The atmosphere hovers between funereal and humorous. This Portsmouth studio is a refuge for mismatched wooden shoes, rusted springs, multi-colored plastic ropes, nicked cutting boards and abandoned musical instruments. Step anywhere in the room, and you'll find yourself standing amid croquet mallets, antiquated wooden coat hangers, or tin boxes emblazoned with uniformed men on horseback. This room acts as both a resting place and a waiting room for reincarnation. "Idea bags," white plastic bags containing masking-taped concepts, are heaped against the wall. Innumerable histories are piled together in large plastic bins, or lie piece by piece upon a working table, unsure of future unity and rebirth.

For Michael Stasiuk, everything here, someday, will find its fate.

Stasiuk received his BFA in painting and sculpture from the University of Michigan School of Art in 1982, and furthered his pursuit of sculpture at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, and the University of New Hampshire throughout the next 10 years.

"I went to art school thinking I was going to be a painter and was overwhelmed. There were too many choices, too much baggage for me. Once you know what's been done, it affects the way you see what you're doing," he says.

And so, it was with "conscious effort" that he directed himself toward a less "body-of-work"-oriented medium; the concern of "creating a product" as tantamount to "simply doing something you like to do" brought Stasiuk to his assemblages, and ironically enough, back to what he initially seemed to be avoiding-creating bodies of work for gallery exhibitions and "putting it out there."

He has exhibited at the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Mass., The Noyes Museum in New Jersey, The Works Gallery in Philadelphia, Pa., the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester and the George Marshall Store Gallery in York, among many others. Currently, "Sculptures on Parade," curated by Marcia Stewart, is at the Firehouse Gallery in Damariscotta, Maine, until Aug. 15.

His original figures were rigid and sticklike, lacking hands to hold their tools and instruments. These earlier works punctuate the corners of rooms and hallways within Stasiuk's home. Consisting mostly of brown, unfinished wood, these older pieces have "a certain weathered kind of primitive look" reminiscent of the late American sculptor and printmaker, H.C. Westermann. Stasiuk gives a respectful nod to the work of Westermann's darkly sardonic, pun-laden, found-object assemblages of toys, bottle caps, bicycle pedals, wood and metal.

His more recent work, he says, "has gone much more into a whimsical, toy-like place, more gadgety, smaller, colorful. I think I'm nurturing a sense of childishness within my own style or sensibility," he admits.

As prop master and teacher for the Mudd Butt Mystery Theatre in Telluride, Colo., a children's theater troupe that travels abroad for one month every year, Stasiuk finds inspiration in all sorts of oddities "off the beaten path."

His brightly colored marionettes and vignettes, with leanings toward Alexander Calder (especially those of Stasiuk's "The Circus"-Calder created an entire miniature circus over the course of five years) are consistent with the Calder quote, "I like to make things that are fun to look at." Stasiuk, like Calder, has an affinity for the quirky, as well as a propensity for representing animals in his medium. "I didn't intend to be like Calder, but I clearly acknowledge the way in which I could be labeled as continuing his legacy," he says.

In Stasiuk's world, springs and ropes are capable arms, antiquated shoe stretchers are shoulders, kids' bowling pins are heads, arms or noses. Scalloped bundt pans and rusted lightbulb covers, conceivably circa 1900, and dainty tin mounds from an indoor golf game are all "potential little skirts." Coat hangers and backscratchers, things he "likes quite a bit because they come in all sorts of styles," are destined to be paddle-shaped hands, holding an attribute of the figure's persona.

"I like words on things, marks that show the history. I use the words to inspire or embellish a theme," Stasiuk says. In "The Mathematicians" ensemble, an old wooden hanger reading "Sam the Square Dresser," gives one of the figures its moniker: "Sam the Square." A children's toy that made melodies as you pushed it along later became the body of a marionette called "The Musical Sweeper," firmly holding a little doll's dustpan.

A significant relationship exists between vision and compatibility of tangible parts. Stasiuk's work is solving problems and finding a level of correspondence within each creation, piece by piece. When a "combination of things suggest a scenario that causes certain questions to be asked," Stasiuk must identify the questions and answer them. Answering those questions isn't exactly a swift process when using recycled materials. An idea may leap from a specific, defining part, but the rest of the vision awaits its necessary parts for completion. "The Lobster," an impressive marionette measuring 48 by 38 by 16 inches, began with the gleaming red shin guard that Stasiuk envisioned as a lobster's tail. It took up residency in an "idea bag" for two years while the other pieces were gathered.

More influential on his work than the work of other artists is the nostalgic nature of his assemblage materials. Part of what Stasiuk is playing to, he says, "is a certain style of vintage toys, like 1940s vintage," and that can include board games, handmade walking toys, wooden tops, and uncountable other discoveries unearthed at flea markets.

Independent of one another, myriad spindles, dominoes, and beads all bring with them unknown pasts, entire lives before they arrived in Stasiuk's studio. Stasiuk's task is to match the past to the future. "Working with found stuff means that the materials I'm working with have a history to them. Nostalgia has an element to what I'm doing. Nostalgia can include leisure activities, such as croquet," he says, digging through the Croquet/Mallets/Handles bin and triumphantly grinning, lifting a mallet up in the air. "Some of them have a nice taper and shape to them. Leg-like."