Countywide : Students Share in Artist’s Visions

Artist Morgan Monceaux fielded a barrage of questions Monday from Tustin middle school students.

Did he ever paint Jimi Hendrix? Does he use photos to create a portrait? How did he get started? Does he ever start something, decide he doesn’t like it and throw it away?

Monceaux, once homeless in New York but now a renowned folk artist, answered their questions humbly as he stood in the lobby of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, where his portraits of great musicians are on display.

Yes, he has painted Jimi Hendrix, though he is still getting used to the late rock ‘n’ roll legend’s music. He doesn’t use photos to create his portraits. He starts every piece by listening to Grace Jones’ “Slave to the Rhythm.”

And, no, he doesn’t throw anything away. “Nothing is perfect,” he explained.

The 48-year-old Monceaux said he doesn’t consider his work to be art. “Music is my life,” he said. “This is about my life and about me.

Materials used to make the collages are “things I found on the street that people were throwing away,” said Monceaux, who adds to his portraits handwritten accounts of the histories of the subjects.

He refers to his work as “the stuff.” A broken hubcap became a guitar in a Chuck Berry collage, with a Power Rangers watch representing the volume control. Popsicle sticks make up the keys of Herbie Hancock’s keyboard, and a copper pipe became Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet.

“I see things not as they are but as what I want them to be,” he told a group of seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students from Tustin’s C.E. Utt Middle School.

Monceaux said he finds his inspiration in music and plays it 24 hours a day. “Even when I am not at home, there is music in my house,” he said.

Monceaux, whose mother was a blues singer in Louisiana, where he grew up, worked at odd jobs for years, and was homeless in the South Bronx for a time before taking a job as a janitor. During his off hours, he collected objects from dumpsters and began making collages.

In 1992, he showed his work to an East Hampton, N.Y., art dealer who displayed it in his gallery and commissioned additional projects. The exhibit was written up in the New Yorker magazine, and Monceaux’s career took off. In the three years since, his portraits have been shown across the nation and are the subject of a book: “Jazz: My Music, My People.”

“He’s amazing,” said 12-year-old Junnun Quazi, one of those who heard Monceaux speak Monday. The people in the portraits, Junnun said, “are really staring at you. They move.”

Monceaux’s exhibit will be on display at the Nixon library until Jan. 28. Admission is $5.95 for adults and children over 12, $2 for children ages 8 to 11, free for children under 7. Information: (714) 993-5075.