Who: Outsider artist Jessie Montes
From Elvis to Oprah, the portraits created by Colorado folk artist Montes are marvels of recycled cardboard, thin strips painstakingly formed into famous faces. JFK and Jackie O. Lincoln and Jefferson. Princess Di.
Born in Mexico, Jesus Manuel Montes Arras was one of 25 children and the sole survivor of five sets of twins. He grew up with no formal education and never attended art school. After immigrating to the United States in 1954, he worked for years as a custodian in Dodge City, Kan., public schools until emphysema forced him into retirement and he moved to Cañon City to be closer to one of his five children.
In 1991, when a son and daughter were serving in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he discovered that making art distracted him from worry. Soon, he’d developed a unique style of inlaid cardboard scavenged from Dumpsters and pizza parlors. Whether he’s creating a portrait, landscape or abstract, Montes’ style “is unmatched in the work of other contemporary self-taught artists,” says Raw Vision magazine, the bible of outsider art, the label sometimes applied to work by folk artists who have no formal training.
What portraits do you have in the show? Mostly presidents and entertainers. Abraham Lincoln, Pope John Paul II and some movie stars.
What’s the favorite portrait you’ve ever done? Mel Gibson. It turned out really good. I did his face when he did “Forever Young.” The face turned out fantastic, and it was one of the first portraits I ever made. Actually, it’s always a calculated risk when I do a portrait.
Why? If I can get from the level of the nose to the top of the eyes, I’m winning. If I mess up that part of the face, I might get a little resemblance, but no way the whole thing. If the face has a wrinkle, or a dip in the chin, and I don’t catch it, then I get discouraged and have to start all over.
I have a portrait of John Wayne that turned out great except the nose didn’t belong to him. I put it away for 10 years. When I went back to do the nose again, I couldn’t find the same shade of cardboard.
That’s another problem. If I start a face and don’t have enough of the same cardboard, it’s going to show, even underneath the acrylic paint. If I’m going to do John Wayne again, I’ll have to start over from scratch.
How do you make the portraits? First I sketch the portrait with a pencil and paper, then I color on the paper, then glue down pieces of cardboard, so you can see pink or flesh color underneath.
Where do you get your cardboard? Right now, I get it from Wal-Mart – little packing boxes. Cardboard comes from different factories. Some is mushy and soft. You can’t cut them, and it’s important to have a crisp cut. In one piece, I counted 38 different kinds of cardboard, all different browns. If I need small detail, I need real thin cardboard, especially for eyes and hair. Pizza boxes are very thin.
Why do you credit your childhood in Mexico with the start of your creative bent? In my childhood my dad could afford to buy me only one toy. It’s the only new toy I ever got. The rest were borrowed from cousins. When you’re a little kid and see someone with a toy, you have to make-believe or make your own. I used mud, wood, bones, rope and horn. I glued things together.
What kinds of toys did you make? If I could manage to have wheels, I could make wagons. When I was a little kid the only wagons I saw had two big wheels pulled by horses. There weren’t very many automobiles or trucks in my hometown of Jimenez. Just the doctor and the chief of police had automobiles.
So you started making art when your children went off to the Gulf War? When I started doing art, my daughter was in Saudi Arabia. She worked as an Army nurse, and we kept her kids when she was out there. Now my grandson is there. He just left for Iraq (earlier this month). Thank God, we had Thanksgiving with him. I met my grandson’s friend, an Army buddy of his. His mom came from Wichita, we got together at my son’s house. But don’t let me go there. Thinking about it, I get nervous.
So what are you working on now? I’m starting a landscape. It’s going fantastic.
