Gary Bykowsky’s "Captain of Industry" sculpture will be displayed at the Florence RiverLINE station.
By: William Wichert
ROEBLING Standing inside the garage at his Hamilton Avenue home at night, surrounded by boxes of nuts and bolts, Gary Bykowsky creates art.
Although his use of unconventional materials already has been seen in several local galleries, this retired phone repairman is taking his creative side to the river as part of a county-sponsored sculpture project called "The Eagles Have Landed."
Mr. Bykowsky is one of the first five artists to be selected by a sponsor to design a fiberglass eagle for the project, which will result in eagles being placed at each of the county’s 11 RiverLINE stations in June. Forty-five eagle designs have been submitted by 31 Burlington County artists.
As part of its $5,000 donation to the project, Delran-based Whitesell Construction Co. selected Mr. Bykowsky’s "Captain of Industry" design for the Florence RiverLINE station. The eagle will be displayed at the station for a few months before being sold at an auction next fall, when the revenues from this eagle will go to the Center for the Arts in Southern New Jersey in Marlton.
The "Captain of Industry" design, in which patterns of nuts, screws and wires are attached to the pre-made fiberglass eagle, first occurred to Mr. Bykowsky at the recycling center in Florence Township, where he found several boxes of nuts, bolts and washers.
"That’s part of art anyway. You find ugliness in beauty and the extraordinary in the mundane," said Mr. Bykowsky, who said he wanted to reflect Roebling’s industrial history in his eagle design.
A Roebling resident for most of his life, Mr. Bykowsky was first inspired to sculpt while stationed with the Air Force in Germany from 1968 to 1970. Walking around the city of Trier and coming upon all different types of Roman art work, he was moved to make his own sculptures.
"I said, ‘I have to try to this,’" he said. "I began to sculpt there, whatever materials I could get my hands on."
After returning home and starting a 30-year career at Verizon, Mr. Bykowsky fixed telephone lines during the day and went to class for 10 years at night to receive his fine arts degrees from Burlington County Community College and Thomas Edison State College.
He originally used wax and clay to make sculptures of the human body, but soon gravitated toward aluminum, bronze and other metals. "It expands your horizons," he said. "You have the ability to look at something and transform it into more."
Although his figurative work may seem more lifelike, Mr. Bykowsky said he gradually found that the metals and industrial tools developed their own personality by the nighttime light of his "garage" studio.
"As I work, they begin to have their own life and have their own personality. But that’s the process," he said. "You’re almost watching the creative part as if it comes from somewhere other than yourself."
Given his experience as an artist and a sculpture teacher at the Teen Arts Festival at Burlington County Community College, Mr. Bykowsky was contacted to submit a design for the "The Eagles Have Landed" project.
After retrieving his materials from the recycling center and heading back to the garage, he first designed an owl and named it "Pablo’s Bird."
"It looked like a Picasso to me," he said.
Soon, however, the "Captain of Industry" design came together. Mr. Bykowsky sought to use the industrial materials, but he also felt the need to create something completely different, because the fiberglass eagles will all look the same at first.
"It kind of forces you to be creative," he said. "You have to come up with an idea that’s interesting to look at."
Now that his design was selected, Mr. Bykowsky will continue to work on patterns for the eagle’s feathers, but as in any artistic experience, the finished product is still unknown.
"Like I say, things change as you go along," he said.

