Cinnamon Hill creates wacky gadgets, automatons
Most people wouldn’t look at a printer someone ditched on the side of the road and see a piece of a sculpture, but most people don’t work for Cinnamon Hill Art.
Andrew Latorre and Tom Tyre have been in their house in Otto for the past 19 years. While technically a business, the pair hangs onto most of their pieces, transforming the house into a massive gallery.
Latorre feels that the items that fill a house over a long enough period of time are as good a resource as any to make a masterpiece with.
“A lot of it is serendipitous,” Latorre said. “All it takes is to have a lot of crap lying around the house and you eventually realize that you can do something great with it.”
That philosophy has led to a lot of unconventional pieces assembled from thrift store bargains and salvaged goods. One of their favorite creations are novelty doorbells, which have taken every form from a spinning mobile full of bells and toy planes to a monkey acting as a one-man band.
Many of their works have a social or political tilt, such as the Democracy Machine, an interactive creation that takes the user through the tenets of a free democratic state.
One of the duo’s most sentimental pieces is a moving diorama of a classic one-room schoolhouse that they made for Latorre’s sister when she worked as a teacher.
In some ways, the pandemic has been a positive thing for Cinnamon Hill Art. More time to spend at home means more time to sort through the parts they’ve collected, which has led to more productivity. They even had a rare in-person art showing by inviting guests to check out their latest sculptures at a small party on the Little Tennessee River Greenway.
“We just invited about 30 people who we thought would enjoy it and took them somewhere outside where they could keep plenty of distance,” Tyre said.
Both Latorre and Tyre are retired, making selling their work more of a hobby than a job. However, they treat their ideas with all the time and passion of a full-time profession.
The two like working together and transforming the most unsuspecting objects into things of beauty and intrigue, and even when they make some good money on a sculpture now and then, it’s the memories they make along the way that stick with them most.
“It’s something to do that we both truly enjoy, and that’s what matters most to us at this stage,” Latorre said.
Tyre agrees. As long as people keep on leaving their old printers behind for someone else to find, he doubts that they’ll ever get bored.
“If there’s something that you really like and you do it every day, there’s no such thing as time,” he said.
For demonstrations of some of Cinnamon Hill Art’s favorite pieces, watch their videos on Andrew Latorre’s YouTube channel.