gain. For all those nuts and bolts and screws and wires, which most persons take for scrap, Blocker molds into beautiful works of art. A Picasso he's not--not yet at least! STAFF PHOTOS BY WAYNE GAYLORD It isn't very easy to weld together the guitarist shown below. But the man was made exclusively from items found in junkyards and around the home. The man's legs are two long bolts. He is sitting on a large scrap nut from a CTA frame. The guitar the man holds is a normal pipe wrench. Welded to the pipe wrench are pieces of copper and brass welding rod, which form both the guitar strings and the man's fingers. The man's body comes from a coil off a train brake. The man's head is a sparkplug. Separately, these things look like-well, they look like what they are-junk. But when Ken Blocker gets through with them, the pieces of scrap look like actual figures. Employees where Blocker works often kid him because he rummages through scrap always looking for a piece which will give him an idea for another sculpture. Blocker was recently featured on "Barry's People," a feature of channel 5 news in Chicago. In the above photo, Blocker welds the "neck" onto his guitar player. Once, when Blocker was making a CTA train car for a gift, he used almost 800 welds to complete the project. Blocker has a substantial amount of money wrapped in his hobby, including al! his welding equipment. While making the guitar player, he ruined a pair of goggles, another expense which he has to incur. A blacksmith by trade, Blocker has always enjoyed working with his hands. It's obvious he enjoys his work because, with his hobby, he is really taking part of his job home with him. No, it isn't the fourth of July. And those aren't fireworks Ken Blocker is shooting off in his workshop. Rather, he is welding the head of his guitar player to the rest of the figure's body. This type of close-in welding is hot as well as potentially dangerous. The sparks can easily cause burns to the hands, and severe eye damage if proper precautions aren't taken. Some of the welds Blocker has to make are almost too small for the human eye to see. But through his experience as a blacksmith, he is able to make the welds, and the result is a magnificent sculpture.