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Once Starving Artist Survives Cancer and the Streets Listen to story (Real Audio)
By Andrea Shea BOSTON - September 19, 2008 - It's high season for Open Studios in Boston. This weekend artists show their work in the South End. One of them, an 82 year-old self-taught painter, has remained prolific in the face of extremely hard times. Phelps didn't have a place to make his art, or even a place to call home.
SHEA: When Peter Phelps makes his art, and he makes a lot of it, he pretty much always starts with the frame. PHELPS: Here's a four-dollar frame. This is a kind that you can push in and push out very quickly, a very inexpensive frame, they want eight dollars you can buy a brand new one for $4.50. Not a great deal of money. SHEA: Always painting on a budget, the 82 year-old makes pieces to fit frames scored on frequent trips to Boomerangs, a non-profit thrift shop in Jamaica Plain. Phelps calls himself a life-long "scrounger" and this place is a relative goldmine of wood, metal and glass frames. Not too long ago the artist was barred from working with "real" frames because he spent months living in homeless shelters. PHELPS: First of all you can't have glass in a shelter so it had to be plastic, the one piece I brought back to hang up they took away because it was glass and glass is not permitted. SHEA: That, among other restrictions, made painting nearly impossible for Peter Phelps. Phelps, by the way, isn't Peter's real last name. Like many artists, and homeless people, he says he prefers to keep his identity to himself. But, like the song that's playing here in the thrift store, Phelps' life changed for the better about a year ago. Phelps listens to Jazz music in his subsidized Roxbury apartment. PHELPS: If you've ever lived in a shelter you have no idea, this is like wow! I'm not great taking showers with a hundred and fifty other men. I prefer my own. But come here and look and you'll get an idea. Bathroom has a shower, no bath. Lots of good, hot water. SHEA: And lots of good, bright light for Phelps to do what he does. PHELPS: I only paint with two mediums, ink, which is acrylic also and paint which is acrylic. SHEA: Framed flowers, abstracts and portraits line his wall. Hearth, a Boston organization that houses elderly homeless people, placed Phelps in this affordable apartment. A retired fourth grade teacher, Phelps says he used to live in Springfield where, at age 79, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. PHELPS: I came to Boston not to live but to die. The great shock of my life was that I lived. SHEA: He lived after selling all his possessions in Springfield before joining a clinical study at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Phelps received radiation treatment there by day, but couldn't afford a room at night. Staff at the hospital sent him to a shelter. Phelps was in pretty bad shape, but still he needed to paint. PHELPS: Well I did at Dana Farber for a while. I hustled up an empty room and ran the brush through. They threw me out of the library for painting they told me I couldn't do that. PHELPS: Today Phelps is healthy and prolific. His radiation treatment wrapped up more than a year ago. He says there's no evidence of disease and generally paints eight hours a day, churning out about a dozen works a week. PHELPS: Everybody in this building has been offered a free painting, and people came down and picked what they wanted. Everybody wanted flowers! My god I never painted so many damn flowers in my life! SHEA: Four Phelps flower paintings are upstairs, in 64 year-old Brunilda Colon's apartment. Colon, a retired nanny, says she goes to museums and galleries, but? COLON: I don't have money to buy art. What I have is because somebody gives it to me. SHEA: Recently Peter Phelps gave dozens of paintings to the organization that helped him. This weekend during South End Open Studios the lobby of a Hearth-run complex for elderly homeless people will double as a gallery featuring Phelps' works. HINDERLIE: I'm drawn mostly to some of the darker ones where you're tasting a little bit of that depth of experience. SHEA: Mark Hinderlie, Hearth's President, says at first he was skeptical about the "artist." HINDERLIE: When people said we're going to have this art show of Peter's work, before I'd seen the slides or the actual work, I thought oh yeah, well, I don't know what that will be like thinking that it wouldn't be really quite lovely (laughs) and of a caliber way beyond what any of my expectations were. SHEA: Proceeds from sales of Phelps' work this weekend will go to support Hearth's mission. Back in his apartment Peter Phelps assesses some recent work. PHELPS: To be honest with you it has limits on its talent, ok, I mean I know that for god's sake. You know if it brings a little happiness and joy and sunshine through the window, great. SHEA: As for his solo show at South End Open Studios Peter Phelps laughs and says? PHELPS: This is my 15 minutes of fame. Peter Phelps' paintings will be hanging at Hearth's headquarters on Washington Street for South End Open Studios this weekend. Audio for this story will be available on WBUR's web site later Friday.
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