ROCKWOOD – As a child in the Netherlands during the Second World War, Andreas Drenters would run around picking up scraps of war materials to mould unique sculptures.
What started as a fascination in his childhood turned into a lifelong career creating intricate, detailed, complex and creative sculptures made mostly or metal and steel.
Now, at 84, the well known sculptor is set to retire his tools, but not before hosting one last show.
“I've done enough,” says Drenters, now hard of hearing and with much less strength in his hands that once worked endlessly to bend metal.
“I didn't realize I can only lift one now. In those days it was nothing to move them inside or outside.”
A family farm in Rockwood now holds several pieces of art made with farm scraps meticulously placed together. Whether it was a horseshoe used to form the body of a whale, bike gear to make a mandala, screws that somehow perfectly resemble a bird’s toe or a discarded gravy bowl to make the body of a bird.
His work is fun and playful abstract art with motion and movement incorporated into the pieces.
“He wants you to move it, he wants you to become a part of it. So the energy, right there, is completely different from any gallery that you go to.” says his daughter Lisa Drenters Carrer.
She says if she could, she would hoard all her dad’s artwork and not put together a show.
“But that's not the purpose of art, and that's not the purpose of his life or career. His purpose has always been to share and bring joy to others, and experience something different,” says Drenters Carrer.
Drenters last show will be held on a family farm located on 5242 Wellington Rd 29, Guelph-Eramosa on Oct. 8 from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m, Oct. 9 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Oct. 10 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Drenters has lived in Rockwood and worked at the Rockwood Academy since 1983.
His art pieces range in sizes up to eight feet tall and the prices range from $30 to $30,000.
After an early rough life with five years in the Second World War he describes as prison, Drenters says he just wanted to live his life as best as he could. And for him, it was sculpting that gave him satisfaction, eased his worries and allowed him restful sleep at night.
“It changes a person but that's why I didn't create anything nasty or negative. Just happy They're all positive,” says Drenters.
“My dad was an inventor and so he had a lot of ideas so he did his invention but I used the material that he didn't use in the shop. I managed to weld together and make a piece of sculpture out of it.”
Drenters held shows around the world. He says his creations were products of his ideas. He would often tell his daughter, I have three lifetimes of ideas left, and even then I’ll have more.
In the early 1950's, his family moved to a farm in Rockwood from Holland. He met people that encouraged his art and by the 1960s his metal objects were being appreciated for their cultural significance.
“I bent them and shaped them and then welded them,” says Drenters, who would play classical music while getting to work.
Now he looks at his hands saying ‘they’re pretty clean. Six years ago, they were always black.”
Along the wall of the barn are 30 mandalas. “So the last one or the macrocosm that's the big picture that we hope to see one day,” he says pointing to the large mandala at the end of the wall.
“That's the big picture that we are trying to grab hold of. The universe doesn't let up too quickly its secrets. So they're out there and we have the choice of finding it or not, that I think I found it through my creative work, the secrets of the universe.”
He says when an Indigenous neighbour first saw the mandalas, he was moved to tears saying it reminded him of his childhood. Drenters Carrer remembers a man once walking into her father's showroom, standing there in awe, and buying every large sculpture in the room.
Drenters remembers when the American airborne division landed around their farm property, He ran inside the home to grab wrenches to take bolts out of the blown up material.
“I always enjoyed metal. I pick it up even as I go to Toronto and I see a nut lying on the street , I bend down and pick it up,” he says.
“I’m not ashamed to pick up what people throw away and that’s exactly what happened with all these pieces,” he says sitting in the middle of his showroom.
“They did their part and so that's why I wanted to save some of that. All the things remind me of my childhood.”
Drenters Carrer says her father and his eight siblings had all done well for themselves when they moved to Canada after living through the war and occupation for five years in the Netherlands.
“Their focus was to make a new life,” says Drenters Carrer.
“That they all made it is amazing because they're getting bombed and you name it. It was happening all around them and my grandparents always had a smile on their face with all the terrible things they saw and that happened to them. Always had a smile and it was always just let it go and move forward. Just forward.”
