Junk Sculpture Decorates Garden St.

It's been there for two weeks now, a strange R2-D2-like sculpture on the corner of Garden Street and Garden Terrace, one block past the Radcliffe Quadrangle.

The construction of junk and wire stood by a fire hydrant, looking ominously out on Garden Street, thrown out by the inhabitants of the nearest house after it was abandoned by creator Matt Sargent.

"Do you think we should send it to an art museum?" one neighbor said yesterday.

The trash collectors have left it intact.

Before its mutilation, the waist-high robotic figure was covered with toys and other objects, the ski-pole skeleton held together by brightly colored telephone wire. Its face was an old cartoon-character lunchbox, its torso a discarded radio, its hands giant ski gloves.

One hand clutched the decapitated body of a Barbie-like doll. In the cellophane-Easter-grass-filled lunchbox lay the head of the doll. Around the base, toy soldiers battled a never-ending war.

The piece is called "Western Civ. 101" or "Zdzblo," which means razor stuble in Polish, according to Sargent, a 24-year-old student at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

"A lot of people didn't like 'Zdzblo' because it was made of junk, but I liked it," Sargent said yesterday.

"I made it about six months ago at three in the morning. It stayed in my room for a while, then it was at the top of the stairs inside, then the living room, then outside and finally my roommates put it in the trash."

"I made it with the intention of combining a lot of themes," he continued. "The major theme is Western society, 'Zdzblo' portrays the American mentality."

When Sargent moved to Somerville early this month, he had to leave "Zdzblo" behind. "I wanted to put it in the middle of Harvard Square," said Sargent, "but I couldn't transport it there either."

Sargent has a longtime interest in beautifying the Quad area. He once hung a mobile made of mylar, wrapping paper and yarn from a telephone pole near the Quad on Garden Street.

Usually, though, he makes roughly hewn, abstract, semi-geometric sculptures out of clay.

Nevertheless, he said he does not consider himself an artist. "I lose art, but it is not the main thrust of my life. There is too much ego involved for me."

For instance, it might have hurt is artist's ego just a little bit when neighborhood kids vulturized his sculpture this week, leaving it in pieces stripped of the soldiers and toys.

"It has followed its natural cycle," Sargent noted philosophically. Only the ski-pole skeleton and greedy hands are left