Video: Keeping Up With RichArt
RichArt's Art Yard
Centralia, Washington
Rich Tracy, the artist known as "RichArt," seemed to never stand still, so we found ourselves chasing him with our video camera in 2004 as he zigzagged around his styrofoam yard art with an unending stream of stories and thoughts about his sculptures.
The tour's allotted 55 minutes -- costing us 5 bucks -- just weren't enough, so we understand the appeal of repeat visits to Centralia.
Video Transcript
RichArt's Art Yard (2004)
Rich Tracy: The magic has to work. It has to work for me. The work started twenty years ago.
I want to move her around so that she gets the light behind her. See there? Makes a difference when you get that light comes through the doorway.
Five years old, and I've had it for nine years. Now she was crying at the first of it, and her mom was working here, and mom says Can I talk to her? And I say No.
And I said the one word, didn't spell it out but didn't say any more, and let her answer her own question. She said can she write some notes, and I pass them onto you, and I said Yes.
And so this little girl, wrote the note: How do you use the beads? And I wrote to her Which beads?
And now we quit writing and just sign language, she pointed to these two golden beads and I put those two golden beads in the glue and that's it.
What have I done recently?
This one was done for Easter, so Easter Sunday this piece stood. And it took all my five hours. It's five hours or less, five dollars or less.
And the wall was done Thanksgiving, day and no one came out to see it. We had a house full of people, and nobody came out to see the wall. And I thought, oh well...
And a year later this is what it looks like. This is one year later.
This is two years later. Some of this is old stuff.
RA.com: So it gets eaten away by the rain and the elements.
Rich: Yes, the rain is making it better, I can't get any better than this. It won't do me any good to tell you how good this piece looks today, because you have to see it in moonlight.
When you see it in the moonlight it takes everything, it takes even the little girl and her church and says you got something here kid. This thing is a light sensitive piece. And when you see it at the right time you go down and you go down either on your knees or you go down something in your spirit that says Wow, that's good.
How come it can only be so good at certain times? I don't know.
