WHEEL ME OUT - C.M. & Grace Kelly Laster

Self-taught visionary artists Charles M. and Grace Kelly Laster fell in love looking for “treasure” in a dumpster. Eighteen years later they and five-year-old daughter, Ruby Elvis Rose, take regular road trips from their rural home in Crofton, Kentucky in their third Art Car, the Inner Galactic Shack-a-llac. And it’s certainly a spectacle to behold as they motor through the tobacco fields of the local Amish community, bound for the burgeoning number of American Folk Art fairs and festivals popping up across the United States.

By Melissa Osborne

Photo: Cap Man

Loaded with witty and restorative aphorisms, the Lasters’ artwork reflects a variety of themes inspired by their dreams and visions, musical heroes, outlaws, historical figures and their abiding connection to the rural South. Coveted by collectors worldwide, their work can also be found in the permanent collections of The American Visionary Art Museum, The House of Blues, The Bill Clinton Presidential Library, The Library of Congress Folk Life Center and the Abraham Lincoln exhibition at the Historical Society of Washington D.C. WMO caught up with the hillbilly pop artists in the wild yard of assemblage that is the Laster’s Art Shack.

How do you feel about being called “hillbilly pop artists?”

Grace Kelly Laster - Actually a fellow artist hung that label on us first. Maybe it was his way of saying that we were the next generation of folk artists. Pop culture is a big part of our art. I guess the hillbilly part is the approach.

C.M. Laster - Yeah, making the best outta what we got, like real hillbillies do. We prefer the term visionary art though: art from a vision, with a message.

How did you come to start making art?

CML - Well, I come from a town called Clifty, also known as Lickskillet, in Kentucky. I grew up on a farm where we had to raise our own food and go fishin’ for supper. My Cherokee great-grandmother used to give me 50 cents to draw pictographs for her before I started school. I had plans to be a radio broadcaster at WSM in Nashville, but that got sidelined by a family crisis. I didn’t go back to DJing after that, but kept playing music in bands and painting. I’ve been an over the road truck driver and a carpenter too.

GKL - My grandma, who raised me, had me draw for her too. I was tossed around from place to place because of divorce in my childhood - I turned to art as a way of dealing with it. I was headed towards a teaching certificate when I finished school, but I was too rebellious for that. I have a whole different idea of teaching art, anyways.

How did you two meet?

CML - I was working on The Recycled Art Project in Chicago in the early 90s with my friend Walt Solomon. We got a grant to do summer workshops with inner-city kids and Grace Kelly came up to help us on the project. That’s how we fell in love: looking through the dumpsters!

GKL - We’ve been together 24/7 for 7 years now…

CML - …and we can finish each other's sentences and each other’s art too.

Is your Kentucky heritage important to your work?

CML - We love being from KY, especially when we go to other places. Our work is full of southern culture; we’re living in the thick of it here. We’ve met Bill Monroe, The Everly Brothers, Loretta Lynn… These are KY heroes for us - strong individualists.

What is making art about for you?

CML - Self-empowerment, vision, love and sharing. Between my ADD, OCD, and general manic nature, I have to make art every day.

GKL - My art is more meditative. I use it as a way to live in my visions. It’s definitely my therapy, especially my Elvis paintings. Elvis is like my touchstone and my muse.

CML - Yeah, we both grew up loving Elvis. That was a common bond between us when we met. I made a sign: “Elvis brought us together and Jesus did the rest.” Music, in general, is a big part of our lives. We can’t help but share that through our art.

GKL - Elvis was the original outlaw too. He integrated Memphis by supporting an All-Negro Day at Memphis Zoo.

Tell us about Laster’s Art Shack

GKL - It’s a funky place out back with way too much art to display. It looks like the inside of our brains!

CML - Yeah, our own pair-a-dice garden! But Laster’s Art Shack is also mobile. Our shack is pretty much wherever we’re at: a full-on, shack attack in our Inner-galactic shack-o-llac. Come - we'll show you around.

How many art fairs do you attend every year?

GKL - Oh gosh, between 15-22.

Is there a big network for this kind of stuff in the States?

CML - Yeah! But I’d say there's a core group of about 50 artists in the different places we go. It’s like a revolving potluck pow-wow system – one fantastic show!

Which festival do you most look forward to?

CML - That would be The Doo-Nanny. It’s the crown jewel of all the outsider visionary festivals. It’s put on by Butch Anthony, with the help of friends and family, on the last weekend of March in his Woods of Wonder in rural Seale, Alabama. Alongside our Art Shack, we also host a lo-fi short film festival called The Woods of Wonder Film Festival. Les Blank always enters when he comes.

GKL - Yeah, the Doo-Nanny has a life of its own. It’s the best festival we’ve ever been a part of because it’s artist-run, and encompasses every form of creative expression from southern folk art to poetry, music, costume and experimental architecture.

How do you feel about the term “Outsider Art?”

CML - Depends on who’s saying it, and with what feeling. When people call us outsiders, it’s supposed to mean ‘outside the mainstream’, but to some, it means ‘crazy’. But Jesus loves Freaks and God Hates Hate - they’re my mantras.

GKL - Living in an Amish rural town of 900 people, where you are the town oddballs, definitely lets us know that we’re unique. We can relate to being outsiders, but all visionaries see things differently from average folks. Outsiders don’t choose to be called outsiders, they’re labeled by others. We decided to make it something that people want to participate in rather than look down on.

Are the distinctions between outsider art and folk art a bit blurry these days?

GKL - We can’t tell. We just make art. That’s for critics to figure out, I guess.

CML - Somebody asked me what the definition of folk art was recently, I said, “Somebody you can take advantage of.” We learned that the hard way. I’d say that most visionary art takes a certain person to appreciate the messages and intent, whereas a lot of folk art that gets made now is simply made to sell for decorative purposes.

GKL - There’s a whole element right now of graphic artists using folk and outsider art as a style for just making something to sell.

CML - What’s still good out there is coming from a more personal and original place. It comes from the heart and speaks to the heart.

What’s been the greatest influence on your work?

CML - The death of my brother set me on a path to make my art really mean something, and then we met the great folk artist, Rev. Howard Finster.

GKL - Meeting Howard was a revelation to us. He became a spiritual mentor, as well as an art mentor during the last seven years of his life. He encouraged us to continue with our art during a really difficult time in our lives. He was 84 then, so we were able to help him and his daughter carry on important community art projects, including the first Finster Fest in his folk art gardens, Paradise Gardens.

CML - Howard Finster will always hold a place in our hearts that can't be taken away. He was a great artist and a lover of people. He’s our Garden Angel!

What would be a dream come true for you?

GKL - Many of my dreams have come true: a solid marriage, creating work that we love and a beautiful daughter.

CML - Yes, our best creation—the hillbilly jewel, the Kentucky Rose—Ruby Elvis Rose. She makes more art than we do and is selling a bit to save for Disney World.

GKL - It’s all we can do some days to keep her in art supplies! One dream for me would be to find a patron for a book, album and film based on our time with Rev. Finster.

CML - And we would love to create and live in an artist community, bringing folks together through the healing powers of love and art. Oh and maybe have a bigger studio with a roof that doesn’t leak! WMO

Click here to see a gallery of The Lasters' work

Lasters' Art Shack

http://www.lastersartshack.com/

Lasters on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastersartshack/