ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

My name is Steve Agin and I sell Toys. I have been selling toys to people all over the world for the last 20 years. Until about 6 or 7 years ago, I sold Japanese TV & movie, live-action and anime character figures almost exclusively. And then a strange thing happened. The very same people that had been buying and collecting the toys I sold for so long started making toys themselves. So many people. They had become artists, and these profoundly indelible and inspirational toys from their past just seemed to come to the surface in their work. First in prints and then, in vinyls. Over a dozen years ago and more, Brian Flynn came to my house a couple of times, and Bwana Spoons used to call up about Micronauts. And so, so, so, many others. Guys from California, and Oregon, and Texas, and Massachusetts, and Florida, and, well, just about everywhere. And now, I sell their work too.

I’ve been a painter for over 35 years and have taught art (studio and history) on the university level for the last 20 years. So, I’ve always looked at this work as Art: Toy Art is what I call it. There are so many swirls and eddies, groups and types, cultures, sub-cultures and cults and individuals–but, they all hang together, united by a fundamental source of roots. Some Japanese artists riff off characters from their childhood just as American artists do, and still other American artists repaint the very evolved original figures that the Japanese have derived from their passionate memories.

It’s a great and convoluted mix and one, unique I think, in the history of art or at least pop. I’ve never seen such a fraternal kinship in any type of art before. Sure there were the Impressionaists, and the Fauves, and the German Expressionists, and the NY School but those were smaller, localized groups–sort of like what you find within the great Milky Way of this scene. Just not this big or expansive, or ever-widening and embracing.

One of the ‘groups’ working withing the great constellation of Art Toys is Grass Hut. I don’t know all of the people or work associated with them nor, do I know exactly how to define them (thank god!) Truth is, I’m one of the strangest kind of art historians in that I prefer not to lump artists together, claiming to see similarities in their work that I can boast about and then try to prove are true. I know just a few artists that commune with each other, live and work around each other, show together and, support each other–so, there’s something there, ya know?

Because I have been working at bringing the larger scene that contains and connects all these people’s work to the attention of the fine art world as it is called, I have come to know some them more personally in addition to their work. Inside the Grass Hut of the great northwest, I know the work of Bwana Spoons, Justin “Scrappers” Morrison, Martin Ontiveros and Le Merde. When I met these guys at the last San Diego Comic Con they were playing traditional Hawaiian ukulele music at their booth. It transcended the hub-bub and drone that is the constant sound of the bustling beehive of the Con (much more like a downtown subway stop at rush hour in NYC than a trippy, laid back southern Californian scene), It just took me right out of it.

There, Bwana in “granny glasses” I still remember well from the headshops on McDougal St. in 1965, sat, beatific and bearded with a smile as much a part of his dominion as the work set out on the table. As I drank in his “Little Killer” (whale) and Globby (octopus-guy) which I’d seen earlier in other painted ‘clothes’ colors at the great Gargamel’s table (I began to realize the very strong bond and working association between these two transcontinental crews), I felt the nature of the ‘optimystic’ effuse in the tiny atmosphere that hovered like just one more of Bwana’s characters–the air, itself. I just didn’t see the smile, but I felt it. The music, the benignly smiling, Buddha-like little vinyl figures (like the gator with the mad butterfly net hurrying on the hunt, in specs, looking more than a little like Bwana himself), it was all there. And I remembered what “Bwana” means.

I was introduced to Le Merde next and to his hand cast resin figures that, seemed to pay straight homage, direct, to the art of children. Humble and powerful at the same time, like kids who know the Truth but are not sure if you know it too, or maybe have forgotten it. Not primitive but primal. Sincere. And so unapologetic in their honesty that, for a while you forget how original they are. How unlike everything else they are. And how much joy must be derived in the creation of them–so much in fact that it becomes an identity. Their immediacy and extra long 1/2 life seems to make names and formal introductions entirely unnecessary, even absurd.

Next I met Scrappers. He’s a painter of figures that have been made by other artists. This is really one of the most interesting art modes of the present. I know of no precedent for it. And as you might guess, not only does that make it ‘risky’ but even, sometimes, ‘thorny’. It can be tough representing the repainting of another artist’s figure as your original work, especially in a potential ‘mine field’ of egos. Even moreso when the politics of the fanbase chooses sides. (And THEN with the MEGAphone and anonymity of the Internet.)  It takes some courage, and some faith, and some tolerance, and some humility. Some good nature also helps a great deal. Hmm, sounds just like Art itself. Scrappers has all these qualities and so, very importantly, do his customs. MAR-DI GRAS, man. They just flip out right in front of you. No holds barred exuberance combined with an inexhaustible feel for colors and design composition. Truly, his figures are props in their Sunday best-go-to-meeting clothes and they further the whole sensation of happiness that is found inside the Grass hut.

One thing I want to add, even if it sounds a bit academic. If you want to know what a new thing in art is, put it with something else that you already know: something with which you are familiar. When Morrison does a custom (as with his bretheren: Paul Copeland, Kirkland Jue, Matt Walker, and a host of other customs magicians) you know IT and, you know him BY THE DIFFERENTIAL. The character becomes a baseline, and as such bonds with you. After all, it is the character and figure that you know. The strange part is the colors, the paint, the design. It’s a cool trick. You KNOW the figure so, you SEE the paint. It is a phenomenon of seeing unlike that coupled with any other figure’s appearance–a kind of synesthesia of experience that always takes place when looking at any painted figure but one you are NOT aware of, at least not like this.

Lastly I met Martin Ontiveros, ‘master of the Ojo Rojo’. Martin’s different. He’s a sober and serious artist. Cordial but savvy. Careful. This was another quality I found in Bwana’s work but less on the surface. Martin has produced two one-offs of the Rojo for the project in which I am engaged. One, the “Black Cloud” is nothing less than a tour de force. It brought one of the highest prices of any Toy Art offered at a Phillips DePury art auction in NY last fall. It’s breathtaking. The figure conjures itself up right out of crises of ancient Indian tribal magic infused with powerfully conquistadorial essences. It is at once, all-seeing with amazing infinite eyes which burn with the colors of fires and then burst forth from a “Black Cloud” in tear-drop shapes of fantastic water. The latter “Zombie Clown,” more diabolical than any Batman’s Joker, and never playing the fool, is being offered this April 25th, at Phillips’ Saturday sale in NY. As I’ve said, this is certain and deeply meant work. The flip side of lightheartedness: there is enduring calculation and arcane information from the past heart of all of us in this corner of the Hut.

All this said, it’s just words. I hope they make you want to see the works of these fine people. You’ll notice, I do not go in for overly describing or analyzing any of the work as, the joy of it is in doing that for yourself. The last thing I would add is this (and I will make no preface nor any apology for it), ownership is a boogieman in our time. I don’t know if it’s worse that people feel guilt over it or that they exhort others critically like yapping hounds. But know this, Art is something to know by living with it. These are not TV commercials to be absorbed in a minute. This is personal. Feeling and enlightenment. You have to marry a figure to know it. Live with it to imbibe of it and, know yourself better for it. Take it or leave it. Thank you for reading these so many words. If you’d like to write me, you may at agin [at] embarqmail.com. You can also check out my website, where you can find a sampling of the 30,000 pieces I’ve got. Next up: I’ll be adding a special section for very special Toy Art by over 40 different working artists.