One of the Island’s most prolific and talented artists, Vineyard Haven’s Barney Zeitz, produces distinctive welded steel sculpture and fused glass panels, lighting fixtures, and religious memorials.
His work may take years to finish, including the fused-glass trumpet vine wall that greets visitors. It is made up of panels of glass heated in a kiln to form a single piece. Commissioned 32 years ago, the Trumpet Vine Panel was originally built for a Brockton synagogue. It is now installed on a north wall of Zeitz’s studio, and when light hits it, the orange and yellow trumpet colors glow. The fused glass panel, saved from the closing synagogue, is now for sale.
The studio workshop is like a museum, filled with Zeitz’s art. Visitors walk inside to a creative collection of tools, works in progress, trays of colored glass dust, drawings, and notes.
Much of Zeitz’s work is spiritual or religious, or it celebrates diversity, ancestry. It commemorates the human story. Some are of nature, as with the magnificent sculpture in his workshop of a dragonfly; there are three other dragonfly sculptures on the wing in his garden outside. Joining them is a handsome osprey, perched and ready to take flight. Each is stainless steel, with surfaces that have been worked — some areas highly polished, other areas left darker and less polished.
Zeitz has had many commissions. His work includes an Immigrant Memorial near Plymouth Rock, work at the Rhode Island Holocaust Museum, and a study for the Berkshire South Community Center and at the Vietnam Era Memorial.
A metal sculpture that Zeitz is especially proud of is of work he is doing for the Island’s African American Heritage Trail, supported in part by a grant from the M.V. Cultural Council — the sculpture of Rebecca. Rebecca, who was enslaved in Africa, remained a slave in Chilmark. She later married, and died a free woman. Zeitz also sculpted an African American Heritage trail marker of Nancy Michael, Rebecca’s daughter, that is now installed at Edgartown Memorial Wharf.
Zeitz spent four years working on “Prayer for Peace,” a work consisting of six stained glass windows in the Evangelische Pfarramt Fleiden church near Frankfurt, Germany. The church was a synagogue overrun during Kristallnacht, at the start of the Holocaust. The windows have Hebrew notations on one side and German ones on the other, and are memorials to the former synagogue, and a recognition of the Christian church today. Another powerful work is his metal cornerstone celebrating diversity at the government center in Fall River. Its inscription reads: “To the enduring memory of our ancestors: indigenous peoples, then immigrants, the enslaved, and refugees. May we, their descendants, together with newcomers, help build a more just and peaceful community.” It is the largest sculpture he’s created.
The artist grew up in Fall River, where his father was a packaging salesman. After visiting there during the summer, he moved to the Vineyard as a young man of 21, and made it his permanent home. Now he wears a leather apron, respirator, and goggles, and spends at least four hours a day hard at work.
Barney Zeitz Workshop, 67 Deer Hill Road, Vineyard Haven. Open house on Wednesdays.
