Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/197412
& Architecture design And whimsical these things are. Made of paper and wood, a turning wheel becomes a carousel or a merry-go-round. Cogs and gears take a rocket ship to the launching pad at Cape Canaveral. Horses run the Derby, ladies dance, a mouse is a one-man band beating on a drum, and a man walks a high wire at a paper circus. Of late, Phelps has experimented with magnets. By using diferent polarities, a boy rides a magic carpet that never touches the ground, powered by a rubber band. His toys are magic. He hunts garage sales and thrift stores for materials — old sheets of antique wallpaper being a favorite. "Tat stuf is beautiful for my purposes," he says. Te color and humor of the work is infuenced by Phelps' childhood, memories of toys and flms that are now antiques. "Te color and the decoration will come to me, but it really develops itself," he says. "Sometimes I have to get up and walk away from it for a month or so and let it tell me what it wants to do. Ten it says, 'Hey, let's go!'" His family and friends urged him to bring the toys out into the world, and after his frst craft show in Georgetown, Ky., he realized he was onto something. People lined up to see his inventions; children remained at his table all day. Some people refer to the toys as folk art. ("If I was creating folk art, I didn't know it," Phelps says, "but I guess maybe that is what it is.") His daughter Christi approached the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft about including her father's work there, and now the museum features the toys in its gift shop. Joey Yates, curator at the museum, is a fan, calling Phelps' work "some of the best the region has to ofer." Phelps has shown his toys at area schools, including the Chance School in Louisville, which he attended years ago. "I had one 10-year-old tell me that I was the greatest inventor in the whole wide world," he says. "I don't know about that. To a child, toys can be just about anything that engages them. Tey become curious and want to know more about anything that they see, and that curiosity when those wheels start spinning turns into pure, unadulterated joy." 14 4 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13