Axle Contemporary on Museum Hill Plaza

Rick Phelps has a lifelong commitment to making work from materials-at-hand and the cast-off detritus of our out-of-balance society of consumption. He recycles paper, artistic conventions, and his self-proclaimed neuroses in an effort to order and reassemble his world. Phelps’ work is made of recycled papers, from hymnals, encyclopedias, menus, beer cartons, magazines, food labels, security envelope liners or junk mail, ephemera re-pulped and repurposed into dynamic sculptures. His papier-maché
and papier-collé sculptures draw on the traditional Mexican arts of Cartoneria and Piñata as well as other paper traditions from across the world, but incorporate an ever-changing array of materials, references, and characters, drawing on Pop, Punk, Folk, Funk, and other vernacular traditions. His work is represented in Santa Fe by Pasqual’s Gallery, in Truchas by Eight Million
Gods, and in Madrid by Calliope.
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