Mixed and Matched

Lupus Garrett gathers all kinds of things.

“I collect old photographs, junk, antiques,” the 64-year-old artist says.

Garrett even collects animals. He has cows, horses, sheep, pot-bellied pigs, donkeys, cats and a lone llama. Together they form Garrett’s “zoo” at his farm in rural Jamestown, southwest of Columbia across the Missouri River. He strives to acquire black and white animals that match his Dalmatian, Spot.

“They’re a riot,” Garrett says.

Garrett, who has a shaved head and wears glasses with thick, circular matte-black frames, collects so many things he’s able to run an antique shop three days a week on Jamestown’s Row Street. It is little surprise, then, that his findings make their way into his art.

His art is on display at an exhibition at the Boone County Historical Society. The exhibition began in late July and runs through Oct. 26. There, Garrett is exhibiting his works of mixed-medium art.

In one work, “Bill and Bob Cola,” Garrett has scanned and printed a photograph of two boys, dating from the early 1900s. The older boy wears a plaid, one-piece, short-legged suit and striped tube socks. He stares at the camera while the younger boy, perched cross-legged on a cushioned stool, appears indifferent to the lens.

Garrett has added a layer of transparency over the photo — yellow in the middle and red on the sides — reprinted onto canvas, and he has sewn images of hand-drawn Coke bottles and outlines of shapes, mostly circles and rectangles, on top of the print.

In an exhibition with 30 other pieces, most made with found objects on top of prints, a needle in the lower left corner of “Bill and Bob Cola” does not stand out to the casual observer.

But Garrett sees it at once as he passes by during a recent walk-through of the show.

“I didn’t mean to leave it there,” he says casually — and keeps on going, immediately picking up the thread of his own tales.

Souvenirs of those tales, such as magazine cutouts and letters, fill a green plastic binder at least three inches thick. Open the binder and the wafting smell of aging paper combines with a hint of cigarettes. The pages, some decades old, have faded to a light gold. This binder holds a lifetime of memories, yet its cover merely states “A Few Details About Lupus Garrett.”

For example, as an adult, Garrett adopted as his first name the name of his hometown, Lupus, which is north of Jamestown on the Missouri River. In fact, a map of the area shows that Lupus and Garrett roads run parallel to each other. The only son of three children to a crane operator and a housewife, he considers Jamestown, where he traveled to attend elementary and high schools, his second home. He spent a lot of time there, on his Aunt Madarine and Uncle Ralph’s farm. The farm is on land that has been in his family since 1832, and now he lives there.

Visiting his aunt and uncle was like visiting “a second set of parents,” Garrett says. Aunt Madarine taught fifth and sixth grade and wore a lot of brown.

“She liked that color for some reason,” Garrett says. “Later on, I did an art piece and called it, ‘Madarine Always Wore Brown.’”

Aunt Madarine also provided Garrett with art supplies and inspired his artistic side, and she helped fund his college tuition. When Garrett was young, she gave him oil and tempera paints, colored pencils and just about any other art material she could find. Aunt Madarine never had a favorite artist herself, but she was fond of realistic paintings, Garrett says. Whether at the farm or at his parents’ house in Lupus, she encouraged her nephew to paint and create art as often as he could.

In 1959, Garrett left Lupus to attend art school at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg. After three years at CMSU, he decided to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Again, Garrett left without a degree, dissatisfied with the classroom.

Garrett stayed in Chicago after leaving school and continued to create art, mostly “pop imagery,” throughout the 1960s. Occasionally he displayed his work in group or individual shows.

By the 1970s, Garrett gained recognition within the Chicago art scene. His 1972 piece, “War, the Dwarf Chicken General Who Conquered the World,” won second prize in the New Horizons in Art Exhibition in Chicago. That same year, his piece “God” won second prize at Chicago’s Union League Club.

1981 marked a new course for Garrett. He opened a gallery, “Missouri,” in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood and displayed the work of young artists exhibiting for the first time. According to Garrett, a lot of the work at Missouri was cutting edge and “out there.”

Garrett says he closed his gallery in 1986; many of the installations required setup and didn’t sell. “A buyer couldn’t put the pieces in their house,” he says.

Garrett says his own pieces have sold better. The ones at the Boone County Historical Society, each 8 ½ by 11 inches, are $1,500 apiece. “I chose this size for portability and space for collectors,” he says.

However, he doubts any will sell during the exhibition. Nevertheless, Garrett hopes it will lead to more recognition and a customer base in Columbia.

The pieces hang on three white walls, like three sides of a room. On the recent tour, Garrett points to “When Generals Play Basketball.” The base of this work is a portrait of a World War II African-American soldier in uniform. A medal is sewn onto the print. It’s one of several pieces involving soldiers, and Garrett says this soldier received his general’s rank “because he is good at basketball.”

“I don’t want to offend anyone,” Garrett says about his soldier pieces. But, he adds, “Nothing is sacred. Nobody.”

At the same time, he wants everyone to see his work. Garrett’s art often involves parts of his life to which he has a significant connection, including his home roots, close family and friends, and his inspirations.

The conversation moves to art in general, then to his parents. They never made any art, he says — that is, until he introduced his father to woodcarving. Garrett walks through a short hallway to a neighboring exhibition on woodcarvings by members of the Mid-Missouri Woodcarvers.

Garrett points to a few carvings in one of the glass cases. They are small, light brown, rectangular containers no more than seven inches long with white wooden balls inside them. There are two levels, and a brown slat divides the balls.

“This is the type of stuff my dad would do,” Garrett says. “Except longer and without the balls.”

Garrett says he has many of the same physical features as his father, Wallace. They both have similar physiques, heights and noses. Wallace Garrett was also excited to learn woodcarving.

“My father would tell everyone I was the influence,” Lupus Garrett said.

As he continues to walk through the woodcarving exhibition, he stops abruptly at a carving of a wolf’s head hanging on the wall. The wolf is painted brown and black. The tongue and teeth appear painstakingly detailed. Plastic eyes give the wolf a deathly, realistic glare.

“You know ‘lupus’ is Latin for wolf,” Garrett says.

He removes the wolf’s head from the wall and recites several facts about the carver, A.J. Hayes.

Hayes turned 80 in August and is exhibiting one of his carvings for the first time.

And Hayes has already sold that piece.

“It would look good on a table I’m going to make,” Garrett says. “I bought it.”