IRON MAN VALLEY RESIDENT USES ART TO PROVE HIS METAL `I JUST DONE THIS AS A HOBBY. IT KEEPS ME BUSY'.

Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer

SYLMAR - It all began with too many horseshoes cluttering up Ambrose Meyer's back yard.

Sick of the unused junk, the septic tank welder with a passion for collecting and creating built a rocking chair - then an eagle sculpture and then a door - with the unused metal. The pieces sparked six decades of turning discarded metal tools into intriguing works of art.

At 87, Meyer looks across his 2.5-acre home in Sylmar, dubbed ``Horseshoe Heaven,'' and takes in his years of work: tables made from miners' picks and trees made from fuse insulators. There's a sprawling cactus garden and rooms packed with endless rows of rusty airplane models, axes, lanterns and mine carts.

Meyer is what museum curators call an outsider artist, or junkologist - prolific artists without formal training who are driven to create by an artistic passion. But Meyer - known as the ``Iron Man'' - doesn't like any of those labels. Instead, he sees himself as an ordinary guy with a lifelong hobby - one that turned his back yard into a magical world of twisted metal and fantastic iron arrangements.

``To me, an artist has to be able to draw something, but I don't do that,'' Meyers said, sitting in his self-made workshop. ``I just done this as a hobby. It keeps me busy.''

The South Dakota native, who moved to California after serving in World War II, first delved into his hobby when a neighbor gave him a truckload of horseshoes.

``For three or four years, I just looked at them,'' he said. ``Then (former president John) Kennedy got killed, and they said something about a rocking chair, and I said, 'Well, I will make me a rocking chair.'

``It was in his memory.''

Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, used a rocking chair to ease his pain from a degenerative back condition.

Meyer's creation - a bizarre, life-size rocker made from dozens of horseshoes - caught the attention of a neighbor who owned a movie ranch. That neighbor borrowed the inspired, tangle of iron for movie shoots and is said to have used it for a scene in ``Mr. Ed,'' the 1960s comedy series about a talking horse.

The experience stoked something inside Meyer - something that, even today, he can't quite articulate. More horseshoes came, and his appetite to manipulate and preserve tools grew. He started scavenging swap meets, picking up old tractor seats, hatchets and crowbars.

``I just did it because it was there,'' said Meyer, who grew up on a hog farm. ``I just made it.''

Today, his sprawling back yard is a living art piece.

``That obsessive collecting and ordering is a living environment to art,'' said Rebecca Hoffberger, director and founder of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the country's largest museum dedicated solely to nontraditional, untrained artist. ``Some people have this respect for the discards of this culture. They see value in the hand tools. They don't just want to seem thrown away.''

Meyer calls himself a man from the horse-and-buggy days who reveres the hand tools men used to cultivate the land. He still recalls his mother taking care of six children in a three-bedroom house without electricity. She cooked on a wood stove as his father took care of the farm. His father used the same kinds of picks and plows that Meyer collects from swap meets.

``When you are from the horse-and-buggy days, you are part of all of this,'' Meyer said, driving his golf cart around his property. ``I have used everything here in my lifetime.''

Before Meyer retired, he was a cesspool contractor for nearly 30 years. An expert welder, he constructed everything from drainage ditches for wealthy hillside residents to manholes underneath the many freeways being built in 1950s.

But in the evening, he escaped to the retreat he and his wife built over the decades. Every night, he would spend hours in his back yard, firing up his welding torch. In part, he wanted to create a nice environment for his wife and his son. Both have long since passed on, but his passion remains. He rises every morning at 6 a.m., ambles out to his cart and drives over to his homemade shed.

Over the years, curious passers-by have stumbled in, asking for a peek at his creations. He welcomes them and other artists, and he's recently helped children learn to weld.

``It's just amazing all the stuff he has done,'' said Karen Mack, founder of L.A. Commons, a nonprofit sponsoring public art work. ``I love that artwork made from the soul, and that is what Ambrose does. He turns it into something beautiful, and it says a lot about him.''

Mack's group recently worked at Meyer's home to create pieces for a public exhibit in Sylmar.

``It ain't just for us,'' Meyer says looking out to his yard. ``It's for the people. You have got to give back.''

Rachel Uranga, [phone]

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

IF YOU GO

L.A. Commons will sponsor a public tour of Ambrose Meyer's home on July 17. For more information, call Karen Mack at [phone].

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

(1 -- color) no caption (Ambrose ``Iron Man'' Meyer)

(2 -- color) Ambrose ``Iron Man'' Meyer, right, chats with artist and friend John Ferguson at Meyer's home in Sylmar.

(3 -- color) Three cowboy musicians stand atop a hat rack made of horseshoes, fashioned in the studio of Ambrose Meyer.

(4 -- 5) Cactuses dot the land outside Meyer's Sylmar home, with metal sculptures all around. At left, a history of locks is displayed on the rugged wall inside Meyer's house.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer

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IF YOU GO (see text)

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer