Bill Brady Jr. works on one of his cosmic-inspired metal mobiles in the back of his bus. Brady hammers out small pieces of tin and wire, soldering the pieces together with an iron that he heats with a coal-fired stove inside the glass solarium he built for himself on the back of an old bus parked behind his stepmother’s home near Centerville. Photos by Jerry Sowden Bill Brady Jr. looked at ease last month as he mingled with other area artists and art enthusiasts at the grand opening of the Graffiti Gallery, where his cosmically-inspired work was on display for the first time in years.

After being “fed up” with the local art scene for about 10 years, the Centerville outsider artist finally touched back down with the local arts community.

“I’m starting to get back into it,” said Brady, whose work is also on display at Sandy’s European Marketplace in Meadville.

For a man who comes from a long line of metal workers, Brady naturally gravitates toward that line of work.

Bill Brady Jr.’s metal sculptures fill the home of his stepmother and late father near Centerville. This sculpture is Brady’s interpretation of another family member’s pet poodle. Now, with the recent success of his work — he’s sold several pieces since the Graffiti Gallery’s grand opening — Brady is a man with his head in the stars.

His industrial-style mobiles and sculptures and his eccentric life story certainly perpetuate that notion.

Just consider the facts.

Shy and rather short in stature, Brady has a thick, white beard and equally thick, long white hair that nearly dominates his appearance. He wears broad bifocals — a necessary and utilitarian accessory, considering the intricate nature of his work.

Occasionally, he wears a train engineer cap. He likes trains, and rockets.

Perfectly balanced geometric designed sculptures and mobiles created by Bill Brady Jr. fill the home of his stepmother and late father. Some other sculptures are in the garage, and a few more hang from tree branches outside the home. Brady is also keen on planes and buses. So much so, he’s building one of the former, and he lives in one of the latter.

In fact, Brady’s interests involve pretty much anything mechanical, moving or metal.

“I’m the fourth generation of Bradys and we’ve all been metal workers,” Brady said. “We know how to work with metal.”

The Bradys have landed

Brady says the American Bradys began when his great-grandfather handcrafted an open hearth furnace in Ireland that caught the attention of Philadelphia steel-making giants Midvale Steel Works. They bought the furnace and brought great-grandfather to America with it.

Metal sculptures, some shiny and some covered in rust, surround Bill Brady Jr. as he pounds, bends and solders metal into one of his sculptures. Photos by Jerry Sowden “I don’t know my greatgrandfather’s name,” Brady said. “My grandfather (Francis) was Catholic and married a Protestant, so he was excommunicated from the church.” And, apparently, from the elder Brady.

His grandfather followed in his father’s footsteps, taking a job with Midvale as messenger boy at the age of 12 (prior to the days of intercoms), before going on to become executive of the company.

And so it would go for Bill Sr., who started out at Midvale sweeping floors before climbing the corporate ladder.

After stints with several steel companies in the Philad elphia area, Bill Sr. took a job in 1962 with Cyclops Steel in Titusville and moved his family to a 26-acre lot in Centerville.

Bill Brady Jr. takes a break from his work and checks the weather from one of the glass doors on the back of the bus that he calls home. “When I moved here it was a real culture shock,” Brady said. “We were complaining that we only had two bathrooms when our neighbors had only outhouses— everybody was living off of potatoes and venison.”

The Bradys moved into a home built in 1840 by David Tryon, founder of Tryonville (now Centerville). Tryon was a lumber man who donated timber to the Oil Creek derrick project of one Col. Edwin Drake.

Brady adjusted to country life.

“It’s really nice here. There’s lots of peace and quiet,” Bill Jr. said. And, he added, at night he can lay down for bed in his bus-turnedhome and stare up at the stars.

Bill Brady Jr. pages through one of the many sketch books he has filled with drawings of metal sculpture ideas. Cosmic connections

Brady’s sculptures are akin to cosmic mobiles straight from a Ray Bradbury novel — spiraling, wired contraptions that defy the laws of both conformity and gravity.

“(His work has) very original, strong design,” said Carol McDonald, an artist hailing from Forest County. “His father’s work was like that — perfection. I can’t imagine the time that is put into one sculpture.”

It would be hard to gauge how much time Brady spends on one project: so much depends on the design and complexity of the piece, and how many other projects he might be working on at the time.

First, Brady sketches his ideas.

“I get a movement in my mind or I see something that inspires me — I always write it down,” Brady said. “Sometimes I start working on something and I think it’s going to turn out one way, but sometimes it turns out another.”

While the outcome may sometimes be accidental, there is nothing haphazard about the appearance of Brady’s work. Instead, he uses lead weighting and creative structure to balance even the most awkward designs.

“It’s so clean, so clean,” said Swan Daashuur, an artist and jewelry maker working out of the Transit Building in Oil City. “There’s no frills. It’s not emotional, it’s intellectual and a little cold.”

His sprawling, twisted mobiles are a practice in harmony and balance — due in large part to what seems to be an inherent understanding of basic engineering principals on Brady’s part.

“I personally believe he has an intuitive understanding of physics and aerodynamics,” said Joann Wheeler, an Oil City Arts Council coordinator who recently showcased Brady’s work at the grand opening of the Graffiti Gallery. “He did not learn it in school.”

The sun, the moon and the stars

Brady, 67, is not a young man by any means. He’s definitely an old soul. He’s oldschool, though he never went past high school.

And Bill Jr.’s been everywhere, man.

From California to Maine, Brady has traveled across the country in search of inner peace and worldly knowledge. He found some of each. He also found vegetarianism.

“When I was younger I used to stutter so badly — I still stutter now but then I couldn’t even talk — and I started living with a bunch of people who were meditators,” Brady said. “They were into vegetarian diet, so I got into that.”

Now Brady — practically a vegan — doesn’t eat any meat or fish or eggs.

“I wanted to get in control of my eating,” he said.

Brady’s travels are as unconventional as his artwork.

In the 1960s he bought a bus in Maine, drove it to California, and then back to Pennsylvania.

The bus doesn’t run anymore. Instead, it serves as Brady’s bedroom and workshop, which he shares with his cat, Charlie.

“He’s an independent cat. He’s my buddy,” Brady said.

Over the years, Brady constructed glass walls and ceilings all along the backside of the bus and over top of his bunk in the middle.

“I put the skylight up over my bed so I could look at the stars,” Brady said.

And he doesn’t just want to look at the stars, he wants to touch them. He wants to fly. So he’s building a 1930s racer style, single-engine airplane in his garage.

“I always wanted to build a plane when I was younger but people wouldn’t let me do it,” Brady said.

When asked if he planned on flying it when he was done, Brady — who has been working on the plane for 13 years now — looked at me as if I was the crazy one.

As far as Brady’s plans regarding the finished product, he acted as though it would be crazy not to fly it.

“Oh yeah, I plan on flying it,” he said, smiling.

To the ends of the universe

“I don’t even know when I started,” Brady said.

But he thinks it might have begun early on when he would sneak into his high school art studio and throw some pottery, or tiptoe into his dad’s blacksmith quarters and play with some metalworking.

“My father forbade me to be a blacksmith,” Brady said. “But when I was younger I would sneak into the shop. He would always catch me.”

Although he now has nearly 90 pieces in his possession — mobiles and stationary sculptures of metal balls, wires and roofer’s tin — Brady didn’t always make “art.”

Brady made models. He crafted early-American lanterns. He worked on engines. He was a carpenter, he was a plumber, he was a short-order cook.

“I do all kinds of things,” he said.

He works with a minimum stockpile of tools: various pliers, ball peen hammers, metal shears, soldering guns, clamps and, of course, his own, worn and chipped hands.

“I know how to build houses and plumb, I know carpentry and wiring, stuff I learned from doing ... well, just from living,” Brady said.

Mostly, Brady does what he wants to do.

“I’ve never had a job for more than a year,” he said. “I like to work on my own. I got tired working for somebody else.”

So now Brady works for himself. His art won’t make him rich, or famous — he knows that.

“I don’t really make any money off of my work,” he said.

Not that it matters. Brady seems content with his own, little universe.

“It’s what I do, I don’t know,” Brady said, perplexed. “I guess it’s sort of a curse, but that’s beside the point.”