For Joe Kennedy of Ripley, Maine, every plumbing job he does is a work of art. It can’t just function perfectly; it has to look beautiful, too. Even though most of it is ultimately hidden behind sheetrock, he loves to build meticulously aligned grids of copper pipe.

Maine Artists Joe Kennedy, Wally Warren and Bernie Beckman

A couple of winters ago, he employed the bits and pieces of his trade for beauty alone for the first time, assembling sprinkler heads, copper pipes and other plumbing cast-offs into a space ship. A translucent green marble in the center served as a glass dome or a beacon, but it also introduced fluidity, a nod to the water that once flowed through the parts.

For the rest of that winter, while Kennedy’s plumbing work was slow, he feverishly built sculpture in his basement studio heated only by a balky wood stove and his imagination.

But what appeared to be a sudden burst of inspiration was really four decades in the making. In high school, he had dreamed of art school. But college wasn’t in the cards for a kid from a poor family, and art had been buried by responsibilities and opportunities.

Joe found inspiration right across the street at the home of his best friend of 25 years, assemblage artist Wally Warren, whose yard is covered with brightly painted sculptures made of found objects. Years of watching Wally work had demonstrated that a well-reasoned piece could exceed the sum of its parts a hundredfold.

Unlike Kennedy, Maine native Warren has been a full-time artist all his life. While working the art scene in Seattle and Portland, Ore., for two decades, he would come home to his three-acre “Wally World” in Ripley each summer to shake off the urban funk and make things. About 20 years ago, he decided to shed the city entirely and settle permanently in Maine.

Wally encouraged Joe as the budding sculptor developed his style. Eventually, the established artist knew his friend had to show his work to the world.

“It’s fine to make things, but you have to get it out there,” said Warren.

This spring, the two artists, along with Maine printmaker Bernie Beckman, had a joint show at Central Maine Artists Gallery in Skowhegan.

At first glance, Warren and Kennedy’s work looks as different as their career paths. Joe’s precise, symmetrical sculptures gleam coolly, the original bright chrome and brushed copper surfaces of their components preserved. In contrast, Wally’s work is a riot of deconstructed electronics, satellite dishes and household goods painted sky blue, bright yellow and hot red.

But they have a lot in common. Both artists compose new things from cast-offs, and for both, each component has an intentional role in the composition. It’s not just a matter of collecting things in a junkyard, nailing them together and painting them primary colors.

Wally indeed scavenges in junkyards, but he dismisses the penchant of some critics to project an ecological mission onto his art. He doesn’t incorporate the propeller-shaped blade from an electric fan to keep it out of a landfill or to encourage recycling. He uses it because he must; it belongs where he has placed it.

The materials for Joe’s art come directly from his “day job.”

“My art is created from my work. I get a piece on a job, and I say to myself, ‘I know what I’m going to do,’” said Kennedy.

Though the digital world has little importance in Wally’s life, computers play a big role in his art. Or at least the guts of them do. He tears old computers open and repurposes the sound cards, motherboards and memory strips inside for fanciful models of cities. The bits become buildings clustered along the banks of Wally-blue rivers painted on board. The models harken to his brief stint studying to be a civil engineer.

For Joe and Wally, daily life generates the stuff of art, and their friendship adds a splash of motivation.

A box of wooden dowels or a faucet handle may lie dormant for months in their studios and their minds until the right use emerges, and the pieces join others to make something entirely new and wonderful.

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