A Yummy Mud Puddle Life | By LouAnn Morehouse

John Richards, Artist Rooster Lamp

A Yummy Mud Puddle Life

By LouAnn Morehouse

Just outside the town of Burnsville, NC, on a road that takes a few curves and then climbs right up a small mountain, is a house with a pretty southern exposure and a tree-shaded oval pond. The pond was muddied by spring rains when I last visited, which called to mind the name of this property: Yummy Mud Puddle Gallery, Studios, and Vacation Rental. This is the home of artists John D. Richards and Claudia Dunaway.

Although the pond is much too large to qualify as a mud puddle, its watery presence must serve as a constant reminder to John Richards, the self-described “extremely mixed media art machine,” of his first artistic efforts. At the tender age of three, young John set about drawing a picture using mud from a puddle in his yard. His mother approved of both effort and medium, and so an artist set his course.

He’s left mud drawing behind, but never gave up the practice of making art from pretty much anything at hand. Aside from the standard art supplies of paper, paint, and clay, he makes free use of bottle caps, shiny wrappers, pop tops, wire, and so much more—the assortment of odd stuff fairly boggles the mind. And while the materials alone are usually pretty mundane, John’s bounteous imagination transforms them into one of a kind, never before seen, objects that amuse and delight.

When I ask John where he finds his materials, he snorts and says, “I live in America,” perhaps to say that in the land of plenty, there are plenty of things he can use. And he has helpers who donate to the cause. He says just about every week he gets a box of odds and ends from someone. A couple of local watering holes save their bottle caps for John—bottle caps figure heavily in his work. The Hispanic proprietor of one bodega was surprised to be asked the favor in impeccable Spanish. John remains fluent in the language thanks to a childhood spent in Puerto Rico, where his stepfather, a lay missionary, founded a school for boys.

Later on, at Union College in upstate New York, John took his degree in Spanish. He spent some years teaching English and Spanish, but his creative energies could not be denied. Eventually, he found his way to the Pratt Institute, where he reveled in the freedom and variety of the prestigious school’s art, architecture, and design curricula. Throughout his college years he had made art and taken on design jobs to earn some extra cash, but it was a bare bones existence. As John explains, he was a poor boy, a missionary’s kid. Although he aspired to be an architect or interior designer, reality intervened, so he took what he had learned from Pratt and resolved to make his way as a full fledged artist.

John has been what he describes as “creatively unemployed” for decades now, and his imagination shows no sign of depletion. A recent design initiative is “collards,” his word (naturally) for card-sized collages that combine images such as reproductions of classic artwork with pictures cut from advertisements. He sells them complete with envelopes that have been embellished with his own calligraphic messages; each collard a proper original. They’re frequently beautiful, usually funny, and sometimes a bit disturbing—which, truth to tell, is true of all of John Richards’ vast oeuvre.

Just next door to his large, well organized studio, with its drawers of shiny bits and boxes labeled “extra art,” his gallery at Yummy Mud Puddle displays a fantastic array of jewelry, sculptures large and small, hanging and standing, and lamps in animal shapes with glowing shades. It takes a lot of looking to see everything. Fortunately, Yummy Mud Puddle gallery is not the only place to see John’s work; he has collections at sixteen galleries regionally. In the High Country, John is at Toe River Art Gallery in Spruce Pine, 87 Ruffin Street Gallery in Linville, and Boonies in Boone. A member of the Southern Highland Craftsmen Guild, John Richards is a skilled craftsman who works in cast off and unappreciated junk. He is furthermore a highly articulate person who infuses his creations with personality and attitude, often by writing or drawing all over them. Not only are some of his most ornate pieces covered with commentary and doodles, his many assorted booklets, hand drawn and lettered, then photocopied and stapled together, share his wit and wisdom with all. Certain pieces, such as the Alien Women sculptures, have their own booklets that provide back stories on the totem-like, foot-high statuettes, such as: “Alien women eat fruits and vegetables with attractive labels.” Who knew? John did.

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And if sculpting and drawing and writing weren’t enough, there’s Hot Duck Soup, the “novelty jazz band,” in which John plays banjo. When I express surprise at yet another creative aspect of this multimedia artist, he quips modestly, “Well you know what they say—not all banjo players are musicians.” Maybe some of them are artists.

John works at Yummy Mud Puddle with fellow artists, Claudia Dunaway and Kathryn Lynch. He and Claudia have been married for thirty years. They met when each were on the art festival circuit, plying their wares at big events up and down the east coast. It was a whirlwind courtship and when they decided to settle down in 1991, they opened the “Temple of Great Art No Spitting,” a gallery, in St. Augustine, FL. By the early 2000s, Claudia fell homesick for her native land, North Carolina, and they started looking for a home in the mountains. John says it took innumerable house reviews before they found the perfect one. I wonder if it was the pond that sold them. Or maybe the fact that there’s room for several studios as well as a vacation rental. Or maybe it’s just that picture perfect view across the sunny valley to the Black Mountains. My guess is it’s all of the above.

Happily settled on a mountainside, with a pond for reverie (and ducks), John Richards makes art, writes stories, and plays music. He says he still gets up in the morning, ready to start on something new. One thing to be sure of, it won’t be like anything ever seen before. And chances are, it will amaze and delight!

Visit www.yummymudpuddle.com, or call 828-682-6567. The gallery/studio is located at 264 Clear View Lane, Burnsville, NC 28714. The work of Claudia Dunaway is also available at the Mica gallery in Bakersville, NC, www.micagallerync.com.

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