For Robbie Baumgart, what would otherwise be trash truly is his treasure. And as an auto repair specialist for the past 35 years, a lot of trash crosses his path. Baumgart, who has worked at La Jolla Independent BMW for 20 years, has always shown an interest in art. His mother, he said, has painted for as long as he can remember, and both his grandfather and great-grandfather were accomplished painters and sculptors. Baumgart said he finds eerie similarities between his creations and those of his great-grandfather, created more than 100 years ago. It started about a decade ago when Baumgart, in an attempt to keep his boss’ children busy at the body shop, began playing around with scrap metal with them. They would pound the metal into the shape of a sea turtle, and even Baumgart was somewhat surprised with the result. After a while, Baumgart branched out. He started making sculptures of whales, turning car hoods that had met with an untimely demise into a work of art. The connection between creating a like-new car and creating art, he said, seemed natural. “When a car would come in all smashed up, I could fix it,” he said. “I could make it look like it did before. I’ve had 35 years of straightening up bent cars.” Apart from serving as an effective “stress reliever,” the art began to have an unexpected effect: it started to make him better at his job. “I’ve always thought that if I were ever to teach a class at an auto body school, the first thing I’d do is to have the students create other stuff [with metal],” he said. “It really keens your senses.” With that in mind, Baumgart began to seriously consider the idea of sharing his skill with others. He even drafted a plan for a class to teach metal sculpting, designed specifically for cancer patients (he’s a survivor of lymphoma, having kicked it once in 1989, then again after a relapse in 1997 with a stem-cell transplant at UCSD — “I don’t know if it has had any bearing on my art, but how can you go through a life-threatening illness and not have it influence you in some way?”). The class never came to fruition, but he did have the opportunity to share it with children. A chance meeting and a conversation about his art with a fellow customer at Bird Rock Coffee Roasters brought about the opportunity to create a sea turtle sculpture with a class of third-graders at Bird Rock Elementary last year — an event (pounding on metal with no consequences) that would be any 8-year-old’s dream. “They seemed to have quite a time,” he said. “They all grabbed different mallets and just smashed it with all their might.” Baumgart has had other opportunities to teach. He has been asked to be the main attraction at birthday parties and other children’s events, helping kids create their very own art — to much success. “The enjoyment I get is the sense of pride the kids have afterward, because what comes out of it is really pretty nice,” he said. “When they show their parents what they’ve made, their parents are blown away. One party was a bunch of little girls, and they were all screaming and cheering while making it. I thought, ‘If that’s the last memory I ever have, I’ll die with a smile.’” Of his subject matter, Baumgart feels no loss of inspiration. Sea turtles, he said, have always held a special place in his heart. “I’ve always kind of felt the sea turtle was my soul mate,” he said. “I’m kind of a vagabond, my mother was kind of a gypsy, wandering around Europe in the 1930s. A turtle is kind of like a motor home. Plus, they’re benevolent and they move through the water pretty gracefully.” The same, he said, goes for whales. He thinks of the giant creatures as big ships, moving effortlessly through the water. When he creates a whale sculpture, he said, he tries to convey the motion as much as the shape. When asked why he doesn’t branch out into other shapes and creatures, Baumgart simply says there’s no need. “People might want to see something different, but for me, every time is already different,” he said. “I’m still learning every time I make one, and I get to develop my technique with each sculpture.” The sculptures, which take about a day to make, have become more than just a pet project. To date, Baumgart has created about 20 whale sculptures and almost 70 sea turtles. But for now, he said, he has no plans to try to conquer the starving artist stigma. While he has been commissioned for sculptures, he has no desire to give up his steady income to toil away at his art. “I don’t want to be dependent upon making money from it,” he said. “If that was my reason for doing it, I would probably already have been broke from it. I know a number of people I really consider to be actual artists, who can’t even come close to making a living [at their art]. If you continue doing it because you love it, that’s the only reason you need. It’s just a way of being able to express yourself differently.” Baumgart will display his work at the 41st annual Festival of Whales in Dana Point for two weekends in March (3-4 and 10-11). An event celebrating the annual migration of the gray whale, the festival draws nearly 100,000 visitors every year for its whale-watching excursions, art and classic car exhibits, environmental activities, paddling events, sand sculpting and an opening day parade — to name a few. Baumgart said he is honored to have his sculptures featured at an event that raises environmental awareness, especially considering the salvage-and-reuse nature of his art. “I don’t really ever use new materials, and I really like that about it,” he said. “It’s nice to make them in a way that I don’t have to worry about making a profit, so it’s just fun. We have three or four scrap guys that come to the shop looking for heavy metal, and while they’re grabbing stuff from us, I’m looking through their truck to see if they have something for me. It’s funny — to most people, scrap is just garbage.” For Baumgart, it’s art in the rough. For more information about the Dana Point Festival of Whales, visit www.festivalofwhales.org.