"I started with just a couple of them, and then I just put up more and more and more," artist Dave Gatzmer said. "Each one has a story to it, [but] I was just putting them up as kind of a goof. People come by, take pictures, go along their way… some people blast by they don’t even notice it and they’re thrilled when they do notice it. When I get about five or six of them, I climb up there."
See
High on a wooden barrier running along Highway 100, just south of Minnetonka Boulevard, hang nearly 100 telephones. I saw Rotary phones. Trimline phones. Duck phones. Football phones. Shoe phones. Toy phones. Red ones. Yellow ones. Gold, gray, office beige, and midnight black. They span nearly a century of communication from heavy black rotary dials of the 1920s all the way to the early cellphone era mounted in rows against the hum of freeway traffic, which serves (as the artist himself puts it) as an eternal dial tone. The installation is called WALL TCS, Worthless Analog Land Line Tele Communication System, and it belongs to a St. Louis Park painting contractor named Dave Gatzmer, who jokingly calls himself "Phone Banksy."
Gatzmer didn't start with a grand vision. He started with a party. Every time he hosted guests, people were magnetically drawn to his unconnected rotary phone. He enjoyed watching people picking it up, staging imaginary conversations, laughing.
"I'm the weird guy on the block." — Dave Gatzmer
There was something about holding a phone with no signal that made people want to connect. One day, he carried that idea outside. He hammered a post into the ground near the bike trail and mounted a phone on it. People immediately stopped to pose and take pictures. So he got a ladder. What began as a quiet, anonymous guerrilla art project kept growing. Neighbors knew, of course. "All my neighbors already know who I am," he laughed. When word spread further, Mayor Jake Spano (a working sculptor before entering politics) didn't hesitate. "I think it's incredible," he said. "This is a great example." He reached out to MnDOT, and sent a survey to the neighborhood to ask: should these phones stay? The response was unanimous. Every single neighbor said yes. The St. Louis Park City Council made it official, adopting a resolution to add WALL TCS to the city's permanent public art collection. What started as illegal became beloved. What started as one phone became nearly one hundred.
Art doesn't always start with a grant or a gallery. Sometimes it starts with a ladder, a rotary phone, and a person who just wants to share a little wonder with the world. That's the whole point, isn't it?
I had heard about this installation so I decided to bike over there this week. The variety was awesome and the feelings it brought up were kind of unexpected. I remember having some of these phones in my house growing up. There were some cool ones that really pinged my emotional sentimentality. So strange to not really think about these inanimate objects for years, then have a rush of feels for plastics from my childhood. I guess I'm vintage too. I always wanted a clear plastic phone where you could see thr colorful insides. I did have a yellow one in my bedroom in middle school like this one pictured below. I spent so many hours talking to my friends and I still have those numbers memorized. Of course, as an adult I don't even know my sons' phone numbers.
Say
Have you ever spotted something in a vintage shop and felt your heart do a little skip (not because you owned it, but because your neighbors did?) Those juice glasses with the painted orange slices. The ones that lived in their cupboard, came out for Sunday brunch, got washed and put away a thousand times. Now here they are under fluorescent lights with a price tag, and you're standing there feeling something you can't quite name. Not sadness, exactly. More like tenderness. Like stumbling across proof that ordinary life was happening all around you, all along. I felt that same thing when I first saw the WALL TCS in St. Louis Park. Somehow seeing the phones made me remember who I was all those year ago and I felt it only right to offer a little grace to her.
- Which objects from the past trigger memories for you?
- How do you define those feelings?
- I was NOT aloud to call boys. Did you have rules around phones?
Do
- Go see it. The installation is on the bike trail along Highway 100, just south of Minnetonka Boulevard in St. Louis Park (3148 Salem Ave, St Louis Park, MN 55416). When you're there, stand still for a moment. Look at the phones. Think about whose hands held them. What conversations happened. What news, plans, I love yous traveled through those cords? Ask yourself what everyday object from your own life might feel like a small miracle to someone else someday and what it means that an artist saw that, and put it on a wall for all of us to find.
- Go to a vintage shop and look through the everyday objects like dishes, sports equipment, and electronics. See if anything jogs your memory.
- Another way to get this experience is to look at an old photo album with candids. Instead of focusing on the people, look at the objects that are in the picture...curtains, an old coffee pot, toys. See what that makes you feel.
- Reminisce over this collection of images of 80's phones by John Summers.
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About the Artist: Dave Gatzmer
Gatzmer is a Minnesota-based public artist and professional painter who gained widespread recognition as "Phone Banksy" for creating the beloved Telephone Art installation (officially titled WALL TCS) in St. Louis Park.
- Early Life: Gatzmer grew up in Minnesota and graduated from Anoka Senior High School in 1985.
- Artistic Training: He pursued formal creative training at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, graduating in 1989.
- Day Job: By trade, he is an entrepreneur and the long-time owner-operator of Paintboy! LLC, a professional commercial and residential painting company he founded in 1994.
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