Archaeology is the act of excavating the past. Andy Chulyk’s inspiration for his personal excavation at the abandoned Danvers asylum site began almost 30 years ago when he was a child, staring at the Gothic towers of the buildings as he was driven towards them in his parents’ car. They were on their way to visit Chulyk’s aunt, a Danvers nurse who had had a breakdown and who was institutionalized there for 25 years. Those visits were an emotional staple in his life.

Fast-forward to 1993. Chulyk and photographer Barnard are in the old Kirkbride building, closed since 1982-- climbing through piles of discarded light fixtures, wall-plaster, old photos, broken chairs, rope, gloves, lead pipes, fireplace pieces, tiny shoes, clothing... bits of memories, belongings, and habitat: the artifacts of trashed lives.

Opened in 1879, the asylum once housed 3,000 patients. There were gardens, terraces, trees, balconies, gleaming hallways, soft lights, warm beds. There was also terror. A place which is locked, where one is surrounded by jailers with needles, straps, and lobotomy equipment. Where sometimes, one’s life, personality and memory disintegrate with time.

The dust-covered, asbestos-laced detritus left behind after the patients and staff had left, after the vandals had finished, and after time had wreaked further destruction, took shape again in the hands of Chulyk-- organized, joined, painted, and polished--to become powerful statements about the emotional impact of mental illness upon the personal lives of those who had once inhabited these crumbling buildings.

Out of the dark silence of the halls, the overturned furniture and stopped clocks, the two artists struggled-- indeed, as those patients and their staff once might have done-- to bring beauty and order, to respond to the urge to correct, rejoin, and reconstruct. The cruel restraining straps and bars now shape, hold, support. Shining through the grimness and the suggestion of horror are the poignant details: the faces on the films, the everyday objects in the cabinets: hope lived here...

In the sculpture below, "emergency equipment" produces a dual message: HELP is on the way.... (but also, that helkp may consist only of chains and a locked door.)

The pieces with which these sculptures were assembled are not only pieces of the patients’ lives, but also bits of their prison and even of their treatment. Inside the globe of “Family Secrets” is film showing faces, with eyes closed, benign smiles-- are these lobotomized patients?-- one's imagination wants to know... Many of the sculptures contain trays, chains, toys, bits of clothing-- and pieces of walls, stairways, furniture found in the asylum buildings. These are now sculptures as history-- for as the buildings continue to self-destruct, such abandoned articles as these will be forever lost.

For Chulyk, a piece of his own life has been captured as well. He has incorporated small items of his own childhood, linking his young memories and fears to the continuing experience of this environment, as the Danvers buildings “reopen” to reveal tiny, secret pieces of these forgotten lives. In "Evening Out", below, movie tickets and clothing found in the old Nurses' Quarters suggest a rare evening escape for the nurses, only a fantasy of freedom for the patients.

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE on this page to review the entire Chulyk art collection with prices and details....and PLEASE give each page TIME TO LOAD... there are over 1.000 images on this site.

VIEW THE NEW 2004 EXHIBIT IN DANVERS, MASS. BY CLICKING HERE:

"LIGHT IN THE ASYLUM" Mama's Boy
Andy Chulyk