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DRUMM’S BEAT

From oats and rubber to industrial abstractionism, master sculptor Don Drumm of Akron, Ohio tells us why his home city has always danced to a different rhythm.

IF EVER man and city were hewn from a similar steel, it is Don Drumm and his hometown of Akron. At 73, he is as much of a fixture in the city as his vast 12-building “crafts campus,” Don Drumm Studios & Gallery (www.dondrummstudios.com). The artist has explored the use of machinery and technology in his art, and, in 1958, he pioneered the use of cast aluminum as an artistic medium. His muscular, expressionist-influenced public murals and sculptures in pewter, steel and aluminum decorate his hometown at every turn, from the tin openers-cumtowering kids’ crayons of the Drumm Totems, to the quizzical Pinocchio faces emerging from the wood in Akron’s landmark Crowne Plaza Quaker Square Hotel (www.quakersquare.com).

You set up your arts business in 1960, in the wake of Akron’s rubber boom. Are shades of the city’s industrial history still evident?

Quaker Oats was made in Akron from the 1800s, and, for much of the 20th century, the city was the nation’s rubber capital, with Goodyear Tires based out of here. In ’59, when I arrived from Warren, Ohio, you’d go around one corner and smell oats cooking, and around the next you’d smell tires vulcanizing. Quaker moved out to Grand Rapids shortly afterward, but they left behind this giant factory with its vast grain silos. Some enterprising people took it over in the ’70s and turned it into Quaker Square.

When the rubber trade moved south, polymer chemistries moved in. It’s a specialist field that draws scholars from around the world and gives us a metropolitan atmosphere. Visitors can also see a little of Akron’s history at Goodyear Co. founder F.A. Seiberling’s Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens (www.stanhywet.org). It’s a magnificent 65-room Tudor-revival country house that was finished in 1915, with secret passageways, hand-carved wood paneling and an indoor swimming pool.

How would you say modern-day Akron defines itself?

We’re a small community of about a quarter of a mil, but we sure have some spirit! In July, the new Akron Art Museum (www.akronartmuseum.org) launches, with a remarkable 64,000- square-foot building designed by the world-renowned architecture firm Coop Himmelblau. It’s a soaring, cantilevered structure, next to the extant 19thcentury building that was once a post office. It’s got great humor, and it rivals the art venues of Barcelona and Valencia in the scale of its ambition.

As chief exponent of the “Akron school,” do you see some similarities in your own work?

My father was a blacksmith, so molten metal is in my blood and this absolutely informs my work. At the gallery, we sell crafts—objects that also have function—such as a beautiful ceramic plate. But my museum-level work is “nonobjective” art, art without subject matter, if you will, or “extreme industrial abstract.”

Where do you refuel after a day of heavy industrial abstractionism?

Akron has some great ethnic food and traditional restaurants. One of my favorites is Fred’s Diner (www.fredsdiner.net), run by my good friend Fred Spencer. I have to like you to take you down there, because it’s a real hole-in-the-wall joint. Fred makes meatloaf every Thursday, and macaroni and cheese—real comfort foods.

My other top joint is New Era Restaurant (330-784-0087). It started way back in the ’40s as a restaurant/bar for Goodyear and the rubber industries. The owners are Yugoslavian, in their third generation by now, and they make a mean Balkan burek (a layered breakfast pie of cheese and meat).

How does it feel to be Akron’s most-celebrated craftsman?

Celebrated? I’m an old man. As I see it, if you live long enough, or create long enough, somebody’s gotta notice you.

Sum Akron up in a sentence…

Akron is big enough to get lost in, and small enough to have friends in.
—Neal Learner