Ted’s Hands by author Bruce Frankel

Funny how ideas start out as interesting and often times take a turn and end up as amazing.

When I first asked Bruce Frankel, author of ‘What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life?’ if he would contribute a guest post, we talked about expanding upon how mental and social stimulation helps contribute to living life with passion. But then I saw the photo of these hands on Bruce’s Facebook page and commented how much I loved it. BOOM, Bruce was off and running on another tangent.

Another tangent, and yet related. It’s still about mental stimulation and it’s still about passion. But this post is not a dry dissertation of facts and figures. Rather, it is the story of a very real person. And his hands. It is the story of Ted’s Hands, as told by Bruce.

I had been thinking about the magic of creative reinvention – the plasticity of our lives, our brains, and our environment –as I drove over the George Washington Bridge and 45 minutes north from New York City on the Palisades Parkway the other night. I was headed to interview sculptor Ted Ludwiczak – the “Rock Star” of my What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life? – for a video for next weekend’s GAGA Arts Festival in Garnerville, New York.

In my book, I tell Ted’s full life story. Here’s a boiled down version:

Ted arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1950s, a refugee from post World War II Stalinist Poland. In New York, he became a contact lens grinder, work he did until his retirement in his early 60s. To occupy himself, he went to work building a bulwark to protect his property on the banks of the Hudson River from further erosion. One day, when he had finished it, he stepped back into the water and to take a look. He was dispirited to see how dull looking it was.

Then he looked down into the water and a stone “spoke” to him. Twenty years and 1,600 stone heads later, stones still speak to him – and Ted continues to speak back, conversing with his hands and chisel. His property is now known as the “Easter Island of the Hudson” and he has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s premier self-taught, or “outside” artists.

A couple of years ago, James Tyler, a sculptor and the executive director of GAGA Arts Center, asked Ted if he could buy some of Ted’s work for the center. Resident artists and Robin Rosenberg, the president of the Garnerville Arts and Industrial Center, envisioned reclaiming a strip of land and the Minisceongo Creek just behind the historic pre-Civil War textile mill where uniforms for Union soldiers were once made.

Though the sculptors, painters, woodworkers, and musicians– many refugees from escalating studio rents in SoHo and Williamsburg in New York City—were bringing life back to the derelict mill and 15,000 square feet of gallery space, Ted was skeptical about the idea of transforming badly insulted nature into an enchanted haven for his work.

After all, the land been treated as a dump for 125 years. A mountain of debris made it virtually impossible to walk 20 yards from the red-brick buildings to the creek, which once ran blue or green, depending on the color dye being discharged into it.

But two years ago, the artists got to work with heavy equipments, shovels, and rakes. And after Ted saw the transformation begin, he donated several of the bemused stone heads which now delight visitors walking a foot path and sitting serenely on stones in the middle of the creek. With the help of other artists, he is working on a giant granite boulder at creekside. When complete, in a year or two, it will be Ludwiczak’s biggest work.

Ted was talking to me about the way nature has fed the creative fire that unexpectedly seized him, when he looked down at his hands. “They weren’t always like this,” he said. “I used to do delicate work. I had soft hands, like a pianist.”

But there was pride, rather than regret in his voice. He had been compelled to carve – and like other “late bloomers” in my book had cast age aside by setting goals and advancing toward them with daily discipline: “I would look at the stones and turn them around and around, until I saw an eye … and a mouth… and I took away the layers. I couldn’t hear anyone else. I only heard the stone.”

Anyone who has walked Ted’s own steep property, taken the two-hour walk along the river he makes each day, or watched him heft his huge stones, knows why he is fit at 84. But his art has had another advantage:

“When I work, I have to be focused and alert,” vigilant, he said, to the directions the stones gives him, ever aware that the wrong stroke could ruin them. “That attention every day”— and the art world it has opened to him— “keeps my mind sharp.”

Ted is, of course, never alone. He has a relationship with each of his heads. “They are like family. At first, I didn’t want to sell any of them. As soon as I did, I had to make a new member for the family,” he said. “I don’t have a religious practice anymore. This is my spiritual life, this chiseling. It makes me happy.”

Evening came, and Ted joined other artists at a creekside cookout. Then, in the dark, he took a seat on low tree stump amid a circle of younger men and women being entertained by a local artist and Balinese dancer, retelling a traditional epic he will perform at the GAGA Arts Festival. As I left for home, I looked back at Ted, a man reinvented, sitting among his new-found tribe, on reclaimed land, next to a repurposed factory. It was a magical sight, one that should offer hope and encouragement to all about what can be accomplished, individually and collectively if we aspire to it and act.

More information!

For more information about Bruce and the wonderful people in his book please visit his website here.

Also check out the GAGA Arts Center here.

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