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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Monday, April 06, 2009
One Man's Trash ... is another man's treasure when it comes to papier-mache art
By Polly Summar
Journal Staff Writer
Talking to Rick Phelps can be as confusing as trying to pick your way through his paper-stuffed earthship home off N.M. 14.
The 52-year-old artist can carry on several conversations at once — all with the same person. But it seems more of a struggle for the listener than the speaker.
Why is that pig hanging from the ceiling and why is play money glued to its insides?
"Well, Sandy is Jewish," Phelps starts. "He especially thinks the pig is funny."
And who is Sandy?
"Oh, Sandy Besser, he's the one who commissioned it."
A flying pig?
"No, his challenge to me was that he wanted a chandelier over his dining table dealing with the financial collapse," said Phelps. "I thought about it all winter and two ideas came to me. One was a house of cards collapsing. The other was a giant piggy bank being broken apart by bulls and bears."
The pig itself is made of the paper used to wrap penny and quarter rolls. "I've never found anything I couldn't make some use of," said Phelps. Lining the bank's insides are lyrics like "The best things in life are free/But you can give them to the birds and bees/I want money/That's what I want ..."
Phelps also plans to give the pig tusks, a la the Arkansas Razorbacks, since Besser is originally from Little Rock, Ark. "I'm going to do a whole herd of bulls on top as a stampede," Phelps said, and he plans to incorporate cutouts from the pig in the shapes of circles of salami and strips of bacon.
Besser, a Santa Fe collector who hasn't seen Phelps' work in progress, said last week, "I seldom commission, because there are probably a handful of artists I have the faith in, but Rick is one of them."
Besser said he first saw Phelps' work some six or seven years ago and purchased a bulto-type piece at Ann Lawrence Antiques. "I was fascinated by the idea of working with scrap paper, and I purchased it. I got his number from Ann and called him. He said he'd get back to me and he never did. That's typical Ricky Phelps."
Phelps had another show at the Donkey Gallery in 2006 in Albuquerque. "I basically bought the show," said Besser. "There were seven or eight major pieces, mostly flying birds of one type of another."
Trying to describe or categorize what Phelps does has always been a problem — for other people. In New York, where he once lived and worked, "it was, 'Is it fine art or a craft?' " said Phelps. "Here, it's 'Is it folk art or fine art?' I can't be a folk artist because I went to art school. But it's not my job to define it."
And Besser said, "Why don't we just call him an artist?"
The hillbilly way
At first, what Phelps did came so naturally to him, and to his family, that no one thought of him as an artist. Born in Independence, Mo., to what he calls a "hillbilly" mother, Phelps said the hillbilly way of life was to make do from whatever was around. Not having much, her people still found ways to surround themselves with beauty and whimsy.
"My mother said all women helped with the field work during the summer, and all men helped with the mending during the winter, so I was taught to sew," said Phelps. "I've been making and selling things since I was 4. My first were sock animals at church and school bazaars." By 10, he had branched out to classic donkey piñatas and large papier-mache animals, from elephants to rhinos and giraffes for a miniature golf course at a church bazaar.
But tempered and shaped by art school, the hillbilly has come to look more hippie. Around his rural home, old bowling balls rest in the landscape, and old hubcaps line the dirt driveway to his house. A makeshift shrine of a thick cardboard cross, old silk roses and Mardis Gras beads greets visitors. At what looks like the entrance to his yard — but turns out to be the dirt roof over his house — stands an old trophy that proclaims: "4th Annual Six Wicket Croquet Tournament."
A giant ball of old green water hoses in the courtyard has been made into a fountain. But all that pales when it comes to the inside of Phelps' house. Paper chains drape across the ceiling, a massive pea pod hangs over the toilet in the bathroom, and a giant cholla tree sprouts from the refrigerator growing toys and plastic grapes and fake flowers.
In the living room, walking across the large braided rug made of plastic bags is difficult without feeling like one's soles have just picked up a scrap of plastic or two.
Piles of cardboard tubes and containers full of papier-mache spheres line the hall, and an entire room has been dubbed "The Room of No Recycle, No Return," stuffed with every kind of paper Phelps' friends donate to the artistic cause.
In his bedroom, Phelps proudly points out the foot-wide rubber band ball he started in second grade. A wall of Chinese joss paper rectangles, often used for ceremonies and prayers, is attached with wallpaper paste to one wall.
Paper over plastic
Using paper as an art form used to be ubiquitous, Phelps said. "At one point, almost every city had a papier-mache factory doing everything from clock faces to architectural details," he explained. "You know what took its place? Plastic."
Obviously, Phelps still prefers paper but has progressed a bit when it comes to the glue part. "I grew up using plain old wheat paste, which was prepackaged as wallpaper paste," he said. But while living in New York, he discovered methyl cellulose. "It's just plant cellulose. A lot of vitamin capsules are made of it. It's an archival bookbinders glue." It's also the only expensive part of his work: $48.95 for a 1-pound jar. Today, even though the public may have trouble categorizing Phelps' work, they clearly see it as art.
"I'm having a booth on opening night of the International Folk Art Music this summer," said Phelps. And he shows smaller boxes — a longhorn cow with a jackrabbit is a favorite — at Todos Santos in Sena Plaza and larger work at El Zocalo Gallery, part of Cafe Pasqual's, where his pieces range from prairie dogs for $95 to hanging creations like "Your Ad Here," a Nascar cowboy riding a rocket, for some $1,500. "It's stolen from the movie, 'Dr. Strangelove,' " said Phelps. "An old cowboy drops a bomb. This is a cowboy with ads all over his flight suit and the bomb."
His future goals? He'd like to have a studio: "But you have to sell a lot of piñatas to make enough money to build a studio."
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