WADE SCHUMAN & HAZMAT MODINE

It must be intense to be inside the mind of Wade Schuman. Not only is he the crazed visionary leader of the band Hazmat Modine, he is an acclaimed painter in a style, (to borrow the literary term) of "magic realism." His work is represented by Forum Gallery in New York; he has taught at the New York Academy of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

I visited Wade in December in his Manhattan loft, an old industrial space reminiscent of the day when occupying a loft was for artists, not zippy millionaires in the making. Lofts were about light, a zone of relaxed density, and unconventional work. In the midst of the stacked rats of Manhattan, lofts were the wide open spaces - a Wyoming for the mind to wander.

Wade Schuman inhabits such a space. A long, stretched room, so long you can actually "gaze" from one end to the other, the outside wall lined with one enormous window after another, the old-fashioned kind you can open and step out of, high ceilings, and much stuff. Stuff? Well, the 4-foot tall cassowary immediately catches the eye, and then you realize there are a pair of them. There's a pipe organ, and there, a whale rib. There are many easels, and canvases. I am sitting at the table, sipping coffee, imagining the life of the person who lives this life, and oh, there's a stuffed duiker (a small African deer) and yes, that is a pangolin. There's a gramophone with the big speaker horn and other vintage sound gear. There is a sheng (I had to ask) and a saz (the long-necked lute). There are plants stretching out and filling niches everywhere, and there is Wade himself: curly brown hair, casually fascinating, his blue eyes sparkling from behind gold wire-rim glasses.

The band Hazmat Modine begins to make sense once you have visited Wade's home. Hazmat Modine brings together blues, 1920's jazz, and Eastern European brass band music, to name a few of the more prominent influences. The band's instrumentation includes 2 harmonicas, deep throat vocals, with the bass line covered by a tuba. One writer, attempting to describe Wade Schuman's painting mentions, "...oblique points of view, ...odd combinations of the logically unrelated..." The same might be said of Hazmat Modine.