The Martin Turbinator T-100 sitting in Booth 333 at the 22nd Street Antique Mall isn’t the same professional hair dryer that it was when it rolled off the factory floor more than 70 years ago.
The guts of the machine, its motor and heating element, have been removed and the plastic cowling that once surrounded salon-goers’ heads has been replaced with a frosted ceiling lamp fixture.
Flip the switch and a recently installed light within illuminates the area immediately in front of it, making it look more like a Space Age satellite than a long-lost piece of beauty equipment.
For Tucsonan Gerry Grant, creator of the one-of-a-kind lamp, the machine was perfectly suited for its new life.
“Those hair dryers are so slick,” Grant said. “They are very art deco looking.”
Turning old appliances, scrap metal, discarded commercial aircraft parts and other pieces destined for the dustbin of history into wild art lamps is what Grant does for fun these days.
Besides the hair dryer, Grant, who retired a little more than a year ago from the Air National Guard in Tucson, has his booth and a workshop behind his home filled with his mad-scientist creations made from common and not-so-common materials.
One lamp at the mall uses an early 20th century silver-plated gravy boat as a shade while another features a large streetlight turned upright on a tripod.
“I always buy tripods,” he said. “Especially the older ones.”
His pieces have incorporated blenders, German cake pans, and combustion chambers from jet engines.
A 1970s Dodge grille that Grant picked up at a local antique fair sits mounted on a wall in his booth, illuminated by LED lights.
“It glows in the dark,” Grant said. “A lot of my pieces are more mood lighting.”
Grant is on a first-name basis at many of the scrapyards, antique malls and surplus supply stores in town.
A lot of times, he isn’t even sure what he is going to do with a piece when he buys it.
“The more unusual it is, the more inspired I am,” he said. “I’m always looking for things that are cone-shaped. I have a stockpile of stuff. The wife hates it.”
A LONG HISTORY OF CREATIVITY
Creativity has always been Grant’s thing.
As a child growing up in Florida, then Oklahoma, Grant excelled in drawing and painting.
“Teachers would pick me out to work on projects,” he said. “They’d grab me to do bulletin boards. They knew I had a knack for that.”
During his early years with the Air National Guard in the 1980s, Grant used his talents to create an elaborate, post-apocalyptic costume a la “Mad Max” that he would take to Halloween parties around Tucson that offered cash prizes for the best get-ups.
“We won $1,000 one night,” Grant said. “I was a celebrity in that costume. I used it every year, but it was always better than what anybody else had.”
His son, Bronson Grant, remembers his dad fabricating a stainless steel lunchbox for him when he was a young child.
“I was this 4-year-old walking around with this 10-pound lunchbox,” Bronson Grant said. “It was really cool. I still have it.”
As a member of the Guard, with a background in structural maintenance, Grant created shadow boxes for colleagues who were retiring.
It is something he still does now that he is retired himself. He recently created a shadow box out of a Korean War-era foot locker for his friend, Armando Gonzalez who retired at the end of December after more than 34 years.
Gonzalez told Grant years ago that he wanted him to create something different for him.
“The really good aircraft structural mechanics seem to have more of an artistic flair to them,” Gonzalez said. “They know how to form metal and how to be creative and think outside the box on some things. Gerry has always had that.”
Gonzalez put his complete faith in Grant, who turned the olive green trunk into a showcase of his career, displaying behind glass his dog tags, original ID card, patches from the unit he was assigned to when he was deployed and a flag that he carried with him on deployment in countries like Qatar and Afghanistan.
When the trunk closes, there is no indication of the history within.
“That’s what I like about it,” Gonzalez said. “It is not super-ostentatious. I can keep it somewhere and pull it out if someone wants to see it.”
Grant’s booth at 22nd Street has been a positive way for Grant to display his works. He has already sold several of his creations, with more lamps going in weekly.
“I am always working on something,” Grant said.