Joe Mussulman

A large part of his career was in civil engineering, first in using his artistic skills to publicize developments, then as a land use planner designing subdivisions, with layouts for such things as streets, parks, etc. Secondary in his career was designing and building museum exhibits.  He was senior exhibit designer at the Arizona Historical Museum in Tempe,  along with building exhibits at the Historical Society in Tucson and on the University of Arizona's campus' State Museum. A series of paintings titled "What If Ancient Cultures Had Hot Air Balloons - How Would They Depict Them in the Art Of The Culture Of The Period?" were published by Balloon Life Magazine every month for two years.  Although hot air balloons have been around for only two hundred years, this sequence depicted balloons as far back as ancient Egypt, pre Columbian America and the Middle Ages.  All were done with just enough fact that they were believable! Currently he is passionate about repurposing worn out musical instruments into art, made to put a smile on everyone's face. This came about by a fluke.  Joe needed a new bathroom sink and knew that the best wood was used in pianos.  After visiting several piano repair shops, he was gifted a dilapidated piano which he then set about to convert into a sink.  This he accomplished by adding a marble top and making the piano foot pedals into a way to turn the water off and on.  Soon thereafter, this piano sink was written up in the Desert Leaf.  Six weeks later a reporter for Tucson Newspapers wrote an article about it in Caliente.  Evidently that article was picked up over the wire, finding it all over the country.  In fact, he was contacted by a lady in Indiana who wanted him to see what he could do with her melodeon, a keyboard instrument. From there he branched out to converting a myriad of worn out instruments into all kinds of art objects.  Joe Mussulman"s view is that if art is supposed to prompt an emotion, he wants it to elicit a smile and therefore specializes in visual puns.  Be sure to get your chuckle by visiting the Tucson Musician's Museum inside the Tucson Convention Center and especially the Leaping Lizard Art Gallery on Tanque Verde Road. Also, if you have a special instrument that you would like to be converted into an art piece or a piece of functional art such as a lamp, be sure to see Joe!