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Artist's passion is funky junk

Behind an 8-foot, plastic foam-lined fence, Richard Tracy presides over a labyrinth of cast-off items he has transformed into ‘junk art’

DAN SCHREIBER; The Chronicle | • Published September 24, 2009

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CENTRALIA – Give Richard Tracy five minutes and he’ll show you his life’s work – as it is happening.

The otherworldly labyrinth of “junk art” on Tracy’s Centralia lawn has been a work in progress at the busy corner of Harrison Avenue and M Street for nearly three decades. The 75-year-old has maintained his man-about-town status, always in search of the things no one else wants – broken garden hoses, rusty twine, worn-out lumber and, of course, plastic foam.

That is what lines the 8-foot fence around his century-old home.

Inside, the yard is an ever-changing collection of odd sculptures and gardens of foam that meld with the day’s shifting shadows. White wooden posts and plastic balls hang from gnarled wire just above the fence line, where dangling orange reflectors warn late-night drivers not to let their vehicles become part of the yard.

To some, it’s an eyesore, but for Tracy, it’s bliss.

“Art comes to you in moments. Art comes to you because you’re out here and you’re vulnerable,” he said. “You get ideas by just running around.”

Raised in Yakima, Tracy met his wife, Pat, while studying at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. He made his living as an art teacher in Sequim and Olympia – he taught for 10 years at Lincoln Elementary School – before going to work as a janitor at the Yard Birds Mall in Chehalis. He obtained one of 20 Yard Birds sculptures made in the obscure store’s heyday, and it has been standing guard on his lawn for 15 years.

“I found it in the swamp,” Tracy said. “I brought it back to them and gave them a 20-dollar bill. They said I would just make fun of it, but they gave it to me anyway. I told them they can have all the 20s they want. I just want the bird.”

Lately, Tracy has been constructing what he calls “The Colosseum” in the backyard. It’s a circular collection of sculptures that he regards as one of his bigger current projects.

“They dug that damn thing up in Rome, and that’s what all the tourists go to see, but it’s not as important as the smaller colosseums,” Tracy said. “You know what was really important in Rome? Every city – like Centralia, Chehalis, Bucoda – had a colosseum. They had smaller little animals like rabbits and chickens and dogs. They didn’t have Christians and lions. Those are expensive.”

Tracy will be the first to tell any of his Art Yard visitors that he doesn’t “do” expensive.

“All that you see here is done with five dollars or less, and it’s finished in five hours or less,” Tracy said.

Various representations of five are branded throughout the yard because Tracy believes in its numerical perfection. Visitors often are confused at his insistence on limiting foot traffic in the yard to five people at a time, or his offer of the extended 55-minute tour. He once gave 55-minute art courses as long as the students were either on time or five minutes early.

Tracy was briefly institutionalized at Western State Hospital nearly 40 years ago, but he has found a way to stay out.

“They know who I am, and I’ll bet you can’t get me committed,” Tracy said. “They’ll say, ‘Oh no, not Richard, not him again.’ I’ve put more artwork up in an institution than I’ve got here in the yard.”

As long as he takes his prescribed medication and keeps making the art, Tracy figures he’ll be just fine.

“Talk is cheap and art is cheap, and I’m just here doing it. I’m eccentric and I know it,” Tracy said. “I produce every day. I don’t like to lay around. In an institution, that’s all they do.”

He also loves visitors, who mostly come from outside Centralia to see the Art Yard. When they enter the front yard gate, Tracy instructs them to pick up hooked tassels that they secretly place on an art piece they like. In the evenings, Tracy walks the yard and yelps with childlike excitement when he finds the delayed and camouflaged appreciation.

“You’d think I’d get tired of this game. I don’t get tired of it,” Tracy said. “You can be out here and just about going to pieces, still taking your lithium and your pills and all that, doing everything the doctors prescribe, and then you see, it’s a blessing.”

Tracy said he plans to maintain the yard until he dies. His love for it grows, he said, as nature takes its toll and his work slowly recedes towards dandelions on the lumpy ground.

“It’s almost like it was dipped in … baptism … you know, it comes out alive,” Tracy said. “It’s dead when you make it. There’s not much to it. But boy, the wind and the rain and the age can put a lot into it. And you see it. And you understand it. Everybody does.”