Toy-maker New and improved

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Sep 14, 2003 by Bill Blankenship Capital-Journal

MANHATTAN --- Somewhere along the path to adulthood, children discover "batteries not included" is a rule of life, not an exception.

"The wheels start to fall off the childhood cart at some point," says Randy Regier, an Abilene artist and recent graduate of Kansas State University whose art installation, "Everything Must Go: The Toys of Randy Regier," is on display through Jan. 4 at K-State's Beach Museum of Art.

For the exhibition, Regier not only created toys that look as if they were manufactured decades ago, he also fashioned for them their often deceptive but oh so enticing packaging.

The boxes promise to contain so wondrous a toy as to make any kid plead that he would gleefully and without nagging wash the dishes, take out the trash and feed the dog until he left for college if only, only, only, just this once, please, oh please, Mom and Dad, buy this for me.

But, Regier warns: "As kids, we don't read our boxes. We just open them."

They often contain disappointment.

"The American Dream," one of Regier's installation pieces, bears on the box's cover an image of a sleek, red automobile. It is the kind that in the 1950s would attract google-eyed, slack-jawed crowds to watch what Detroit had created as the year's new models were unveiled at the local dealership.

The box's size suggests a scale model of such a size as to be easily spotted from across the street by other neighborhood kids who would instantly be overcome with toy envy.

Unnoticed on the trip to the cash register would be the "not actual size" disclaimer on "The American Dream" box. Only after, the eager buyer opens his treasure does he discover the model car is indeed shiny and red but no bigger than a matchbox.

Thus Regier lets his art make social commentary, not only on deceptive advertising of children's toys but also the broader observation that not everyone's "American dream" will live up to its billing.

Says Bill North, the Beach Museum's senior curator, "Randy Regier creates fictive toys that expose powerful, and often unpleasant, truths about our society and its culture."

Truth be told, however, it wasn't that long ago that Regier couldn't imagine himself as a college graduate and an artist, let alone one with a one-man show in an art museum.

It wasn't that long ago that Regier's mind and hands were focused on the task of making formerly dinged and dented cars look as though they had just rolled off the assembly line at the plant.

'Ornery orientation'

Looking back, Regier said his work as an auto body painter satisfied part of his artistic need, "but never to the extent where I found any sort of peace."

"It was like I was close to something, but I couldn't find it," he said.

Regier recalls he has always had a need to express himself. As a teen growing up in Salem, Ore., Regier "did a lot of creative endeavors, mostly of a somewhat ornery orientation."

Regier and his running mates would buy secondhand clothes as costumes, make props, rig special effects, write scripts and videotape movies in the streets of Salem, much to the bewilderment of onlookers.

"In retrospect, I could see how they could be classified as performance art," he said, adding that the amount of work they required certainly put them beyond just passing time.

Regier didn't pursue a career in film. Instead, he turned to paint.

"My dad ran a small body shop when I was young," said Regier, who began learning the craft of auto painting at age 10. He learned well and graduated to larger auto restoration shops.

While painting cars proved lucrative financially for Regier, it wasn't rewarding artistically.

While still in Oregon, Regier did discover one creative outlet. Flipping through a community college paper, he read about a guy teaching a cartooning class. Although Regier lacked any innate drawing skills, he fell in love with cartooning. He created a strip, "The Gongfarmer," that would eventually be syndicated nationally, mostly to college newspapers.

Regier thought syndication could mean he would one day be able to support his family as a cartoonist instead of as a body man in an auto restoration shop. But Regier's humor never quite flowed into the mainstream, meaning most daily newspapers weren't going to buy "The Gongfarmer."

While he clung to his daily comic strip as an artistic life preserver, Regier said he grew depressed about his life and where decisions made when he was younger had left him.

"The 30-year-old man being resentful because the 18-year-old boy in him decided what you were going to do for the rest of your life," Regier recalled his thoughts.

It was time for a change --- a big one.

Starting over

Although he has family ties to Kansas, it wasn't until Regier came there here to attend the wedding of his wife's brother that he took a fresh look at the state.

"Kansas just got a hold of me and wouldn't let go," he said.

A year after the wedding and with the encouragement of his wife, Vicki, Regier moved her and their children, son Jacob and daughter Rachel, to Abilene in the summer of 1997.

"Kansas seemed the place to go to start over," he said.