This is a Zine I just finished, after spending an extensive amount of time with Richart. The physical form of this piece is obviously a very different format, but it contains the same writing and pictures. I decided to take advantage of the technological tools offered on the internet, and supply the piece with audio clips from the interviews I conducted, so, as you read, you will find mp3 players throughout the piece. The track order is the order you should listen, so at the first audio box, listen to the first track, the second box, listen to the second and so on. In the physical form of this, the audio boxes are written, but, as you will hear, Richarts voice is very entertaining and essential to his overall character.
TWENTY SIX YEARS AGO, RICHART MADE a decision, “I was doin artwork, but I was on my motorcycle. I’m a motorcyclist so I stay on a motorcycle all the time and just piddled with art. And before I got on the motorcycle, I almost crossed myself. I’m not catholic. I almost kneeled down, I didn’t, I prayed in my mind, are you gonna be an artist or not? Just say yes or no now and get it over with and get on a motorcycle and get going! Well I’m still a motorcyclist, that meant I would have to give up that to be an artist, cause when I said I do, that meant art came first, motorcycling came second. Well, I thought, I’m not gonna try it cause that’s not what I’m after. I’m after yes or no. Do you want to do it or don’t? And I said yes, and that meant all the difference in my life.” and the Art Yard began.
Richart is a seventy six year old man who lives in Centralia, Washington. As you drive into Centralia you are confronted by Richart’s yard, exploding with sculptures made of what looks like trash. As you near, you may notice the exterior walls decorated with deteriorating Styrofoam and metal. You may see a mobile spinning slowly, built with old bicycle rims and plastic bowl propellers. There may be reflectors draped over archways built out of rebar, or plastic colored balls nailed to chipped wood. At the entrance, there is a plethora of open signs, directing you to the entrance. The signs read: Open, Free, 1-3 Everyday, Welcome, and No Smoking. If you follow the signs, you will find the entrance, where you enter into Richart’s Wonderful Yard.
I first came to Centralia to meet Richart after hearing of him from a friend. As I neared his yard I was intimidated by the complexities of its form. I stumbled in not sure what to look at, or where to go. The whole yard was filled with magnificent sculptures assembled with a variety of materials. There was metal, Styrofoam, rope, wood, glass, plastic, rubber and much, much more. I noticed his sculptures connecting and creating a maze of pathways, winding in and out of each other. I noticed makeshift alcoves, illuminating the art inside, but mostly I noticed the theme of deterioration in his work. The white washed wood was chipping and fading, the metal was rusting, the Styrofoam was growing mold, and the plastic was losing its color. Everything had an archaic/apocalyptic tone, like it was the ruins of a modernist extinction. I wandered around the yard shyly. I felt as though I had fallen asleep and was intruding on someone else’s dream.
Only a few minutes after arriving, I heard a dog barking behind me, and I turned to see an old, callused man walking my way, “Oh, well you’ve already seen the front, come here, let me show you what I’ve been workin on. Come on, it’s in the back.” He walked away, tugging his little black dog along, “Come on Sally.” I followed him confused. He spoke to me as though he already knew me, and I had been in his yard for hours. He had not introduced himself, or inquired into who I was, but I followed him any way and was led into his back yard. “Oh look at this! Isn’t it wonderful? I’m just now workin on this one. These are the crosses.” I looked at the crosses, but felt a bit awkward for not having introduced myself.
“My name is Mark.”
“ Hello, my name is Richart.”
“Richart?”
“Yeah. I was born with the name Richard Terry, but you take the T in Terry and knock the D out of Richard, and you’ve got Richart!”
After spending only a half an hour with Richart, I was roused by his eccentricity and dedication for his work and was compelled to continue visiting. I went to see the Art Yard numerous times over the next couple weeks, and every time, I found Richart working on something new. He would lead me around his yard aimlessly, highlighting different sculptures, rushing from one to the next in a train of consciousness. He didn’t know where he was going, but it seemed like every sculpture would remind him of another, and another, until he decided it was time to stop talking and get back to work.
I was inspired by Richart. Moved by his diligence and enthusiasm and I knew I wanted to maintain a relationship with him. I decided to inquire farther into his life, and learn more about his motivation, and unique style. I wanted context. I wanted to learn about his life, so I visited him frequently. Most of my visits were informal, each involving a tour and maybe some photographs, I even spent a day with him making art, but I also sat privately with Richart and recorded two substantial interviews. It took time for Richart to remember me, but slowly he remembered my face, then my name, and our time spent together seemed natural. Our interviews were relaxed and conversational, and I now consider him a friend.
“Where were you born?”
“Yakima. Mhm. That’s in Washington. Right in the center. Ellensburg is the center, but Yakima and Ellensburg are close together, you know, like Sahalis and Centralia. There not that close, but there in the center of the whole state, you don’t have to be too close to be in the center. They are the center.”
“Did you grow up there?”
“Yeah, I went there first – I graduated there in highschool so I had that much interest in the area, but the four years in high school were in different schools, so you see how I move around. I move around because I’m with my mom, and my mom doesn’t take care of me; I’m boarded out to people. I’m really like, if you want the poor story, I’m like the little orphan, but it does hurt when your parents peel off from you and your left with other people.”
“Was it boarding schools?”
““What happened to your mother?”
“She was around, but she just couldn’t take care of us, you know there’s a, uh, there’s a place in your life where you just have to do things. Well she had to do that, but it doesn’t make any sense to her children. I have a sister, but we were both boarded out. So its, it’s the rough child hood, the not so fun to be in a new school each year. You don’t like that, you like- Ahh I knew when I graduated I was kind of a loner – and ended up like this, its okay to be a loner, but I’m going to die being a loner. I don’t gravitate to friendships and people, I gravitate to this artwork and the artwork has paid off.”
Um they put me in a school play
with the little third graders.
I didn’t know what to put ‘em in
or dress em in,
so I put em in a
in a paper sack,
a big one,
cut a hole out of the top
and put a target on em
and this was before target schools
or target stores
but I mean
that was a stupid costume
and a stupid art teacher
doing,
you know
art.
RICHART WAS AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL teacher for ten years. “I taught third grade. You treat third graders just the way you get ‘em. I was a teacher that learned that third graders bring frogs to school and you don’t know what to do with frogs.”
I spoke to Richart about his participation in college, but whether Richart started teaching after graduating college was unclear to me:
“Did you graduate college with a degree?”
“Yes masters.”
“So after college you started teaching.”
“In a way. I, the first year was uh, they needed teachers they took me, I only had three years of college.”
“So you were teaching before you graduated college.”
“Oh yes.”
“So you were going to school and teaching?”
“No, just teaching. I quit school because I didn’t have money for school. They were paying me to teach, I thought hey this is a better deal, so I taught, and uh, I got paid for it.”
“How long did you teach?”
“I taught ten years in a public school and two years at Olympia. Now I started movin around, because I’m used to movin around. I start sayin ‘Hey! If you don’t like me and I don’t like you, I’m gonna move on.’ And so I move on, but I get into worse situations, you know it’s not always the best idea to move. It might be too good to stay there and face the music. Mmm.”
Richart’s style of teaching did not suit public school systems, and he found himself in trouble more often than he liked. “Well, the one that I quit up in Sequim, it was dangerous, I was working the class was quite- there was lots of noise, from the work, so you know it was a noisy classroom, but there's no talking. I was trying that. And it was working. But we didn't hear the fire alarm. It was just an exercise, but it doesn't make any difference. Fire alarm is fire alarm. We were working and somebody come and - "Hey! There’s a fire alarm going, get the class out!" So we got the class out. Now, later on, just to solve my conscience the bell wasn't really that close to our classroom. You may have not heard it even if I was teaching, but I thought it was because of the way I was teaching and how I was so interested in the class that I didn't even hear the fire alarm. So, I understand the dangers, and if people said anything to me it was- it would upset them, that I didn't go out with the classroom during a fire. Even though it’s just a mock fire. It’s a fire alarm. It’s a fire drill, go out. So, your stuck with something that you shouldn't have done it, it happened, you can justify it, but it wasn't worth it. I thought, get out of teaching. Then I learned later, since I taught ten years, that the real good teachers get out of teaching in seven years. So I'm just three years too late, or two years too late. You know what I'm saying?”
Richart finally made the decision to stop teaching when he concluded teaching was implausible with such large class sizes, “After ten years. I knew that I wasn’t going to be a teacher where you gave me twenty-five students. You’re a disciplinarian. I wanted to be part of the class; I wanted that from day one. I knew that. I wanted to be a third grader when I was in third grade teaching. I wanna be part of the classroom. I don't want to be a teacher, I wanna be a student. And they say, well, we're not gonna pay ya to be a student. Well why not? Why don't you pay people just to, you know I can still run a classroom by being in the class. I'm more part of it then being out here and being just a lip going. I can be up at the head of the class and I can have control of the class and I can do everything you expect of me, but they're not learning the way I want them to learn. I want em to learn the hard way. On your own.”
After quitting teaching Richart spent ten years away from teaching and away from art “I didn’t do anything, didn’t do any art, thought, ‘Hey listen that doesn’t pay off I’m not gonna do that, I’m just gonna be a manual laborer, and, uh, I’ll work for anybody even with out pay.’ I wanna work. I’m a work-a-holic. I love to work.” He found a job at Yard Bird’s, the world’s largest general store in the world at the time, “You know how you get to be a big store, you have cheap wages, but I was worker, I don’t care. I like to work.” After a short time at Yard Bird’s, Richart was offered promotions, but he was not interested in the responsibility, so he declined the offer and quit, but a week later he returned hearing that the janitor’s position was open. “A week later I went back and said ‘Hey, I heard that the janitor is leaving, could I have his job?’ and they say, ‘Yeah.’ So I went right back to work with them. They weren’t dissatisfied with me, and I wasn’t dissatisfied with them. I like working for people and I’m honest, and I just love working, and janitor is just fine, nobody tells janitors what to do, they just do it.” He worked as the janitor for thirty years, until he finally quit, and moved into Centralia, where he started The Art Yard. “Without work I’m just nothing. I have to have the work, now its artwork. Its still work.”
“One day I was out on the playfield and there was snowing and we were building igloo. And I just kept building igloo, and kids were, you know, were helping me and everything, and the tardy bell didn’t mean a thing to me. I didn’t go back in. I thought I was the teacher and they were the students. Well I found out that I am not the teacher that you thought I was, I got on the carpet and got reamed out. Now I thought the kids got away with everything and I took all the blame. Hey we were both out there enjoying ourselves, well we were coming up on the igloo and the top was gonna be, we didn’t know we could put a top on the igloo. And that was the hard part. Eh you can build the sides and come in a little, but hey hey hey, as it gets up here it kinda likes to crumble. There’s a secret to the igloos and the igloo people know it. Eskimos know how to build ‘em, cause you build a center block and you put a center block up there, have somebody hold it up there, and pick up the snow and it works. But without the center block, you don’t build arches, you don’t build igloos, you don’t do anything in life until you know about the center, it holds everything together. Arches, igloos, you know?”
“So you built an igloo and it collapsed and you got in trouble or something? What happened?”
“Well because we stayed out after the tardy bell.”
“Oooh.”
“Oooh. You see I am pushing authority. I don’t like authority. You can tell that when you’re here. I don’t like anybody telling me anything. You tell me my fences are too high, I tell ya, hey, my fences start where yours say stop, and they say seven foot here, and I start at seven foot and go up, fourteen feet.”
IT WAS MY FOURTH TIME VISITING Richart, but I still roamed around the yard aimlessly, noticing new materials, new sculptures, and new paintings. On this particular visit I noticed a sign hanging above the front fence, which read “Five or Less.” The sign was painted wood, with Styrofoam letters popping off the black surface. It was tied to long pieces of rope, hanging from a PBC pipe, which stretched between two trees. The sign hung on the ropes along with a surplus of Styrofoam balls and metal bowls turned upside down. I stared up at the sign as Richart spoke of another sculpture, but I interjected, pointing to the sign, asking, “What does that mean?”
“Oh that, the secret to that is, you can use any material you want, but then you gotta think of cost. And the minute you think of cost, what’s the cheapest thing out there? Its something that people throw away. And they throw it away in volumes. I can get anything I want, any size I want, any time I want.”
“But what does five or less mean?”
“There’s really nothing to it, but its five dollars or less, and its five hours or less. I put some limits on it, and I think that Jackson Pollock, and uh, Picasso, and all of ‘em, uh, spend a little bit more time, and a little bit more money, I’m ready to get up to the plate with five dollars or less and five hours or less, that’s where my goal is. So I say to you, Jackson Pollock, and Picasso, can you find materials for five dollars or less? Here let me show you something.”
We headed over to a part of a fence that had two sculpted faces above framed pieces of deteriorating carved Styrofoam. 
One of the faces was wood, and the other was Styrofoam. “People love that Styrofoam face, they’re always taking pictures of it, but they never take a picture of the other one, and it hurts my feelings. I like the wooden one.” I looked at both the faces briefly and enjoyed both, but held that opinion, changing my attention to the hanging reflectors above me, and the erect crosses behind me, then I looked at the decorated bicycle in the corner, and the plastic bowl propeller, spinning by the hub of a bicycle wheel in the distance.
“Richart, there is just so much here. How did this all begin?”
“I just made one thing and then made another and didn’t get rid of the one thing. Hahaha. I just kept addin! Yeah I just kept makin things. I don’t want to get rid of em, I’m makin em! I’m makin em! I like makin em! And whether you like em or not, I don’t really care too much about that, although when I make em they want to say, ‘I love you’ to anybody that looks at em, because I think they’re lovely. I think everything I do is neat, so I just keep doin it. And when I don’t like it, I like to change it, because I’m in control. Not you or anybody else. You know?”
“Well does the city give you problems? I mean your fences are so high, and your yard has so much in it.”
“Ah, the city would give me trouble, but they have a bad habit of leaving Friday, early, for a three day weekend. When they leave, I start workin. When they come back Monday, it’s in, its painted, they don’t even notice it, you know what I mean, because it looks like its been here before, and if its been here before and nobody’s said anything, why say anything now. So they don’t say anything and I get away with it, and I’ve gotten away with it for thirty years, so I know how to work the city, and the city knows how to work me. They don’t come around. Why don’t they come around? And maybe they’d even like the place, but they don’t, and that hurts. You know it hurts both ways. They don’t care about me, and I don’t really care about them and their rules, you know, their rules would pull me down.”
WE SAT UNDER A CANOPY RICHART HAD built as I interviewed him. We were maybe an hour in when I realized my voice recorder’s battery had died. I picked it up, and looked at the screen, and Richart stopped talking, “Did it stop?”
“Yeah, the battery died!”
“The battery died!”
“Would it be okay if I ran to the store real quick and picked up a new battery. I could be back in less than five minutes.”
“Oh of course, as long as you are back before three, cause once it’s three I am stopping.”
I sprung to my feet and jogged to my car, jumping in and speeding off to the gas station down the street, where I bought new batteries. When I returned to Richart’s, I noticed a car parked out front, but I hurried past and into the front yard, not finding Richart, so I turned around and darted into the back. I found Richart at the far corner of his yard showing an elderly man and his wife the fort. “You see if I climb up here- come on Sally, you come up too- and close this door,” he pulled his dog into the fort and slid a piece of particle board over the entrance, “No one knows I’m up here!” The elderly man laughed and clapped as Richart climbed down. “You know one guy said, he’s seventy two and still building farts! Oh! I thought, oh that little snot! What was he thinking when he said that publicly, but then I read it! Forts! Forts and farts! The O looked like an A, a lowercased A!” We all laughed and Richart led us back toward the coliseum.
As we walked the elderly man turned to Richart and spoke, “Now I’m going to ask you a question that has been asked thousands of times: How did you get started? I mean why and how?
“I just said I’m going to be an artist. Just said it.” He continued, explaining how he used to be a motorcyclist, “I got on the motorcycle everyday, but one day made the decision of becoming an artist.”
“You and Robert Persing, the guy who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”
“Yeah, yeah, I was on motorcycles all the time. I could ride, I could do wheelies. Hehehe. Come on, let me show you something out front.”
On the way to the front yard the old man commented on the coliseum. “You know, I love the deterioration of this work. It looks like the ruins of an ancient city. But, you couldn’t have designed- you couldn’t have visualized this to begin with.”
Richart smiled, “No, no, no, a day at a time. Twenty-six years of it, and never looking back.” He continued walking toward the front, exhibiting different sculptures along the way, and the elderly man followed with plenty of questions and observations, eager to converse. “You know, in all honesty you have to be crazy at some point to embark on projects like this, uh, a degree of insanity is requisite for building things like this, and building really unique things. Just like the guy who built the Watt’s Towers. Do you know-”
Richart turned to me and enthusiastically conveyed, “He’s still asking me questions. He asks more questions than you do!”
I like art to send me.
When I see it
I want to feel love.
And a lot of things I do
even when they’re good
don’t give me
the thrill of victory.
I want really good art.
I understand Picasso
Matisse
I know you boys
Jackson Pollock
I know all of you.
I know how good you are.
Okay.
I can be
almost
as good as you are.
“OH COME LOOK AT THIS!” I FOLLOWED Richart through the coliseum, as he pulled Sally along by a leash, “Come on Sally, oh please stop that barking, you know I hate it when you bark. I’ll put her in the basement if she keeps it up.” Richart led me to a wooden table, decorated with Styrofoam chunks and covered with fake food on hubcaps and metal plates. Plastic wine glasses were turned upside down and scattered around the table, and everything was sprayed with a coat of white paint. 
“This is the dinner table.” Richart explained, and look at this.” He held up a bowl filled with rusty nails, and a serving spoon stuck in them, as if the metal was prepared to eat. “I had Janie over the other- well a month ago and she did this. She is five years old! We can’t do this. Picasso, once said, he wanted to be more child like. That was his goal. Somebody asked him that same question, you know. And I thought well, if that’s good enough for Picasso that’s probably good enough for me. I think he's right, I think everybody tries that, but only five year olds can get it. I saw a church done by a little girl, five years old, and that church is better than any church I've ever been in, and that includes cathedrals.
“Wait, a church? A church was built by a five year old?”
“Unhu . . .yep . . .”
“An actual church?”
“Yeah, you know it’s a church because it's got a cross at the top of it you know?”
“But how big is it? People actually go into it?”
“It's bout'... give you inches, it's bigger than a foot but not two foot.”
“Ok, so not like an actual-”
“No, and it's kind of a crooked church, and it's kind of like a church that all of us belong to. You know. It's not a perfect, level, square, like what I would do. And it's so good and it's - every time you see it everybody should know, that’s the church you should go to. You shouldn't even ask the question, should I believe in church or anything. You better go to that church because I know you've sinned. I know you need this kind of church. I thought, oh, where was everybody else in class including me? So I had that little church here and would tell it to people, it's the best piece I've got on the property. And I had it in a glass case at one time. Oh I did a lot of things with it, and just the other year, about a year ago, it just fell apart. You know, I mean, I finally got rid of it. But for about ten years, of at least half of the years I taught, I taught twenty-two years, I'd say eleven years I had that church always as my corner stone.”
“What do you mean you taught for twenty-two years? Did you teach here?”
“Yeah I gave lessons here.”
“Not anymore though?”
“Not anymore.”
“Tell me about those.”
“Well those started and um, right immediately my wife said, ‘No one is comin in the house to use the bathroom,’ and I thought, well, that will stop the workshops, because everybody has to go to the bathroom. Can’t use the house, you know, I’m not gonna have them do it in the yard, so, there was a solution. Within a block we have a little store, a convenience store, and there’s Goodwill two blocks away, and you don’t even need the key for that one, you can just walk in it and use the bathroom. I thought hmm, okay so here’s the lesson kids, the first thing, you gotta use these bathrooms, not this one. And that little joke, right there, is what bonded our class together. It was using the bathroom. Not using the hacksaw blade and the Styrofoam. Not being with the teacher that becomes a student. There was a lot of things that maybe bond people together, but the old bathroom trick worked. Some of them I usually had to go, maybe every other workshop, but one day I went to class and I forgot to go to the bathroom, and I said you don’t have a choice today, you’re all comin’ with me, I have to go to the bathroom before we can start this workshop. Hahaha. That was funny. That was neat. That was human.”
“So you taught more than one class though right?”
“No. Just one class a day.”
“Was it the same people the whole time?”
“Uh, no, it wasn’t the same people. Every time it was workshop, the only thing about workshops is they’re fifty-five minutes long. They never were an hour long. I could have taught more than one workshop, but every- almost every other day there would be a workshop set up and it lasted, like I said, fifty-five minutes.”
“What would you teach?”
“Art. Yeah just what I’m doin. I don’t teach anything but what I’m doin. Kids you wanna be like me, take up the same tools I’m usin and copy. We stuck with Styrofoam. Students and Styrofoam never hurt themselves. But I’m not gonna talk. I thought, no, no, no talking. The talking is getting in the way of even these five. Don't let em talk, but communicate. God, if you wanna say something, you need something? Do you want me to say something, about your work or something? Then write it up, and if you don't, just keep working. You'll figure it out, you're on your own.
“So, if someone needed to communicate with you, you would have them write it down and hand it to you?”
“Sure, I'd Write back to you. Sure, sure. No talking.”
“And that would enable people to keep working.”
“KEEP WORKING! Figure out your own problems.”
“You just gave them the tools and you’d work together?”
“Yes. No talking.”
“Why don’t you talk?”
“Because talking interferes with your work. And I’m not going to interfere with your work. You wanna be like me, look at me, if you want or just do it. When the fifty-five minutes is up and everybody has to stop, everybody was in there for fifty-five minutes and in an instant everybody knows whose number one. Always the five years old. You can't- you'll never go wrong on that. Put a five year old in any class and he'll out do any adult and any teenager.
“Why do you think that is?”
“I think it's because they're not programmed, they're not really thinking. As you get older people criticize what you do. And criticism is probably the main thing. So then you try and be better, which is, if I do it and people criticize I'm not going to do it any more, and you give up. Five year olds aren't interested in giving up. They just started. They're doing it for the first time, and that's what they like.”
RICHART FOUND A TASSEL WHEN HE showed me The Three Doors, “These are The Three doors. I just saw three doors and thought of The Three Stooges and thought, oh! wouldn’t it be nice- I had a triangle out there and I was thinking, triangle, if I put three doors in a triangle, they would hold up each other, you know, the casings on each one would be- and it would be very- it wouldn’t be, um, um, weak. It wouldn’t be wobbly. You know what I mean. It has a lot of structure, so it has a lot of strength by being the three doors. If it was four doors they would have the kind of wobbly effect. You could push on one and push the other over. Domino effect. Three doors you can’t do it. Oh! Look at this a tassel! Well I have to stop talking now, but here, let me give you tassel before you leave.”
“What are the tassels?”
“Well come here, I’ll show you.” We headed over to the front, and at the entrance there was a rack, with dozens of hanging tassels. They were made with metal from a hangar and frayed, colored rope taped to the ends. The metal was bent so you could hang them in various places. “These are the tassels. Now you take one and hang it anywhere in the yard, but make sure I do not see. You can hang it high or low, naughty or nice. I don’t care. Just make sure I don’t see it.”
“What are they for?”
“I want a little bit more participation than just comin in, and I thought, why not vote? Why not- you know, what do you like best? And I thought of the tassels. And then I got to thinking, I don’t want two tassels on anything. Two is a wasted vote. Why don’t you do it on one? And when I see it- it’s when I see it, if I don’t see it there still out here and there’s some right around us, if we start lookin there like Easter eggs, we can find one, and that’s kind of fun to do that sometimes. Sometimes I come out and look for em. I want clean out house and I start lookin and I don’t think of anything else and I find lots of em. When I don’t look, I don’t see any of em, I just go right by em. But when I see em I put the hammer down, I walk with it: reverence. And because I’m not with you and talking all the time, I’m not talking, but I’m- oh, ooh, hang it up, and the same reverence is comin back to my hammer. Until I pick up the hammer, I have a moment, where I’m going and coming back that I really see things, really feel things, have a moment that’s better than anything I’m doin, and just think, thank god I thought of that one, that was a good thing. Tassels, make em important.” He hung the tassel on the rack, and smiled, “Here take one, and go hang it.”
“Before I hang it, what do you mean by reverence? Reverence for the moment or your work?”
“No. Its just a moment. Just a moment. Has nothing to do with the work. The thing with the work is how you hung it on the work. That’s interesting. That’s interesting about people. Some of em have no sense. Even though they liked the piece, they hang the tassel like they’re important, and that’s all right. That’s all right to think you’re important, ‘cause we all are important, but maybe the artwork is more important than you are and if it is, then be careful how you put it on there. Otherwise, not saying you deface, but you’re coming close, you’re comin real close. Now I say naughty or nice, you can pick either one. I like naughty, I like building farts better than forts. But I have to see it real. I don’t make it up. Naughty or nice I don’t make up. High or low I don’t make up. I’ve had ‘em so high, this is the secret, couldn’t reach ‘em. So I thought, get a stick, I’m smarter than you think, but it took me so long to get the big stick, you know for the- the big stick right then I understood where the tassel was. When I got the big stick, I was walkin around the yard, ‘Where is the damn tassel?’ and it got to me! Where is the tassel! So, the tassels out there, and I had a reward! I said to people, ‘There’s a tassel out there that upsets me a little, because it’s so high, if you find it, I give you a dollar.’ Well, they didn’t find it. They didn’t- they might have seen high ones, and I said no that’s not it, I know the high ones when I see it. Okay, so its up here, when the tree was cut down, its up that high, its up there, and I didn’t see it, but one night the street light shown on it and it come in that kitchen window right over there, and I say, ‘Is that a moth out there or what is that?’ and I looked and, ‘What is that?’ and I went from the street light to what was doing that, and realized, it’s the tassel! And I beat it out of that kitchen, its night! and I climb up there and get the tassel, and I got the dollar! Oh geese a true story and it’s- why do you think tassels are important? That one was important, because it got to me and I solved it, not you. Ah hell, I’d a been mad at you if you would’a solved it. You got the dollar. That hurts. Okay, I’m not given out dollars, but I give you one cause you found it. Its worth a dollar to me to find it, but I would’a rather found it myself, because I’m searching for it. If I was just a joke or something I would have left it there, but it wasn’t there, I’m not a joke.”
I looked at the tassel in my hand, and glanced around me, looking for a perfect spot to hide it. I walked around for a few minutes, overwhelmed by the amount of worthy locations, but as I went, I noticed that I was looking at the yard differently. In looking for a worthy space to hang the tassel, I focused more intently on every part of Richart’s art, noticing both the entirety of each sculpture, but also the intricacies that made it up. Parts of the yard were revealed to me that I had never taken the time to notice in my previous visits. I noticed how easy it is to enter Richart’s yard, skimming his artwork frantically, inundated by the great deal of sculptures, occupying every foot of the yard. I found a suiting location for my tassel, scanned my surrounding areas to make sure that Richart was not watching, and hung it. I moved away, quickly, making sure Richart would not see me, and found Richart around the corner picking up his hammer and returning to work. “Well I hung it Richart and I couldn’t believe how differently I saw the yard. I just slowed down and-”
“OH, OH COME IN HERE WITH ME.” Richart led us into a small room with walls made completely out of glass. The glass was the kind you put in your shower, so you cannot see through it, you can only see an outline of what’s beyond it. Inside this room, he had wires hanging from the ceiling. Attached to the wires were brightly colored plastic balls. This color was surprising, because almost everything in Richart’s yard is painted white. “You see, I don’t like color, its too telling. Too easy. But come look at this! Come in here! You see, this glass. You can’t see through it. That’s why they use it in showers, you know? You see you wouldn’t want to put your butt up against the glass though, because then you can see it as clear as day! You see?” He pressed a colored ball from outside against the window, making it much more clear. “Will you step outside for me?” He directed us to the other side of the glass. “Oh you look so beautiful!”
I was enthused by Richart’s shower doors, and I enquired further into them in a later visit.
“Well, those are shower doors, and if your behind a shower door, you become distorted, so you can be naked in the shower and people can be in the room with you and still not see your nakedness. And that’s kinda neat. I’m so close to you, I can almost smell you, but I can’t see you. And all you’re concerned about is that I see you. The smell, you would smell me as if I was out, and uh, touch, well that eliminates touching. You can’t, you know – there’s no way your going to get to me, but you can’t see me clearly, and that’s all I’m concerned about.”
“You don’t like it so obvious?” I asked.
“That’s right. Yes.”
“I know you talk about Picasso, and other artists who are more abstract”
“Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah you really can’t see the people, but you see em better than you’d seen em, if you saw em currently.”
“So you like it to be less easy to grasp, but it gives you a presence?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you like about that?”
“Because it’s another way of seeing. Everything we see, uh, everything that goes by here on Harrison, is- everybody sees it that way. They see it like it’s a car. They don’t see the car is blurry. If they see the blurries, there not supposed to be out there on the car driving anyway, but there’s an interesting part about, that seeing things through a prism, or through colored glasses. That’s an interesting way to look at the yard, its just different. I like to be different. I’m eccentric. I’m very eccentric.”
“You showed me some of your arts deterioration processes-”
“Yes you’re very observing. Thank you.”
“Everything I’ve done,
which I like to do,
and I’m a work-a-holic,
and an eccentric,
but nature comes in
sunlight, wind and rain
and works everything over
and changes it
and always changes it for the better
and it makes me mad,
inside and outside,
because I made it.
I want credit,
but half of the credit goes
because it’s aged
and its weathered
and it has on a life all on its own.
So when I go around looking
I enjoy my own self,
because I see myself
through other glasses.
I see myself through the shower doors.
I don’t see myself clearly,
but I see myself better.”
“I’m better at my artwork, than I am at my interviews. I’m better at my artwork, than I am complying to your set of standards in Centralia. What you want me to be, everybody else is, everybody else is in line. How come I’m not in line? I don’t like to be in line. I don’t want to be in the line. I don’t wanna be like you. If I wanted to be like you, I would have it all gone. When I die, I want to be like you. I want to be dead. I want this stuff to be gone, and I wanna be the one that did it.”
TWO WOMEN GOT OUT OF THEIR CAR, outside of Richart’s and walked apprehensively toward the entrance. They noticed the numerous open signs, with their molding letters, and the flowerpots filled with garden hose stems and swimming noodle petals. They gazed at the “No Smoking” sign, and the yo-yo’s hanging with wooden beads on string from the Japanese maple tree. I walked past them quickly, nodding, as they gaped at the Styrofoam pillars leading them to the entrance, and I walked in, making my way through the maze of sculptures, in search of Richart. He was nowhere to be found in the front, so I turned around and hastily walked toward the back, As I approached the entrance I found the two women timidly making their way into the yard. I watched them scan the larger sculptures, and abandon their cascading astonishment, by looking at a Barbie formation, standing erect, with painted faces and cut hair. “Oh look at this! Barbies!” I passed them, saying hello, and they looked at me with perplexed eyes, dumbfounded by the complexities surrounding them. I walked out of the entrance and preceded through the back gate, which reads, “GATE CLOSED AT ALL TIMES.” I patrolled the Coliseum, and made my way toward the material tables, but Richart was nowhere in sight. Must be walking Sally, I thought, but I wandered back toward the entrance, and through the front yard, passing the massive chandelier of draping numbers and bicycle rims, then the shower doors and crosses, before turning and seeing Richart talking to the two women in front of a sculpture he was working on. He saw me coming and walked toward me, “Oh hello.” I gave him a hug and explained that I brought him some pictures I had taken of his yard. “Oh great. You brought them all though right? Not just the good ones? You know I want to see them all, it shows me how my yard looks in all ways. Not just the good ways.” I pulled out the stack of pictures explaining that I had brought them all, and he sifted through them. “Oh! Some of these are real good. Hey, come with me, I’ll show you what I’ll do with ‘em.” He walked past me leaving the two women gaping at his unfinished sculpture, but as I followed him, they followed me, and we all headed toward the entrance.
As we left the front yard the two women commented on Richart’s work. “You know I really like what you’ve done to the place,” one said, “Oh look at that. Those are sunglasses.”
“Oh and look there. Yo-yos!” the other added, “You know you are very crafty.”
Richart smiled briefly, “Thank you! Oh before you leave, let me show you what I’ve made. Come here.” We followed him onto his front porch, where he reached underneath a small table and pulled out a plastic Tupperware container, with a stack of postcards inside. “I just had them made. You see that’s me on the front. Ron made ‘em down the street and I’m gonna give them to all my visitors. So here’s one for you two, but I only give one to every group, so you have to decide who gets it.” The women smirked, and thanked Richart, as we walked away from them and into the backyard. “Okay, let me show what I’ll do with these pictures.”
He brought me behind his house and down the stairs into the basement. As I walked in, he turned on a light, which shined upon a room that was decorated similarly to the art yard, but was furnished with framed paintings hanging on all sides of the walls. “You see this is what I do with ‘em, I make collages.” I looked closer at the painting he was pointing at, and noticed, underneath dabs of paint and tape, there were clippings of photographs of his yard. There were maybe ten paintings hanging in the room we stood in, but after glaring at a few, Richart requested that I follow him, “I’ll show you where I work.” He brought me into the next room, turning on the light while I walked in, and once the room was illuminated, I saw Richart’s desk, where he worked, but also stacks and stacks of paintings filling the room. “Well, these are all the ones that I have done.” He walked to the nearest stack and flipped one over. It was another collage. “I just like doin collages, you know, I just clip pictures from magazines, or photograph’s people have given to me and I make them better.” I looked around the room and was astonished to see thousands of these collages and paintings stacked throughout the room. “What I do is, I get these picture frames, the ones that you can take the backs out of, and I will put new paintings in them and hang them up. I can always have different ones hanging.”
“Do you only hang them down here?” I asked.
“Oh no, I sometimes put them in galleries. Oh, here, let me show you, I am just now working on a show.” He led me into the next room, which also was covered with framed paintings on the walls. “You see these are the ones I’m workin on for the gallery in Centralia. I just go through the piles and find the ones I like, or make new ones, and put ‘em in these frames, and they’re ready.”
“How long do you work down here?” I asked, surprised, “I mean, this is a lot of work. How do you do all this, and the art yard?”
“I'm proud of the yard because I work on it daily, at night and at eight in the morning I'm out in the yard, before eight in the morning, from sun down to sun up I’m in here basically. And I get my sleep. When I'm not sleeping I'm working so, you know I’m a workaholic or, I love to work.”
How you gets germs is through the nose, the mouth, or the eyes. If you touch em with your hands, that’s the hard part. Try to break the habit. That’s what I'm workin on right now, not doing the art but trying to remember. Touch em with a Kleenex or - just don't touch em. But if you do touch em you have to not reward yourself but wash your hands- oh I'd be upset if I had to wash my hands cause I don't like to wash my hands. Well as long as they're dirty and I'm working I'm ok, just don't touch your lips, your nose or your eyes. Real hard to do, if you don't think so I'm working on it daily. I make it important that I work on it. Not continue doing the interview, not continue doing anything, but work on this is number one until you get it down. Maybe it'll take me ten thousand times but I'll bet I’ll get it down. Cause I'm working on it. If you don't work on it your not gonna- you know - your not gonna improve you'll probably go back to what you've been doin.
I VISITED RICHART ON A WEDNESDAY, after we made a decision to quit the interviews and do art together. He gave me a brief over view of what the day would look like when I left him in my last visit, but I arrived in Centralia anxious.
When I arrived, I found Richart working on the sculpture he had just started in my last visit, only two days previous. He collected and built a large quantity of windowsills, and he connected them in triangles, and then added more and more, constructing a large wall standing at about six feet, and stretching almost fifteen. When I left Richart in my last visit, he had only assembled the first triangle, but now there were almost fifty. “It looks great Richart!” I expressed, once I reached him.
He turned around with a smile, “Oh hello there. Yep, yep it’s lookin pretty good, I just put them all in triangles. Well, follow me, we’re gonna work in the back.” He lead me to his back yard, where he keeps all of his materials. He grabbed two hammers, and placed them down next to a pile of Styrofoam. “You see, you get a hammer and I get a hammer, you get some Styrofoam and I get some Styrofoam, you get a hacksaw, and I get a hacksaw . . . oh the glue!” I jogged over to a table piled with an assortment of materials and waded through them, pulling out a tube of caulking glue. “Oh damn, it’s all wet.” He brought the tube closer to me so I could see it. “You see, it got rained on and it’s too soft now. If I push it the tube will break. Well, I guess I’ll just have to cut it.” He picked up the hacksaw blade at his feet and sawed the tip of the tube off, revealing the glue inside. “This will work.” He picked up two tiles from a near by table and scooped a pile of glue on both. “Now, you get some glue, and I get some glue. You see, we’re equal!”
“Well today, we’re gonna make birds with this Styrofoam, and we’re not gonna talk, and we are goin to stop after fifty-five minutes. Do you have a stop watch?”
“I have a cell phone that has a clock.”
“Well, I guess that will do, oh wait, wait come look at this.” Richart turned jogging away from me and I followed him unsure where he was leading me. He stopped after a moment pointing to a clock that hung on a support beam. “We’ll use that.”
We walked back to our material piles, equipped with a hammer, three pieces of Styrofoam, glue, a hacksaw blade, tooth picks a pencil, and a notepad. “If you have any questions, just write it on here, and bring it to me, but no talking kid, remember that. If you want any more materials, just go over to those tables, I don’t care what you take, but make sure you leave at least one. Okay, you ready?” I shook my head and picked up my hacksaw blade and a my three pieces of Styrofoam, placing them on a small pedastool to my right. “Well before we start, we should make a platform for the birds to balance on.” He walked to his material table, finding two pieces of scrap wood and a few nails. “If you hammer a couple nails into a piece of wood and push the Styrofoam into the nails, it will balance.” He gave me a couple nails and we nailed them into the wood each taking one. “Okay you ready? What time is it?”
“It’s 2:00”
“Okay, well we will take a break at 2:15 for five minutes, then take another five minute break at 2:35, and finish at 2:55. Okay now, no talking.” And we started. I watched Richart pick up the largest of his three pieces of Styrofoam and start carving it with his hacksaw, so I followed his lead, picking up my largest piece and carving it’s edges. The first fifteen minutes, I watched Richart frequently, observing his technique for carving. He worked very fast, and I watched Styrofoam flakes explode into the air, covering his knees, but his cuts impeccable. I followed, trying to emulate his method, but my blade did not seem to slide through my block of Styrofoam as smoothly. Instead, it made annoying squeaks every time I dug the blade in. Richart took notice of this sound, and stood quickly coming to my side to show me, without talking, how he slid his blade across, to delicately shave its edges. I saw the difference; I was digging, making my cuts sloppy and deep, while he was sliding making a precise carve. I tried, and the result was much better. I was able to carve smooth round cuts, instead of jagged and deep cuts. As I put this technique into practice, I felt some raindrops fall onto my head. I did not take much notice of these drops and kept working, but as more rain fell, I noticed Richart moving his pile of materials underneath branches. He picked up his notebook and rapidly wrote on it, tearing the paper off the pad to hand it to me. The note read, If your glue gets too wet it won’t work. As I read his message, Richart jogged away from our workstation to check the clock. He returned a few seconds later holding two fingers in the air. I made a few cuts and started to see a bird’s head take form, but before I could focus in on its features, Richart announced, “Time’s up.”
During the five-minute break, the rain picked up into a pour, and Richart moved as far underthe branches as he could. “I don’t wanna be workin in this, but if you get under the branches its dry.” He gathered all his materials, then ran to check the clock. “Alright, fifteen more minutes, then we’ll take our last break.” The next fifteen minutes quickly went by. We worked without much notice of what each other were doing, and I noticed that our blocks of Styrofoam were taking shape and molding into birds. Richart wrote me a note that read, Use lots of glue or use toothpicks, conveying his technique of binding the Styrofoam together, and I found that the use of toothpicks worked the best for me. I started decorating my bird, paying more attention to detail than the actual shape, but before I knew it, the fifteen minutes were up, and I was nowhere near finishing. I felt nervous, and frustrated. What if I were not able to finish? How could anyone finish a sculpture in three sessions of fifteen minutes? But before I could inquire into these questions, Richart reminded me that it was time to start the last session.
I worked fast, running to the material counter to grab wooden beads, nails, string, and plastic forks. I watched Richart glue plastic forks to his bird, making attractive wings, and I imitated him, also adding dangling beads, attached to the birds head with string and nails, and two large bolts for eyes. I made some detail oriented cuts after adding the eyes, then stepped back, satisfied. As I stared at my bird, Richart ran to the clock. “Okay, put your hammer down. Times up.” I was astonished to have finished and glanced at my Styrofoam bird remembering that only fifteen minutes earlier I stared at this same slab of Styrofoam, wondering how the hell I could finish, but I did, and so did Richart. Richart’s bird was incredible. Its body was skillfully carved creating a very realistic body, but Richart’s unique aesthetic radiated through its second hand components. Richart walked to my side, giving me a hug, “That’s great Mark, it looks great, and now we get to paint them. Oh the kids loved this part. They would use whole cans on their sculptures! Hahaha.” He led me to a stack of spray paint and we chose the colors we wanted, settling on black, white and tan. Richart spent very little time spraying his bird, but I took my time, adding detail to the wings, and giving the body a solid color. As I finished, Richart stood beside me and said, “Now when you take this home, you need to find a nice place for it that’s outside. Make sure its exposed to the weather, and you can watch it really become art. Just make sure you leave it outside.” I promised I would and I thanked him offering to clean up, but he shook his head, “No, I always clean, you wouldn’t know where I’d want all this stuff anyway.” I stared at the random piles of tools and material stacked impulsively on his tables, and I agreed. I hugged Richart good bye, and left him as he picked up a golf ball sized chunk of concrete, “You see, I can use this, you would probably just throw it away.”
Bonus Material:
Influences:
Jackson Pollock
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