Chuck Dolence sees possibilities in things most of us would walk right past. A discarded turbocharger can become the shell of a snail. Alarm clocks become locomotive wheels. A trombone bell becomes a smokestack. Louvers from an old heat pump might someday become feathers.

A metal artist, builder, engineer, and lifelong maker, Chuck creates intricate sculptures from found objects, discarded machinery, musical instruments, and metal. He calls many of his creations “Musanicals,” machine parodies made from musical instruments and mechanical pieces.

In 2026, Chuck was selected for the Recology Western Oregon Artist in Residence Program with the Arts Alliance of Yamhill County, an experience that gave him an entirely new collection of discarded materials to explore and new reasons to experiment.

But Chuck’s instinct to look at one thing and see another began long before the residency.

“Hey, This Looks Like That”

Chuck grew up in Cleveland as the youngest of four brothers in a family where building things was simply part of life. His father and brothers were machinists, his brothers built hot rods, and his mother loved making things from everyday materials.

“My mother was very crafty in the sense that she liked building things with Styrofoam and yarn and cardboard and just kind of crafty kind of stuff.”

What stayed with Chuck was the ability to look at an ordinary object and imagine something else.

“The concept of, ‘Hey, this looks like that,’ was easy to carry over both in my woodworking and in my metalworking.”

He began as a woodworker and still has a deep appreciation for the material. But eventually he discovered that metal suited him differently.

“I think my real gift is in metal.”

Chuck especially enjoys gas welding and brazing, techniques that allow him to control the heat and flame as he shapes and joins materials. He describes it to his grandchildren a little more colorfully:

“I love to burn metal with fire.”

Machines, Music and Making

Chuck’s fascination with machinery also began in childhood.

Growing up near Cleveland’s heavy industry, he remembers riding bicycles with his brothers and friends to see ore boats coming into the harbor, climbing on a steam locomotive at a nearby park, and watching the industrial world around him.

“I’ve never lost my enjoyment and the mystique of large, loud, stinky machinery that I experienced when I was quite a young man, a young boy actually.”

Those influences eventually found their way into his art.

“My art is typically machine parodies that I call Musanicals because they’re made with parts of musical instruments and mechanical pieces.”

An early mentor, Detroit artist Sonny Dalton, introduced Chuck to the possibilities of creating with discarded musical instruments. Chuck did not have access to an unlimited supply, so every instrument and unusual component he found mattered.

That helped shape the meticulous way he works today.

Many of his pieces begin with a mental image and one object that establishes the scale. A trombone bell might suggest the smokestack of a locomotive. From there, Chuck begins searching for the components that will make everything else feel proportionally right.

“I have a design in mind, I gather parts, I start basic assembly, then I start adding on to that assembly.”

Once the structure is built, the real fun begins.

“Once I get the infrastructure built, I love adding all of the detail.”

Finding Possibility in What Others Discard

The Recology residency has been a particularly natural fit for an artist who has spent years seeing potential in discarded objects.

Sometimes Chuck has an idea long before he finds the object needed to make it work.

For years, he had been looking for the right turbocharger. When several appeared during the residency, he immediately recognized something he had imagined long before.

“The very first idea I had was a long term idea I had because the turbo looks just like the spiral shell of a snail.”

That became one of his Recology pieces.

Chuck describes finding the right discarded materials as “hunting,” and he believes it is something people can learn.

“If you kind of know what to look for, or if you focus on the things to look for, hunting can be a trained skill.”

That willingness to experiment also means accepting that not every idea succeeds.

A Recology experiment using louvers from a heat pump did not turn into the piece Chuck envisioned. But the material sparked something else.

“What it’s done is it’s spun me off on different types of louvers from different types of machines that are going to be feathers for large birds now.”

For Chuck, an unsuccessful experiment is rarely the end of an idea. It may simply be the beginning of another one.

Ideas Worth Waiting For

Although Chuck has been making things for most of his life, there was a long period when creating art took a back seat.

“My family is first.”

While raising his four daughters and building his career, there was not always time to turn his ideas into finished work.

So he saved them.

Chuck has accumulated sketchbooks filled with drawings, observations, and ideas, some recorded many years before he had time to pursue them.

“Whenever I have an idea or something that just kind of, ‘Hey, this looks like that’ kind of thing, I’ll start sketching or write it down and I capture those ideas.”

Now those sketchbooks provide an archive of possibilities.

“Now that I have time, now that my kids are all grown, I can go back and say, ‘You know, this idea from 2014 is a really cool idea that I think demands me to take action on.’”

Chuck also brings that philosophy to the students he works with at McMinnville High School.

“No matter how trivial your idea might be, write it down because it could become a seed that starts to grow.”

He wants students to see experimentation, including the pieces that do not work, because learning how to deal with failure is part of becoming a maker.

One of Chuck’s own locomotives, Shorty, became an example. After repeatedly rebuilding a mechanism that simply would not work, Chuck set the piece aside for a couple of years.

Eventually, he came back to it with a new solution.

Failure, in Chuck’s world, does not necessarily mean something is finished.

Sometimes it just means it is not finished yet.

Gifting and Tenacity

Chuck has lived in McMinnville for more than 30 years. Today, his connections to the local creative community include the metal arts community, students at McMinnville High School, the McMinnville Art Festival, and the Recology Artist in Residence Program.

He credits his family as some of his strongest supporters, particularly his wife, who enthusiastically shares his work with others.

“She loves my work. She’s my PR agent, and I love the way she thinks, and she likes the way I think.”

He also appreciates the role the Arts Alliance plays in keeping art visible throughout the community.

“I benefit, even in my absence and in my solitude, I benefit from the work that y’all are doing.”

That balance between solitude and community reflects something Chuck believes is important for emerging artists too.

His first piece of advice is to trust that your ideas have value, even when other people do not immediately understand them.

“Never sell short the fact that you have ideas that other people may not have. And don’t let other people ascribe value to things or ideas that they don’t understand.”

The second is persistence.

“Never give up.”

Chuck knows that some ideas will fail and others will take years to figure out. What matters is being willing to continue.

“I think it comes down to both gifting and tenacity.”

Still Building

Chuck has no shortage of ideas for what comes next.

There are large locomotives, motorcycles, feathers, golf clubs, and other projects still taking shape. But the Recology residency and recent exhibitions have also shown him that he enjoys making smaller, more accessible pieces.

“What I found out at both Maggie’s show (Metal Arts Gift Show) and at the festival (McMinnville Arts Festival) is I can make stuff that is fun and really fulfilling for me that I could sell for affordable prices that people will really enjoy.”

He does not intend to stop creating the large, complicated work. Instead, he is looking for room for both.

And if time and resources were unlimited, Chuck’s dream would extend beyond his own artwork. He imagines a workshop where people could learn welding, woodworking, fabrication, and how to create with discarded materials.

“I would love to build a shop that I could teach.”

It is a fitting dream for someone whose own creative journey was shaped by parents, brothers, mentors, teachers, machinists, artists, and makers willing to show him how things worked.

And Chuck is still figuring out where that journey will take him.

As he put it:

“I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

Perhaps that is part of what keeps the possibilities open.

When I asked Chuck what song would be playing if his art had a soundtrack, he landed on one that seems particularly appropriate.

“‘Oh Happy Day.’ That’s it. That’s gotta be it.”

For Chuck, underneath the machinery, engineering, experimentation, and problem solving, there is something wonderfully simple at the center of it all.

The joy of making.