Art That is More Than The Sum of Its Parts

The name may scream “loud and wild,” but it’s actually pretty quiet inside Metal Maddness, artist Mike Peery’s storefront studio on the eastern end of Melrose Avenue. Peery creates fantastical sculptures from gears, tubes and rods that are more often found revving up automobiles, piping water through walls or churning inside machines. After Peery gets his hands on them, metal parts mutate into majestic dragons, jaunty dogs, goofily shaped robots of all sizes and intricately crafted motorcycles and trains. Unlike the Jetsons’ metallic maid Rosie, Peery’s robots don’t zip around the house serving breakfast, though most have a hidden compartment for valuables you don’t want anyone to find.

A welder by trade, Peery practices what he terms “fabrication art,” cutting, drilling, grinding and welding found objects to create something entirely new. He finds his materials at downtown scrapyards, aviation stores and metal supply shops. “I’ve been thrown out of the hardware store before,” says Peery. “They thought I was weird standing in the plumbing aisle for four hours.”

Peery, 39, migrated from Utah to Los Angeles in 1990 as an aspiring stand-up comic, but instead found himself crafting special-effects props on movie sets. He soon turned to art, moving to his current space in 1996.

Peery’s train replicas, which require about 2,000 individual pieces and 800 hours of labor apiece, sell for a hefty $25,000. His biggest sellers, though, are his colorful, desktop-friendly robots, which peek at window shoppers from the gallery’s front window and run about $40 to $200.

“They have a little personality,” says the artist. “And they kind of protect you and keep the evil from coming.” Peery’s community-friendly spirit includes a sale on Saturdays. “It’s difficult to make anything for $20 in this day and age,” admits Peery. “But we’re trying to have something for everyone.”