My  name is Denise Corley I was Mark Bennett Russell's loft mate for 42 years. We had different ideas about what kind of life we wanted to live, "live and let live" was the motto of our relationship. 

After Mark died, his relatives weren't interested in his sculptures and artwork. I decided I would show them because I deemed them beautiful, wondrous and worthy of showing.  

This is a very brief telling of Mark's history, what I know- our relationship was complicated like all relationships.                          

Mark Bennett Russell was born in suburban Detroit, Michigan in 1956.

His mother Lucille (Edie) Russell had artistic leanings but suffered from bi-polar disorder for most of her adult life.  His father was an intense, creative man who worked in industrial design in the Detroit Metropolitan area. His hobbies were carpentry and Bonsai gardening.

Mark had difficulties with his eyes at a young age that contributed to reading problems. Mark showed an early talent in art.

After showing much promise in the art in high school, Mark enrolled at Wayne State University to study art, despite his father warning him "You can't make a living in art".

Mark left WSU for a semester and went to New York to go to museums and galleries. He worked as a bicycle messenger.

He came back from New York to finish his degree and met Denise Corley in a class on Aesthetic taught by visiting New York artist Ron Gorchov.

After graduating Mark got an apartment in Detroit and painted while working as a waiter at a popular Detroit Italian restaurant, Lilel's.  He started dating Denise Corley who also graduated and was working and painting in downtown Detroit.

Mark decided to move to New York again, for good. He thought it was the place to be if you were an artist and he was interested in the punk music scene in New York as well.

He stayed in touch with Corley and other Detroit artist friends including Carlo Vitale. Mark started his career as a carpenter with skills his father had taught him. He got a job renovating Ron Gorchov's loft in Soho. Ron took him to Barney's to buy some suit jackets to wear to openings. Mark visited Detroit and flush with his new job earnings bought several paintings from Corley and Vitale.

In 1981 Corley visited New York and stayed with Mark. She planned to move to New York with the money she made from her show- mostly paintings sold to Mark.

In December after Corley had moved to New York they hunted for a loft in Manhattan but ended up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, a nomads-land of abandon building, stripped cars, and dog packs.

Russell and Corley rented out part of their space to help pay the rent as they struggled to pay the bills and make art.

After a parade of roommates, Corley and Russell redesigned the loft to create a better space to rent and their next roommate  Christina Shmigel stayed for 2 years while she attended Brooklyn College for a Masters Degree in Art.

Mark's work life was busy and successful and he started making sculpture out of the discarded plastic trash dumped in the neighborhood. Mark's idea was that the "throw away culture of disposal everything" was represented in plastics just as previous generations were repurposing outdated metal machine parts for sculpture like Picasso, Tingluey, Stankiewicz and di Suvero. Mark thought plastic was the key material of our age.

Corley and Russell's relationship deteriorated as the couple had artistic rifts and different life values but they remained loft mates for the rest of his life. 

Mark's productive art making years were from 1980's thru the 1990's. 

With the help of artist Alan Saret, Mark had a small room at PS1 in 1986 to show his first sculptures, curated by Saul Ostrow.

Mark's studio became an installation over the next few years, like a Schwitter's "Merzbau" environment. He installed shelving toward the ceiling of his space and created many pedestals all displaying his sculptures. As time when on, he built a stage in his studio and invited artist to perform at dinner parties. Mark's personality was humorous, obsessive critical, suspicious and a tendency for ruminating. Whether these were symptoms of obsessive compulsiveness was (OCD) or Bi-poplar disorder we do not know and he didn't want to take medication but he did see a therapist for a while and of course was self medicating.

This time period was the peak of his sculpture production.

He moved on to an interest in "sound" and performance. He actually took classes for opera, ballet and acting. He was in an off-off Broadway play where he played a dead body on stage for the full duration of the play and he startled the audience when he jumped up to to receive his applause. 

He took up an interest in researching words in the Oxford English Dictionary and determining what he called their "duality" a concept he invented basing all words in categories , like male/female, light/dark, etc. At the same time , he began writing poetry  filling book boxes with yellow legal pads full of writings that are somewhat indecipherable. He started dressing in eccentric clothing and going out to bars to socialize as a sort of "real life" performance. He began developing his own audio equipment and than started buying vintage Soviet era audio equipment which turned into a business for him. That lasted until ebay became the mode and buying and selling and Mark wasn't interested in computers or the internet.

In the meantime, he reconfigured his studio again and made a small home sound studio for himself which took a lot of his studio space. His sculptures were by then abandoned to the periphery of his studio and life.

He did carpentry for some sound studios to bring in income. Then in 2014 he slipped on ice and had a traumatic head injury. He spent many months in hospital care and rehabilitation facilities.  At that point he was also diagnosed with chronic alcoholism and drug abuse. He was able to stop drinking but continued to smoke cigars. After the head injury he continued to glean the neighborhood for possible sculptures pieces. His space ended up like a hoarders nest. He got too weak to cutup the plastic and hot glue them. In the last few years he began buying stuff at the 99cent stores that amused him and taping them together. The head injury started a nearly 10 year decline in his health, until in died in a nursing care facility at age 66 in 2023.

As his loft mate for 42 years I have taken pictures documenting Mark's sculpture and life. 

The sculpture was his triumph.

He created a character for himself and lived it out- heaven and hell.

Denise Corley, 2024