SANFORD — Artist Randy Regier would prefer for someone to stumble across NuPenny toy store by accident ”“ to climb the half-dozen or so steps at the back of Eric Stone’s mill at 72 Emery Street and peer through the eight panes of glass in the door.
Peering through the panes is the only way to see NuPenny, because the door is locked, though that could change briefly upon the closing of the exhibit at the latter part of January.
NuPenny is a toy store that doesn’t open. Inside, the toys, in grayscale, hang inside the vast stairwell of the mill building, or, like the lunar spacecraft, perch on the glass counter that doubles as a showcase. There’s a car pulling a trailer; a many-storied skyscraper fashioned from a 1940s-era kitchen cabinet, a robot, a space ship based on the 1949 Ray Bradbury story “Kaleidoscope” and more.
He’s not trying to hide the exhibit. To Regier, it is more believable if someone just comes across it ”“ whereby the viewer could conceivably feel they were the first one to discover what was there.
“If someone happened on the exhibit, they experience it through glass, but they can’t consume it in the way we’re accustomed to. The experience of seeing it is all there is,” said Regier.
The toys are meticulously handmade by Regier, using bits from 20th century household, industrial and scientific items. They are at once both futuristic and reminiscent of toys crafted in the 1960s. Each is labeled, but in teletype code. One can download a code card from the store’s Website at: www.nupennytoystore.com. Each of the toys are his interpretation of a particular song or a poem, he said.
What isn’t seen, or meant, by NuPenny is nostalgia.
“I don’t miss the past. I’m not nostalgic. In think there’s value in the past and to be dismissive of it is a big mistake,” he said, Thursday. “For me, (NuPenny) is about using things from the past I think are compelling or worthy. This boils down to making things I want to see in the world, as a musician wants to hear a song writes it. As a kid, I would have loved to have had these things.”
NuPenny feels kind of odd, but fascinating. It has a dream-like quality and, as Regier pointed out during a visit Thursday, a bit of the feel of the old black-and-white Twilight Zone television series. That feeling is heightened by an accompanying soundtrack composed of bits of non-hit songs played on AM radio in the 1960s, merged together. The music has a somewhat familiar quality at times ”“ and then it doesn’t. The soundtrack was created by Marc Berghaus of Meade, Kan.
One intriguing notion for Regier, the artist, is the location, donated by Stone, the mill owner. The last place one would expect to find a toy store is in a mill. And it is as if the store was locked up years ago and forgotten.
Regier said one can think of it as picturing an old Perry Mason show in black and white: Mason in a car, whizzing down a street at twilight past a row of storefronts, including a toy store ”“ but there’s just the glimpse as the car passes by.
Or picture a toy store once owned by a European immigrant in a city where stores in business districts are closed down daily using iron-barred grills that pull down from ceiling to the sidewalk. Picture it closed up for 50 years ”“ then picture someone opening that iron-grilled gate. Picture them gasping, “Oh!”
First shown in Waterville, NuPenny moved to Portland in the summer and to Sanford until October, where it will remain through January. From here, the exhibit will move on to Wichita, Kan. and then likely to Chigaco, Ill.
Regier has been working on the exhibit for several years, but was able to focus solely on it for eight months, thanks to a grant from the Harry S. Faust Public Sculpture Fund through the Maine Arts Commission. Regier thanked Lee Burnett for his assistance in helping foster NuPenny in Sanford and to Stone for his donation of mill space.
“This is my vision of a toy store as if you dreamed you were in a toy store,” said Regier.
Born in Nebraska in 1964, he was raised in Oregon, worked as a painter in the autobody industry and became an artist in the 1990s. He moved to Maine five years ago to pursue a graduate degree in art and is working this semester on the faculty at the University of Maine at Orono. Regier has taught previously at Bowdoin College and the Maine College of Art.
Sometime in late January, on a date to be determined, Regier will hold a “closing” for an exhibit that was never open, inviting the public inside.
— Contact Staff Writer Tammy Wells at 324-4444 or at twells@journaltribune.com.
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