Artist Frank Strunk III drops a tiny, stainless steel object into the palm of my hand.
“Just look at that,” he says admiringly.
I look down.
I’m hardly a hardware expert — whenever something in my apartment breaks, I just call my ex-boyfriend — but I’m pretty sure the shiny doodad in my hand is a screw. Or a bolt. But, like, a really nice one. What I’m holding, I decide, must be some kind of high-class screw-bolt.
“It’s beautiful,” I offer, hesitantly. Strunk nods in approval.
We’re in his Gulfport studio — a vast commercial garage packed with tool benches and pieces of metal, open to the outside air — having a late-July-in-Florida schvitz. Strunk offers me a bottle of water and a piece of organic dark chocolate from a small refrigerator and sort of apologizes for the horror flick playing on an old television in the background, but doesn’t offer to turn it off. As the movie (one of the Halloween franchise) flickers behind his shoulder, he sits to face me, all of him — barrel chest, scruffy red beard and tattoos — pointed attentively in my direction.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.