Jay's View - an artist looks at Life: January 2012

Who is this Guy?

Jay: I have always liked making things. I fell in love with art when I spent my 18th summer travelling around Europe. At Princeton I took all the art courses available and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in mathematics in 1966. Disillusioned by the Vietnam War, I returned to travelling after getting my Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I sailed across the North and South Atlantic and wrote an unpublished book before working my way on to the special effects crew for the movie JAWS 2. There I learned the skills to make just about anything. That came in handy because one day, sitting in the Sculpture Park at the Hirshorn Museum, I had a vision of creating the Wild Island Sculpture Park on my land in Chilmark. In 1994 I created the monumental sculpture, the Swordfish Harpooner, in Menemsha for the Chilmark Tricentennial. I work with a variety of materials because I view almost everything as sculpture from the placement of driftwood on the beach to the building of my own house and studios. I have a unique way of seeing things and in 1997 I started making my own public access TV show: Jay's View.