Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Jacob J. Kass, Untitled, 1981
oil paint on antique handsaw
7 x 26 in.

Jacob J. Kass was born in Brooklyn in 1910. From 1922 until his retirement in 1972, he worked in his father's firm, which specialized in painting commercial signs on the sides of trucks—images of everything from bridges to beer. Upon his retirement he divided his time between Florida and Vermont, where he began to paint old milk cans that he bought at local auctions and yard sales. In 1977, taking up a venerable folk art tradition, he began paining landscapes on antique saws. Since 1981, when the Allan Stone Gallery in New York gave Kass his first show, he has exhibitions at the Low Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida, and the Federal Reserve, Washington, D.C. Kass has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His panoramic bucolic landscapes are imbued with a simple nostalgic charm that is at one with the antique saw blades on which he paints.