This Home Isn’t A Castle; It’s A Gallery

A white Chevy slows to a creep. Two walkers stop dead on the sidewalk. A neighbor gazes appreciatively from her living room window.

Day-in and day-out, the pace turns glacial on this tree-lined section of Spokane.

It’s all because of Bob Clark’s wondrous outdoor art gallery.

Anyone who thinks this burg has run out of surprises should cruise by 1220 W. 8th. Check out the work of the South Hill Picasso.

Nearly 30 pieces of surrealistic, boldly crafted sculpture adorn the front yard and porch of Clark’s home. Dozens more line an east-side porch.

Ask nicely and you may get to peek at the back yard, where another 35 pieces stand like mutant soldiers amid fruit trees and pines.

Much of Clark’s statuary is small, table-sized. Many others stand imposingly over 5 feet and weigh hundreds of pounds.

There is his take on evolution: an angular shimmering green creation with crescent-shaped human faces at one end and the swooping upturned tail of a leviathan at the other.

Something resembling a huge white and red human ear occupies center stage on the front lawn. An abstract sunbather lounges high above near the second-floor window.

Clark, 69, is a wispy-haired character who often seasons his sentences with quotations from the likes of Socrates or Matisse. The barrel-chested retired Kaiser worker claims to have sired a dozen children in three failed marriages.

He laughs when asked why he would put his work on open display.

“That’s the beauty of being creative,” he says. “You don’t have to worry about being protective. You can share your knowledge because you know that tomorrow something new will come along.”

Years ago, when he began turning his lawn into the Louvre, an offended neighbor filed a complaint with the city. Clark says a cop showed up and gave him a deadline to make his yard culture-free.

That’s Spokane for you. Let an old Buick rust in your yard. No problem. But don’t think you can get away with trying to expose the public to art!

Instead of caving in, Clark says he researched the law and essentially told the city to buzz off.

Although I’m sure he did it by tossing in a quote from Voltaire.

Whatever he said worked. There have been no further problems.

In fact, Clark’s neighbors are some of his biggest fans.

“I like it,” says Doug Dompier. “He washes it all once a year and repaints it.”

“Almost everybody slows down to look,” says DeAnn Arnholtz.

“He’s expressing himself and that’s cool,” adds Jim Michado.

Clark’s obsession with art began the day he broke his leg playing football in the eighth grade. The nuns at the Catholic school he attended in Tacoma sent him home.

“I didn’t have anything to do so I just started drawing,” he says.

He never really stopped. Working on the pot line at Kaiser, Clark would spend his lunch and break time painting. Workers put up a sign that read, “Bob’s meditation room.”

Years of painting gave way to years of sculpting. If his yard is a gallery, the inside of his home is a museum, cluttered floor-to-ceiling with paintings, sculptures and stacks of manuscripts. His work is obviously influenced by Picasso, with touches of English sculptor Henry Moore. Unlike conventional sculptors, Clark crafts much of his work out of cement, bonding it to wood, metal and even rocks.

“It sets up like a rock and you don’t have to bake it,” he says. “Once you paint it, it’s beautiful.

Clark used to enter art shows, but burned out on the competition. Although he gave up on the art scene, he never gave up on his art.

“Money and popularity are two things people can give you but they can just as easily take it all away,” says Clark. “The act of creation, the fun and love of it, nobody can take away.

“That’s why I keep on. As Picasso said, ‘I don’t seek, I find.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo