Mention ‘Fly’ and This Man of Steel Shows Off His 11-Foot-Tall, 1,500-Pound Zipper

It may seem out of place to some, but hardly to R. Bret Price, 36, of Orange who has an 11-foot-tall steel zipper in his backyard.

“This is an art form,” he said, gesturing at the 1,500-pound partially unzipped zipper with a movable pull-tab that clanks when the wind blows. “It is art, and it’s what I do.”

Price, a ceramics and sculpture instructor at Chapman College, said that “people are beginning to understand” his work, as he pointed to other steel art forms in his yard. They include “Bent Over,” a 600-pound, 14-inch-wide steel pipe that is, of course, bent over; “Untitled Coil,” a twisted stainless steel pipe, and “Back in the Saddle,” a free-form piece. Besides his backyard exhibit, Price’s work has been shown at the Laguna Beach Museum of Art and several Orange County galleries.

Price has a fit physique, no doubt because of the arduous task of bending heated steel, which he started doing eight years ago.

The artist sometimes gets material by scrounging at scrap yards.

“Rusted metal can end up having a beautiful texture,” he said.

To create his artwork, Price softens the thick steel in self-built heating chambers or at a steel fabricating plant, and the pliable metal is then bent with a crane, skip loader or by the strength of his own hands.

“It’s a long process to make something out of steel,” he said. “I want to make steel look fluid, flexible and rhythmic.”

When he began as a sculptor, Price said, few people believed in his work. Since those tough early days when “accolades were hard to come by,” he has found a number of allies, including the Newport Beach Arts Commission, which was instrumental in obtaining his most recent abstract sculpture.

The steel piece, titled “Metalphor” and resembling a sideways “Z,” is embedded in front of Newport Beach City Hall. It is valued at $15,000.

Price said the idea to become a steel sculptor--”I don’t know anyone that’s doing metal like me”--began in a ceramics class at Chapman College while he was “daydreaming about making huge and enormous clay pieces.” Instead, he went on to steel.

He said people who look at his work sometimes are not sure what it’s doing and what it’s made of. “I like that,” Price said, “because it becomes a mystery.”

But there’s no mystery if someone wants to buy the big zipper titled “Untitled Zipper.”

“We deliver,” he quickly said. The asking price is $15,000.

What it comes down to, says UC Riverside horticulturist Dennis Pittenger, 33, who directs a tomato research project in Irvine, is that tomatoes grown by homeowners are probably more luscious than those grown commercially.

The big difference, he said, is that homeowners pick them when fully ripe, while commercial growers have to pick them earlier. But if both were eaten at peak ripeness, “they probably would all taste fairly good.”

But Pittenger explained that taste isn’t the primary consideration.

“We’re really interested in knowing how many of the 26 varieties we’re growing can perform in locations outside of Orange County,” he said, noting that the research will also help home growers to improve on the varieties they grow.

Cheryl Phillips, 31, of Anaheim keeps her spaghetti sauce recipe a closely guarded secret. And no wonder. She won the $1,000 first prize at the recent American Red Cross Spaghetti Cook-Off at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

She calls her recipe “Mama’s Spaghetti,” and it only seems right that a chef from a local restaurant took second place, sort of a victory for home cooking.

Phillips, a mother of two, revealed that “there’s nothing funny in the sauce, just things in the house.”

She can put the prize money to good use: Just before judges crowned her champion, a loudspeaker announced that Phillips was the raffle winner for a trip to Hawaii.

Barbara A. Hoyt, Placentia Unified School District transportation director, figured school bus drivers needed a foolproof method of delivering kindergartners and some first- and second-graders to the right corner on their trip home, especially at the very beginning of the new school year.

Corners can look alike to a kindergartner, so Hoyt developed a system of colored dots on cards tied around their neck with a piece of yarn. Each color means a specified stop.

“After the first couple of weeks, bus drivers usually know where each child gets off,” she said.

It’s a good thing too.

Some buses have 10 stops and 10 different colors.

Acknowledgments: Octogenarian Edith Morgan, a lifetime Fullerton resident, 17-year staff member in the Fullerton Union High School District and an active community worker, was named Cal State Fullerton Volunteer of the Year.