A visit to Lane Mulke's Green Estate off Broadway in Bethpage is to discover a wonderland of unexpected and impressive metal sculptures.
There's a strange skateboarder with ears that resemble the head of a golf club walking on the roof of a garage, a water surface made of redwood bicycle tires, a large circular door decorated with spider webs, and a silver palm tree that looks like it has appeared. The park features a three-sprayed cat and a shiny aluminum guitar tied to a tree.
The Metal Open Air exhibition is a gateway into Mulqueen's creative world. In her home, the living room and dining room are filled with endless woodwork: plates, boxes, sculptures, bracelets, pendant lights, lamps, black poppies, fragrant Brazilian poppies, Australian lace, maples, African ebony and zebra; Purple heart, mahogany and black walnut.
“I've always worked with my hands,” says 80-year-old Malkin. "I love it. I get a lot of satisfaction from doing things."
Mulkeen, a longtime Bethpage resident who lives in his childhood home, said he became interested in carpentry after the contractor who added on his house to finish the job 40 years ago didn't return. He said he had to learn carpentry to earn a living. He quickly built the patio, dining table, chairs, piano, coffee table, bar, walls and shelves. He soon began producing decorative wood.
His work as a metal fabricator at Chivvis Enterprises in Cabbage inspired him to get into metalworking, where he worked for about 40 years after retiring at age 75.
“Some of my work was for clients who were artists but couldn't afford to do the work themselves,” Malkin said. “So I thought if they can do it, I can too.”
Today, Mulqueen's work can be seen all over Bethpage, including the 9/11 memorial at the Bethpage LIRR station, a recreational entrance sign, and until last year, a 9-foot-tall stainless steel menorah that has served for two decades. . Brighten every Hanukkah. (The menorah was stolen last year.)
Generous trees
Much of the wood used in Mulqueen's creations comes from many woodworking friends. Sometimes the wood has an interesting story, like the mahogany he brought for the original bar at the Oak Beach Inn, or the exotic trees he found on a construction site in Plainview.
“I went out there with a 20-foot crane and lifted the logs,” Malkin said. “It was filled with a crane floor and two trucks.”
In most cases, Mulkeen donates his creations, although creating a small wooden bowl can take six to seven hours. One day, a friend who was planting a tree cut down a tree that had a special meaning for the woman. Malkin said his father planted it years ago and didn't want to get rid of it.
"He gave me the branch and said, 'I'll make a bowl of this and bring it back.'
Many people have asked her to make an urn to hold their ashes one day. In each case, he said he would not be paid for his efforts.
“How can one borrow money for such a thing?” He said: I can't, I can't.
When the Black Golf Course at Bethpage State Park was renovated in 2000, Malkin, president of the Bethpage Central Park Historical Society, was on hand to document the changes to the course. When he saw the downed black walnut and maple trees, he asked park director David Catalano if he could salvage some of the timber.
To show his appreciation, Malkin, who has been making pens as gifts for years, said he made Catalano a pen engraved with the word "Bat Pig." Home of the black cycle.
"I handed it to him and said, 'This is a golf club. It's Beth Page's son.' It almost shook. I said, 'Maybe I have something here.'
The item turned out to be 2,000 pens that Bethpage claimed to have sold at the 2002 Black US Open.
The next time the golf tournament returned to Bethpage, Malkin was less concerned. Instead of doing the work himself, he said he sourced 1,000 pieces of wood from a golf course to make them.
“When it happened in 2009, after you had made 2,000 pens, you never wanted to make another pen in your life,” he said.
Let the wood "speak".
Working with a variety of lathes, mills, saws and other woodworking tools in his basement workshop, Mulken spends hours most days carving, drilling, drilling, cutting and gluing wood on all types of structures.
“When I started, I had manual vision and this is what I saw,” Mulkeen said, pointing to his Sears Craftsman beam.
Malkin says wood can surprise you, like when he starts cutting down a maple tree and realizes it's infested with ants. After removing the ants, he built a coffee table that he called “Rafiha.”
"I tell everyone. You don't know what you're going to come out of the woodwork until you put in the work," Malkin said. “I let the forest talk to me.”
He often collaborates with his wife, who gives him samples or fabrics from her projects, which he places in wooden and epoxy boxes.
“Amazing” is the word Laura Mulk, 77, used to describe her husband’s career.
"This guy is like magic," said Meryl Zorn Jensen, 61, owner of Bethpage Zone Grocery.
During renovations at Zorn-Jensen's store, the pear tree she used to visit her grandfather on the farm when she was a little girl had to be removed. A king asked him to do whatever he wanted with the tree.
“Len made so many beautiful things from this wood: frames, bowls, handles, jewelry,” she told me. “This guy… I don’t even have words to describe how talented he is.”
After Zorn Jensen showed Mulqueen some plumbing fixtures from the first shop, he asked him to make two.
“I bought things, but the tree is very delicate and very cute, so he gave them to me,” said Zorn Jensen, who also made a jewelry box.
“It was nice to have someone do something knowing how important it was to me,” she said. “Other than that, it's great.”
Unusual technology
Malkin said he would never consider teaching woodworking because he felt unqualified to do so.
“A lot of the things I do are probably very unusual,” he said. "You don't have to do that."
However, Malkin has been working with his cousin's 13-year-old grandson for several months, teaching him how to make pens and other wooden products.
“He likes it, so that's good,” Malkin said.
Malkin is constantly trying out new designs and projects, and says he gets some ideas from YouTube videos as well as the Long Island Turners Club, of which he is a longtime member.
"You see someone else who did it and you say, 'Wow, I want to try that,'" he said. "It doesn't replicate that. I just have an idea, an inspiration. You can get a little something from it, like it's woven or it's sculpted."
When he joined the Woodturners in 1985, Joel Rickover lived in Dix Hills and Malkin was club president.
I call him “Yoda,” Rockover, 65, now retired in Asheville, North Carolina. "The amazing thing about him is that he's self-taught and came up with all these ideas himself, so all you see is design. He has an artistic side and he's a mechanic as well."
Despite the breadth and diversity of his oeuvre, Malkin acknowledges that art is personal; Everyone has their own taste, and not everyone likes their job.
“To each his own, father,” says the old woman, kissing the cow.
These days, Mulqueen still takes on some commissions, but for the most part, he says he makes what he loves, when he loves it.
I am now retired. "I do what I want when I want."
How to join?
Long Island Woodturners, a division of the American Woodturners Society, aims to "encourage broader interest and appreciation for the art of woodworking in the Long Island and New York areas."
The club, which welcomes new members, meets monthly from 9:00 a.m. to noon at Northport High School, 154 Laurel Hill Road. The next meeting is scheduled to be held on October 21. The $45 annual membership fee includes meeting updates and orientation.
- Arlene Gross
