What kind of guy paints purple-gray veins on light bulbs?
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Orth was born in Cleveland and grew up in Akron, Ohio. “I’ve never had any training whatsoever in art, not even a class,” he says. “That’s important. I went to college in Columbus and lived there for eight years. Then I went to Southeast Asia [he visited Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore], which is where I started doing the type of art that I’m doing now.
“My work is from materials that I’ve scavenged. The only stuff that I regularly buy is the paint and any hardware stuff. I try and find things, or use things like broken glass, junk, bits of wood, and try to bring them back to life.”
Much of his work contains bits of original poetry, or a line or two of chilling dialogue. The poetry is often all in capital letters, the opposite of E.E. Cummings’s typographic style. Orth suggests that his messages resemble commercial signs: “Like “SHRIMP BASKET ONLY $9.99.”‘
“The interesting things that are happening are all around, and too many of them are overlooked.”
