We recently connected with Gerald M (Jerry) Tuckman and have shared our conversation below.

Gerald M (Jerry), thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

My most meaningful project has been combining my found-object steel sculpture and related poetry, what I call ArtsPairing. I have written poetry for 70 years now but started pairing it with art in 2014 when I met a talented mixed-media artist and wrote poetry, including haiku as possible accompaniments to her work. When I met a talented sculptor who was willing to mentor me six years later I broadened the ArtsPairing concept to sculpture. When I listened to an extraordinary first and only symphony written by an acquaintance, a retired radiologist, in his late 80’s I broadened it again with sculpture a poem about the musical piece and its creation. Four of my pieces and related poems have been exhibited at the Bennington (Vermont) Museum NBOSS Outdoor Sculpture Show over the past four years with more planned for Summer 2025.. The most meaningful of these works have been tributes to very special people, sometimes ill or having passed away..

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I will be 79 years old in 2025 and have had varying careers and jobs throughout my life. My careers have been primarily in corporate real estate, fundraising and government, university and non-profit organizations. I have written poetry all my life and have had a few small publications of it in a local Boston poetry magazine (A Poetry Mag) and book (The Fathers Book). I retired at 70 and was looking to do something very different, creative, something artistic with my hands. I spent five years searching for a talented artist who would mentor me in return for me helping in his or her work..I knew I did not have the talent to paint but thought I might be able to create by putting things together in some way with some materials. I talked with gallery owners, artists and friends for five years. No luck..Everyone, it seemed, wanted to work alone. I visited a Boston Newbury Street gallery and contacted a talented artist who created large, beautiful standing and hanging mobiles of varied colors and shapes. Same issue. He works alone. For years I visited a wonderful annual outdoor sculpture show at The Mount in Lenox MA each summer. I asked the sculptor, Director of Sculpture Now and curator of the show, if she knew any sculptor I might help and learn from. She mentioned one possibility, I took him to breakfast and this talented sculptor in steel has become a mentor and friend and the reason I have created 17 sculptures and even more poems over the past four years. Recently I have sought to collaborate with artists in other areas whose have talents different from mine. First, with a dear friend of my daughters who is a talented artist working in resin, geode and crystal and then with a recently-recontacted cousin who paints beautifully. In each case I place one of their pieces in my steel sculpture. I hope to record all of this in a book on ArtsPairing, featuring multiple works of art, mine and others’, and my complimentary poetry.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My creative journey has come as a surprise. I continue to be driven to create, with words and steel, and to champion the joining of physical arts and poetry but primarily hope to also champion everyone tapping their own being for creative talents seemingly laying dormant. Retirement is a wonderful time for this but this can also be realized at other times in your life, anytime really. I have tracked the combining of poetry snd physical arts back, at least, to the ancient Greeks who named the concept Ekphrastic Poetry, poems written about works of art. It is one of my main missions to bring this concept into broad understanding, acceptance and use today.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I spent five years in retirement seeking a creative outlet, looking for someone who I could help, who could teach me and bring out creativity I hoped I had somewhere deep within me. Three years into my search I talked with a gallery owner about my hopes and dreams. He was sympathetic until he told me there was little hope. Artists do not want to be bothered by an apprentice. They follow their own dreams and don’t want to stop along the way to help with someone else’s dreams. Give it up enjoy your grandchildren…or learn to play the guitar. I was disappointed but undeterred. Years later I found the right person, someone who delights in his own endless creativity but is broad enough in his outlook to enjoy my, sometimes peculiar, creativity as well. I cannot recreate his chuckling as my giraffe out of old hot stove pipe took shape.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @JERRYTUCKMAN