13 sculptures walk into a bar: The return of Jack Dowd’s ‘Last Call’

You step into a bar at closing time. Throbbing rock music fills your ears. Your eyes spy a dartboard, a Ms. Pac-Man video game, flickering neon signs touting cheap beer, and a long mahogany counter. Nothing fancy. Just a typical working-class pub in New York City.

The unusual suspects await you along the 22-foot bar: 13 colorful characters, including a street musician, a flower girl and a louche barfly. (Sculptures actually, but the illusion of life is strong.)

The tall man holding a pool cue has a strong resemblance to Jack Dowd, the Sarasota-based artist. No accident. It’s a portrait of the artist who created this “Last Call” pub-crawl, on display through Aug. 16 at Ringling College of Art and Design. Dowd created it over two years and it had its debut in 2001 at the Ringling Museum of Art.

If his installation seems true-to-life, there’s a reason. It draws on Dowd’s real-world experience owning various bars in Long Island, New York City, and Vermont in the 1970s and ‘80s. This show also includes the pastel portraits of Dowd’s “27 Series” – a nod to 40 artists and rockers who left this planet at age 27. Dowd’s still on the planet, so we asked him a few questions.

What inspired you to create the “Last Call” installation?

Being in the bar business so long, it was pretty much inevitable. My son John kept bugging me, “We should do a bar. You can do the sculptures and I can build the rest.” So, I finally just started doing it. I began with the bartender, using Jack Fehily as the model. He was one of the founders of Patrick’s.

Right. And you’re the guy with the pool cue?

Guilty as charged.

Who were some of your other models?

I modeled the musician on Reggie at Johnny’s Car wash. Bill Kelly’s a friend of mine, and he’s in there. I also based several pieces on strangers who agreed to pose and let me measure and photograph them. The waitress is a girl I spotted in Tompkins Square Park. It hit me, “There’s my waitress.” She agreed to do it for $30. So I ran to a bar across the street, borrowed some mugs, a tray and an apron, and started photographing her in the park.

In a way, you’re a character collector.

Yes, I am. And I also collect stories. Back in the 1960s, there was a TV show called “The Naked City.” At the end of every program, they’d say, “There are 8 million stories in the naked city and you have just seen one of them.” Over many years and many bars, I’ve met lots of people with different lives and amazing stories. I thought it’d be fun to create a piece that told their stories. I couldn’t go as high as eight million. So I chose 13 people.

Was that your ambition from the beginning?

Not really. I had a general idea for doing a bar installation, but I didn’t start out with a grand vision; “Last Call” took shape more organically. And David Ebitz was really the catalyst. He was director of the Ringling Museum of Art at the turn of the century. By 1999, I’d only created one or two “Last Call” sculptures. I approached him about the project, and he came to my home to see what I’d done so far. I told him the whole story of what I planned to do. He loved the idea and said he wanted to put the completed installation in the museum. And that’s what he did. It was a great show, with record attendance. I really want to give him credit for giving me that push to bring it all together. (Ebitz left the museum in 2000 and died in 2011.)

Let’s go back to the beginning. What’s your origin story as an artist?

I started drawing just for the fun of it in elementary school. At family card games, I’d walk around the table with a sketchpad drawing everybody’s faces. The more I did it, the more they’d say, “Oh, that’s great! You should be an artist.” So I kept it up, and that’s what I became.

And you eventually graduated from sketchpads to chainsaws.

That I did.

Chainsaws make me think of “A Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” not art-making. How’d you start using them to create sculpture?

In my late 20s, I was in the bar business on Long Island. On my way to work one day, I saw a guy on the side of the road cutting up big blocks of wood with a chainsaw. I stopped to see what he was doing. And he was making these little sea captain sculptures – with a chainsaw! That captured my imagination as an artist. I’m a physical person, and sitting around drawing cartoons was frustrating to me. I was looking for a more physical kind of art, and making sculpture with a chain saw was definitely physical.

So I just jumped into it. I bought a steel chain saw and started playing with old barn beams. That summer, I took my family on a bus to lots of state fairs where I sculpted with a chainsaw in public. My early pieces weren’t anything special, but people paid for them. I kept at it over the years, and my work evolved into what I do now. About 20 years ago, my originals were carved wood. I’d make a mold and cast them in a limited series. I now do clay originals. I work with oil-based clay that doesn’t dry. I can start a piece, walk away from it for a week, and come back and pick up where I left off. When I’m done, I make a mold, and make a new cast-sculpture series from that.

Arts Newsletter: Sign up to receive the latest news on the Sarasota area arts scene every Monday

‘Truth of the Night Sky:’ Stars come to life in Sarasota Art Museum exhibit

What drew you to representational sculpture as opposed to abstract work?

I’m a storyteller. The story of the human condition is what interests me. Non-objective art can’t tell that story. It’s the art of the mind. Figurative work can go straight to the heart. Abstract art can also spark powerful emotions, don’t get me wrong. But it’s abstract by definition. I’m interested in telling specific stories about specific people. That’s where I’m coming from.

Is your installation a nod to “The Last Supper,” or am I imagining things?

No, you’re not. “The Last Supper” really was on my mind. Without saying who’s who, there are definitely 12 apostles and one God figure in “Last Call.” But that wasn’t my idea at the beginning. I had a general notion of doing a pub installation, but that was it. The “Last Supper” concept came to me gradually as I kept working on it. It occurred to me that people go to bars for the same reason they go to church. It’s fellowship, communion, deeper human connection, something out of the ordinary, whatever. In a church, you sit in a pew and talk to the same people. In a bar, you sit on a stool and talk to the same people. Church on Sunday morning, or a pub at Happy Hour. Either way, they’re serving the same basic human need. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

“Jack Dowd: Last Call”

Runs through Aug. 16 at the Stulberg Gallery at Ringling College of Art and Design, 2700 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota; 941-359-7563; ringling.edu/galleries

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Jack Dowd’s sculpture ‘Last Call’ on display at Ringling College