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This summer, we are taking a look at some of the people who keep the arts alive in the Old Pueblo. Today: sound sculptor Glenn Weyant.

Glenn Weyant pulls out his portable recording equipment on the eastern edge of the University of Arizona campus and gets to work.

A found-sound artist, he places his recorder at the cement base of Athena Tacha's "Curving Arcades" sculpture and begins rapping softly on its split sheets of steel, using a mallet and the bottom end of a crutch he found on the bike path that runs along Aviation Highway.

Moving back, forth and in-between the work of art, he improvises a melody that is barely audible amid the barking dogs, bicycle squeals and roar of Thursday morning traffic rumbling past on North Campbell Avenue.

"When you are creating a sound portrait, the point is not to exclude anything," Weyant says, undeterred. "If there is traffic noise, you keep it rather than try to edit it out."

The end result, a multitracked, ambient mix of engine noises and metallic tones, is eventually added to Weyant's Web site, sonicanta.com, for the world to hear.

"Someone driving along the road can see ('Curving Arcades'), but they don't know what it sounds like," said the 45-year-old UA adjunct journalism professor. "When you make that sort of connection, it transforms the object into something else entirely."

Weyant has long considered Tucson a "sound city." What some might consider a terrible racket is music to his ears.

For more than a decade, the East Coast native has "played" structures and objects across Southern Arizona with his mismatched collection of bows and mallets.

"When you get a bunch of kids together they sing songs, bang on pots and pans, there is no right or wrong," Weyant said. "Somewhere along the line, we become adults and we start editing what we think is good or bad, right or wrong. These projects get rid of that dichotomy. You just have the opportunity to create something, explore the sounds."

Weyant began his exploration as a kid growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Weyant's parents gave him a refurbished drum set when he was in the eighth grade. But he was always more interested in playing the front steps of the family home.

"I liked the way it sounded, the staccato-ness of it," he said. "I loved the way the sound reflected off the other houses."

Weyant continued to experiment with found sounds through high school and while earning a degree in communications from Hofstra University in Long Island.

He and his friends were big audiophiles. When they weren't listening to Brian Eno's ambient "Music for Airports," they were creating their own instruments.

"One time, we had this huge metal tub, some fishing line and a wrench," he said. "When you filled the tub with water and spun the wrench, you amplified the tub and it made an amazing sound.

"We were constantly doing all these interesting sound collage projects."

Weyant began playing guitar and took up the alto saxophone shortly after moving to Tucson from Nantucket, Mass., with his wife, Jenniffer Funk-Weyant, in 1995.

But it wasn't until his daughter, Kestral, was born in 2003 that he took his passion for sound-sculpting to the next level.

He created the Kestral 920 in her honor, described as a hollowed-out piece of lumber mounted with random objects, including a dust pan, a satellite-dish mount, screws, wires, springs and bungee cords. The instrument created vibrations and tones that were then boosted, processed and broadcast.

"The tenor sax was making way too much noise in the house," he said. "I got serious about building an instrument that worked with microtones."

The Kestral led Weyant to explore other sonic opportunities.

In 2006, he gained national attention when he traveled to the Arizona border for an endeavor he would later call the "Anta Project."

Spending 10 hours in the summer heat, Weyant improvised songs by drumming against the border wall that divided Nogales, Sonora, from Nogales, Ariz.

He ran bows along barbed-wire fences, hooked mics up to shrines and gently tapped on discarded water jugs left in the desert for migrants.

Weyant uploaded samples to his site and threw a mix of tracks on CD for sale. He hoped his efforts would spread awareness.

"There was a real misconception of what I was seeing the U.S.-Mexico border to be like," he said. "I wasn't hearing stories about the number of migrants dying in the deserts. I thought I would tell the story journalistically with sound and images, a real avant-garde piece."

The online recordings drew in listeners from around the world. He was even featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

"For the most part it has been embraced," he said. "There is always somebody out there who will approach it with anger. They are in a mind-set that doesn't follow the idea of 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' It is more about walls and protectionism."

The Anta Project earned Weyant a cult following. These days, his Web site receives more than 9,000 unique hits a month.

Other projects, like his recording of a Honeywell electric fan at different speeds, mic'd from different angles, have been well received.

"People all over the world are members of the Tucson Electric Fan Appreciation Society," Weyant said with a laugh. "You get a certificate of appreciation with a gold seal on it. It is signed and you are in good standing for eternity."

Weyant isn't making much money off of his recordings, and all of that goes right back into equipment or the site's expenses. It isn't about money for him.

His big dream is to one day create an online "sound map" of Downtown with financial support from groups like the Tucson Downtown Alliance.

"Downtown is going to change dramatically in the coming years," he said. "We have construction, jackhammers, workers talking, trucks beeping. On Saturday nights, you have voices coming out of bars, people laughing, music. It is a rich tapestry, a sonic environment."