ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

If you’re looking for an artist’s statement on Phoebe Marie’s website, you’re S.O.L. Instead, she writes: “I’m not going to tell you what [the art] means or why I do it. Not because they are terribly private or personal, though perhaps they are. I don’t want to tell you because I want you to find your own meaning in them.” Fair enough, but being an intrepid toy journalist of a rather inquisitive nature, there were just some things I needed to know. For instance, while writing a post on the Cleveland-based artist’s Dia de los Dunnys custom series, I’d stumbled upon her Rancid Munnys–detailed doppelgangers of the boys in the band. From a Mexican holiday remembering the dead to black coat/white shoes/black hat/Cadillac? Of course I had to ask…

JEREMY BRAUTMAN: So….why Rancid?

PHOEBE MARIE: Well, this is like a four part answer, so bear with me…

• Part One: The Medium. I’d been a collage artist for like a decade. I bought a 7″ munny to collage on for Shoparooni’s Easter munny contest. My whole “thing” with my collage work is clean lines, perfect cuts, no slop–which basically means that I SO couldn’t collage on a munny, it being, you know, rounded all over. I was nervous about stepping AWAY from collage, but I’d wrecked my 7″ at this point, so I bought 2 minis. Which brings me to…
• Part Two: The Accessories. I had the foil packs with the mystery accessories out of the boxes before I’d even signed my receipt. I got a fedora and a mohawk and immediately yelled, “Oh my god, I need two more!” I know it’s not like every person who bought two minis and got those two accessories immediately thought “RANCID!” but there was nothing else I even could have thought of. Why?
• Part Three: The Connection. Rancid is a huge part of my life. Because i’m a super-fan? No no no (though I do love pretty much their entire catalog). It’s because they get to spend more time with the love of my life than I do. Yes, boring as that might make the whole thing, Rancid employs my boyfriend, Ryan Foltz. As such, through on-tour visits and various social events, they have become friends. But that STILL doesn’t quite explain the entire “why.” To round out my whole reasoning, I need…
• Part Four: The Utter Fucking Perfection Of It All. Let’s face it: No other punk band I can think of is as recognizable. Tim’s worn that hat and leather jacket for as long as I can remember. Lars’ hair and outfits are always outrageous–and quite often damn near MATCH each other. Matt wouldn’t be Matt without the comb sticking out of his back pocket to keep that perfect widow’s peak in order. And Branden, despite being a newer addition, fits right in like he’s been there all along. They are bright and shiny and wild and outlandish and beautiful and fascinating and let’s face it: kinda look like toys already. I mean, honestly? It was just too flippin’ perfect. I couldn’t NOT do it.

JB: What materials did you use?

PM: Mostly it’s acrylic paint. I did the tattoos with fine point Sharpie, but they looked too shiny and new, so I went back over them with another coat of the flesh-colored paint to make them look more “aged”. For Lars’ hair, I actually sewed a teeny wig out of fun fur. I also sewed Matt’s scally cap from fabric cut from some thrift store old man pants, and his bass was hand carved by my boyfriend. The rest of the little accessories were made up of wooden dowels, tiny rubber gaskets, straight pins, a bandana and a little bit of ball chain. It all came from the hardware store or the craft store.

JB: How did the Rancid munnys meet the Rancid men?

PM: I didn’t tell the guys about what I was doing at first. The plan was to surprise ‘em, but I looked through a couple years of tour photos and about 100 pages of Google image search, and had a bitch of a time getting good shots of Matt’s and Branden’s tattoos–so I had to call in Matt’s help on that, thus ruining the surprise. Anyhow, when I flew out to St. Louis in June for the tour, they knew the munnys were coming, too. When I made everyone pose with their respective munny, Tim was the cutest, making sure to put his fedora and leather jacket on for authenticity.

JB: Where are the Rancid munnys now?

PM: They are all now living with their respective Rancid men. The guys loved them so much, the only right thing I could do was hand them over.

JB: Why do you think it is that munny makes such a great platform for immortalizing musicians?

I think that when you’re a musician, there is a part of yourself that you have to openly give to the public, to your fans, to the people who love and appreciate what you are famous for. They adore you and they want to possess you in whatever way they can, often forgetting that you’re just a dude who maybe wants to get dinner or go to the post office or grab a smoke or take a poop without being bombarded. And munny is somehow a perfect platform that, in this odd way, manages to humanize these musicians for whom we, as fans, have this incredible hero-worship thing happening. And that’s pretty cool, considering munny is a lot LESS human-like than some of the other platform toys out there. I think munny is hard to dislike and that he both fits the way that people look at their musical heros as objects, but also makes them a little… I dunno… easier to relate to. And cuter.

JB: Your Dia de los Dunny series has a lot of cool little flourishes. When you go to work on a platform toy, do you have the final result in mind or does it “grow as you go?”

PM: It really depends. The Rancid munnys I could pretty much see complete in my head before I even got them home. And the finished product did not stray too far from my initial mental image–aside from being even better than I could have expected. The Dia de los Dunnys series, on the other hand, were a natural progression from the ‘Dia de Los Munny’ shrine piece I created for the same Easter munny show at Shoparooni last spring. And that thing was like freakin’ Frankenstein. I just kept adding and going “oo! i know…” and skibbling down my stairs to cut the metal wings off of a broken old picture frame or steal a scrap of wood from my boyfriend’s workbench. When I decided to do the the smaller dunny shrine series, I had the basic concept down, but what each piece ended up looking like was completely dictated by what teeny props I was able to find (a six-shooter earring that I couldn’t wear due to allergies turned into a gangster dunny, a discounted bag of cross-shaped sequins spawned a trip to the dollhouse aisle of the craft store to buy an itty-bitty bible for the holy-roller dunny, and so on).

JB: Who are you favorite bands to listen to while making toys? Is it a different mix than when you do other work like collages or jewelry?

PM: I hadn’t really thought about this until you asked, but I ABSOLUTELY listen to different music when working on toys than I do when working on my collage pieces. My favorite toy-making music, in no particular order: Rancid (naturally), Steve Earle, The Magpies, Billy Bragg, The Replacements, and Harvey Danger. The collage music is more like a Ken Stringfellow, The Damnwells, Tim Barry kind of a thing.

JB: Who/what are some of your favorite toy designers and/or toys in your collection?

PM: If I could afford to, I’d be hoarding BxH like nobody’s business. Not quite Huck Gee expensive [ed note: oh snap!], but certainly outside of my meager budget. I also love the delicious stuff I’ve seen on flickr by “pocketwookie”. Absolutely some of my favorite customs ever! Looking at it, there is more Kozik in my own collection than anything else. I love that his toys are affordable, funny, and pretty varied. I think my favorite things I have, though, are a Tony Millionaire drinky crow and a David Horvath bossy bear. Both were under 15 bucks and are totally hilarious. I appreciate the beauty of a lot of what’s out there in the designer toy world, but I gotta say: make me laugh or smile, and I’m yours.

JB: Please translate your mantra/insignia “pulchritudinous, invenire, plus.” My Google translator funkifies the Latin a bit…

PM: It is actually “plus pulchritudinous invenire“. My grandfather was an artist and he never signed anything, just had this stamp–THAT stamp–but instead of “Phoebe Marie” in the center, it had his initials, “JPW.” Supposedly, it translates loosely to something along the lines of “more beauty to discover”. And because it’s sort of my belief that the beauty in (as well as the meaning behind) any piece of artwork is something that the viewer must discover for himself rather than have forced upon him by the artist, and because my grandfather was my absolute hero, I made it my own signature as well.

JB: What’s next for Phoebe Marie?

PM: Too much for a girl with a day job! I’ve got a few customs commissioned by various folks that I’m working on. I’m doing a halloween series (cliche or not, I love halloween and can’t resist it!) for the halloween show at low life gallery here in cleveland. And I’ve been toying with some original sculpts for a possible future project which is, as of yet, unnamed. I’ll keep you posted, though.

Related posts

• Midwest Plushform Show Sneak Previews
• Midwest Plushform Show Customs Up For Auction
• Midwest Plushform Show
• Dia de los Dunnys Return For Halloween Spooktacular
• Dia de los Dunny Custom Series by Phoebe Marie