Robots, mad science and ‘Burping Bowls’ at Crockett’s Bailey Art Museum

Step right up, folks, and view the mysterious, the curious, the spurious skull of the rare Cyclops Bigfoot and the remains of his female companion (identified by the bones of her telltale high heels). Be amazed and astounded at the science of madness in the mad-scientist’s lab, a conglomeration of clever curiosities, unnatural critters, jugs of snake oil and weird oozing blobs in bubbling buckets of goo.

Then feast your eyes on the voluptuous Miss Marilyn Monrobot, a tantalizing temptress of teapots, taillights and tin with an electrical outlet embedded in a location we can’t reveal in a family newspaper.

“See? You can plug a toaster right into her,” says artist Clayton Bailey, plugging in said toaster and causing a visitor to blush.

Crockett’s claim to fame

Bailey is the chief creator and purveyor of these wild wonders at the Bailey Art Museum, a surprisingly conventional name for this madcap mashup of art, robot invasion and traveling freak show. It all lives in a permanent gallery/storefront in the shadow of the Carquinez Bridge and the C&H Sugar plant in the tame town of Crockett (think a single stoplight and no Starbucks).

Now, despite the twirled Yosemite Sam mustache and a penchant for rummaging around junk yards (his favorite is Custom Alloy Scrap Sales in Oakland), Bailey is not just some lunatic with a wrench and a screw loose. He’s an internationally known artist and ceramics professor emeritus at Cal State East Bay, where he taught for nearly four decades. With his partner in madness, artist Betty Bailey — his junior-high-school sweetie and wife of 57 years — they ran a gallery from 1970 to 1978 called the World of Wonders Museum in nearby Port Costa, where they have a home studio. In 2011, Clayton Bailey was honored with a 50-year retrospective exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. And one of his robots has a long-term gig as a greeter at the Oakland Museum of California.

Don’t feed the blobs

In 2013, they opened this 3,200-square-foot space in Crockett. It’s only open weekends or by appointment, but they always have grapes or pretzels laid out for guests. “On a busy day, we’ll get 40 people through. Then sometimes just one or two,” Betty Bailey says as a ceramic-headed blobby creature, triggered by a motion sensor (I hope), bubbled up from a bucket of water behind me. It’s one of Clayton’s hydro-pneumatic ceramic sculptures titled “Burping Bowls.”

Yikes. Do you have to feed that thing? Maybe some grapes?

“No, but we do have to water him occasionally,” Betty says with a sweet, yet mischievous, smile.

The main gallery room could be mistaken for a robot department store with the latest models on display, including the famous Marilyn and even a full-size Bender from the “Futurama” cartoon. Clayton puts everything together with screws, nuts and bolts. No welding. “Keeps me from burning the place down,” he says.

Most of the creations light up or display their internal organs of lava lamps or plasma balls. But they don’t get around much.

“They’re more stationary than what you think of as a robot,” he says. “They’re not really operable. We don’t really want them wandering around the place.” Indeed, a friend of his calls him the “haberdasher for robots,” which he considers a pretty good description. “I just do their suits.”

Things become curiouser and curiouser as you make your way through the museum. There’s the Bigfoot section illustrating the “Pre-Credulous Era,” a collection of giant bugs, fire breathing demons and a wall of ray guns that really shoot (corks). As proof, Clayton takes one down and demonstrates with a loud pop.

And things get particularly dicey on the autopsy table in the science lab of the mysterious Dr. Gladstone, where a humanoid rib cage lies dormant until someone passes a motion sensor (I hope), then it rattles and goes into spasms.

Pseudo-scientist Dr. Gladstone is said to be Clayton’s alter ego. Although I’m not really sure which one’s which.

Contact Angela Hill at ahill@bayareanews group.com, or follow her on Twitter @GiveEmHill.