A Bang-Up Finale

Gallery

Pat Monk's Explosive Creativity

A former Manhattan Project physicist spends his twilight years creating dynamic sculptures in Alexandria.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

Eventually, though, Dee had had enough of the isolation of rural life, and the Monks left the farm for the suburbs, moving in 1957 to the house Pat still occupies in the Hollin Hills section of Alexandria. Until he became a full-time artist in his early 50s, Monk was a busy scientific consultant whose work included researching and developing instruments for early space studies. Dee, daughter of an erudite entomology professor, was a high school art teacher in Fairfax County and an enamelist with gallery space near her husband at the Torpedo Factory.

The children always called their parents Dee and Pat. (Pat is actually a nickname derived from his St. Patrick's Day birthday; he was born Gaines Whaley Monk.) They describe Pat as their main source of parental affection, though it was limited by his consuming work schedule. Dee, they say, didn't offer much warmth. Gammons recalls her mother being "angry a lot."

If there was tension, Monk doesn't remember it permeating his family life or his marriage the way his children do. "I'm a recessive type, in that I tend to back away when there's a difficulty, so it didn't seem that way to me," he says. He was always drawn to Dee's fierce intelligence. They were both honors students, and she was studying German philology when he met her at West Virginia University. He liked her sense of humor, her love of puns. Plus, he says, "she was very supportive of any damn foolish thing I tried to do," and "she smelled good."

When Dee first became ill, Monk would bring her to his studio and set up a work space for her. But she grew increasingly difficult, one friend confides, becoming "rather violent and quite tricky." Consigning her to a nursing home was out of the question. "Would you?" he responds sharply when asked if he considered it. Eventually, his children persuaded him to get an aide to attend to her, so he could focus again on his art. They were worried about his health: He required a quintuple bypass after a heart attack about 15 years ago. Still, Szabo says, her dad was a devoted caretaker.

When she visited her parents last summer, she marvels, her father would follow her mother around with a spoon "to make sure she got enough nourishment."

MONK'S HOUSE IS ABOUT SIX MILES FROM HIS OLD TOWN STUDIO. It's glass-walled and contemporary, filled with and surrounded by his works. The yard is a slightly unkempt sculpture garden, full of undergrowth and piles of leaves, and from his kitchen window he can look upon some of his creations, such as "The Bather," an oversize concrete faucet affixed to a tree above a statue of a girl bent as though washing her hair. On an unusually balmy day, he stares out at her while sitting at the table with a plate of something he's concocted: a mix of rice, onions, oranges, apples and meatballs. "I don't know about this lunch," he says, eating slowly.

He offers a tour. One wall of his living room displays Dee's small circular enamels, while book-crammed shelves bear some of his early wood pieces, including a black walnut sculpture of a man with a hole in his head that was made to rest above the family TV. He called it "The Creature of False Gods." Monk built much of the furniture himself, including dressers with drawers that swing out from a dowel on one corner, for easier access. With the help of his son, Leonard, a 59-year-old mathematician, Monk wired the sink so it could be controlled by piano-like floor pedals: one each for hot, warm and cold water; one to run the garbage disposal, another to open the trash can.

Signs of a curious mind are everywhere. On the kitchen wall there's a small line and "June 21 '01" scrawled in pen. He thinks for a minute why it's there, then remembers: "That's where the sun came in that day." He wanted to see if it would fall on the same spot the next year.

A small office space holds a laptop and three computers with flat-screen monitors. Why so many? "It's hard to explain," he says. "I've often wondered that myself." Leonard, who lives in Massachusetts, helped Monk set up his Web site, but he's learned to maintain it himself. He has a few photos of his family, which has grown to include three grandchildren and a great-grandson, 6-year-old Max.

He pulls out a thick report in a three-ring notebook that Leonard's son, Joakim, a senior in high school, has just mailed him, "Biography of Pat Monk." "He got an A-plus on it," Monk says, flipping through the pages. Buried within the admiring portrait, one part reads: "When Pat was a young father he did not have much time for his kids. As a young man he was tense, busy and absorbed. He was very nice, though."

When Leonard is asked about this characterization, he says that his father began to change in midlife: "He really softened up and warmed up. By the time he was in his mid-50s, he was a different person. And it was almost an act of will; he willed himself to change. He realized that he was too uptight, too nervous about work." Now Leonard flies down to visit his father frequently and calls him "a good friend."

Monk chuckles at his son's pop psychology. He does acknowledge having been preoccupied for years by his responsibilities. "You've got a family, and you've got more of a feeling that you've got to make a living; you don't have any freedom," he says. The move from what he calls "the rat race" of his scientific consulting jobs to a studio at the Torpedo Factory was made possible by Dee's steady income from teaching and the launching of their children off to college and beyond. So, yes, a load was lifted as he shifted his efforts from science to art. But as for his personality changing, he smiles: "How can I tell?"