barry schmetter, 1959-2023

barry schmetter looked like his name sounds. in my world of rarely-remembering-a-name, i never forgot barry’s because as soon as he told me his name, i thought, perfect. 

barry died yesterday from a heart attack. he was in his mid sixties.

barry was one of my first, true, DMV art friends. when we met, at the artomatic 2012 volunteer interest meeting, i discovered that he loved old technology and modular audio, and he used materials found around the soon-to-be-demolished building to create this super cool installation up on the top floor. he helped a bit with the build-out of my installation that year (a walk-through vagina protesting virginia’s new ridiculous invasive sonogram law pre-abortion. yes, it was repealed. eventually). and i helped hang the fiberoptic and various colored wires all over his installation. 

a few artomatics later, in 2017, barry and i created an installation together. manipulating sound and video against surreal images, we embraced psychedelic-town. he had collected all this old video equipment and i had a bunch of pieces that fit into our theme of i-don’t-remember-what. but you sat in a giant bean bag in the middle of the room (could fit three people easily), different lights focused on different pieces that themselves had LEDs going on, there was scrim and something else backing it all and a 1990s-like video monitor hooked up to one of the live feeds on some old video camera. and the old traffic light that sat in the side yard for years and years. and his music was piped throughout the room. it was pretty trippy. we had a lot of fun.

when i decided to tackle converting scott’s office into a bedroom (a few months after his death), barry showed up and painted this very mondrian-like wall, adding texture to some of the lines. all very precise, with rulers and tape and measured out. it sits right next to my wall, where the only forethought was which color to start with. mine is this improv-like tableau of swirls, much of it applied with my hand in big long swipes. i LOVE the contrast of these two walls, right next to each other. it makes me very very happy.

i really dug his exhibit at glen echo a couple (few?) years ago, of his tintype photography. some of the images are haunting.

i write, specifically of barry’s artistic life, part of it. cause that’s what i knew. as a colleague, an artist, a friend. barry will continue to pop up in my thoughts at the most random times. i’ll miss his corporeal self, but his essence is very strongly and fondly embedded in my soul.