What happens to a successful artistic collaboration when it ends in the death of one of its members? In the midst of their lives, after their children were grown, and with years of opportunity to make splendid works of art before them, Marcee and Ric Blackerby suddenly faced this question. Serious health issues had always confronted Marcee, but it was a mundane one that suddenly and unexpectedly took this luminous, charismatic, and influential Salt Lake City artist from her devoted partner and appreciative public. Having grown up in rural places, she’d missed out on the miraculous vaccines created by Doctors Salk and Sabin, and then became one of the minority of poliomyelitis victims who didn’t brush it off but would spend her life with weakened legs. After years of misery caused by her clumsy, painful, and heavy metal braces, something she brought vividly to life in her unpublished autobiography, Marcee chose a variety of wheeled devices on which to meet her public, make her art, care for a family who vividly recalls her gourmet cooking, and touch the lives of friends and strangers alike. For sheer vitality, no one topped her, though as it turns out, her husband Ric was her match.

When Marcee disappeared so suddenly from his companionship, the always energetic Ric initially felt lost and adrift. The man who had replaced every square foot of flooring in their house with inventive and beautiful woodwork didn’t know how to start again, and he stumbled through his first months without her. It had been her pleasure to show up when he sang, accompanying himself on the guitar, and sit in the front row of the audience, where her comments and banter formed a second layer of accompaniment to versions of Leonard Cohen and other personal favorites. Anyone familiar with their art would have noticed among it a continuous, lifelong thread of images of the two of them, in which they projected their connection back into the years before they’d actually met, often depicting themselves as children dressed together like cowboys.

By July of last year, Ric had recovered sufficiently to share some of his collection of their various works with the public. Unbeknownst to most of their community, though, he was also remaking the physical evidence of their lives into a combination living and working memorial. After a plumbing pipe in his basement studio exploded, Ric undertook to remodel the entire house in order to give himself the range of exhibitions and workspaces his seemingly limitless range of media and energy had always hankered after.

The Blackerby’s SLC home covered in snow.

The evidence of his new vocation actually begins at the property line, with a refurbished version of the decorative fence and gate that had marked their territorial imperative: the boundary between the world at large and their creative retreat. He remade the garden, so that today he boasts of his flowers, though to be sure the art works that appear among them give new complexity to the modern notion of a “sculpture garden.” He repainted the house a stunning blue-green, with red trim that stands out among the earth tones preferred (or accepted) by so many who dwell around the Great Salt Lake.

To be sure, there are a few places in the home that might be mistaken for rooms belonging to an ardent collector, where framed prints back up vases full of bold floral arrays that alternate with sculpted figures, animals, and some insects—favorites of Ric’s—that strike an unusual chord. The parlor, which used to be Marcee’s primary studio, now feels more like a gallery. The bathroom is still an Egyptian extravaganza, with a strong chord of Art Nouveau-era decorative work, but no gold-plating going on in the bathtub like I saw in Prague. The more industrial side of Ric’s work, like welding skeletons for the converted crystal chandeliers that have become a staple of his recent work, or grinding and polishing opals that reproduce the iridescence that he sees in nature and copies into his sculptures, take place in walled-off areas concealed behind the array of ghost-town retrievals and paintings that everywhere jostle for space.

Blackerby’s basement studio.

A charming and possibly misleading aspect of one semi-industrial workshop is the small, almost toy-like torch and furnace with which he is replacing his much larger ones. More precise and perfect for his craftsmanship, these use much less fuel and produce far less dangerous emissions, making for a more economical and greener shop.

As a visitor ascends to the upper floors, steep stairs lead to an attic that was inaccessible to Marcee and was left unfinished until recently, but has been rescued by Ric for a painting studio (though his framing takes place in the basement) and a showroom. Downstairs, in a space that was also off limits to Marcee, used to be Ric’s primary studio before everything changed. The thing about these two areas, the top and bottom of the house, is that both needed extensive remodeling and restoration. He removed one wall and replaced it with another to create spaces he could use. And he found materials, some quite colorful, responsive to the light, and supporting his mindful and creative consciousness, to complete the remodeling.

Scraps discovered in ghost towns.

In fact, consciousness is a suitable metaphor for the creative activity that now suffuses his home. Everywhere Ric Blackerby turns his attention while at home has two dimensions that support and contribute to his art-making. One is his vivid memory of four decades spent living and working with his creatively collaborative wife. He points here and there and relates what those places and the works that fill them tell him, what they mean to him from a lifetime of art-making that it stimulates him to recall. And then there are spare parts near at hand that he can use to make a working model of self-expression. Consider that you may wake up in your bed and find you are hungry. You have a kitchen convenient at hand where you can respond to that feeling. When artist Blackerby wakes up and has such a feeling, there are things around him that not only speak to him of his past, but include tools and materials within his reach that will assist his skills and training in making real-world versions of those feelings.

Most persons will not create anything in life as elaborate and complex as the mirror Ric holds up to the world, or respond with anything as original and creative as he has made and continues to give form to. Yet we may well wish that we had a tool that could allow us to make something real from our thoughts, whether stray or focused. Ric Blackerby has made that tool, and made it such that he can dwell within it. Art, which comes to him like a habit he’s given years of his life to, has become like a reflex: like breathing, or any other activity he can bring forth into the world he still shares in his memory and imagination with his life’s partner. He also follows up with his fellow artists at workshops like the Studio de Verre, and finally with all of us who will see what he produces wherever he finds an opportunity to share it.

Two from Ric Blackerby’s Hair Series.

All images courtesy of the author.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.