One man’s trash?: Lafayette man makes three-dimensional folk art as 'Cajun Picasso'

Dusty Reed has always collected odds and ends — used sanding discs, gears and chimes from an old clock, scrap blocks of wood, wire, nails, nuts and bolts.

For a long time he'd keep them in a junk drawer, like "normal people," a phrase he uses for non-artists. He couldn't bring himself to throw them away.

"During the time I wasn't pursuing art I would collect stuff and arrange them in different ways and think, 'This could be that,' but I never made them," Reed said.

Today you can see all those items and more — industrial spray insulation, anyone? — in his mixed media artwork on display at the Lafayette Art Association.

One wall features a face made from a palm frond adhered to an old shutter. Another shutter is outlined paintbrushes with dried paint on their bristles. They've all been used in his other paintings.

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"I thought that was biggest and best way to tell a story," he said. "Those paintbrushes have told thousands of stories."

The gallery walls also feature paintings of his, which once was all he did. Now he also makes three-dimensional works by adding his baubles to the painted surfaces.

Sometimes he then translates that work into a one-dimensional painting. The options are endless.

'The Cajun Picasso'

Reed, 41, grew up in Lafayette and studied art all four years at Comeaux High School. He'd considered going to college for art but instead studied secondary education, earning bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

He taught English for about a year and then returned to art.

"Teaching is part of me," he admits. "It's what I love. But I decided to be a painter."

Reed was selling his paintings to folks outside of Lafayette, but he wanted to open a gallery in his hometown. He did and sold out, realizing he needed to create more inventory to fill his gallery. He began making things out of found objects.

Reed has been with the Lafayette Art Association, of which he is the president now, for the last three years. His showroom includes many of his paintings next to his mixed media pieces, the sharp angles and bright colors affirming his nickname, "the Cajun Picasso."

A painting shows a blue person with pointed nose and elbows rubbing an angular washboard with rectangular fingers.

Next to it is a 3D face cut out of a metal washboard, painted and adorned with beads and buttons.

"Things I'm supposed to discard are my most coveted things," Reed said.

That's just part of being a folk artist, he explained. Reed finds things as he's living life and then uses them to create something from nothing, he said. It's also what he hopes draws people in to his art, like the chimes that sound when stroked.

"Most of my work, I want it to be touched," Reed said. "That's what I love about mixed media. People are curious. I love stuff that is tactile."

'We all have a need as humans to create'

Reed always included Louisiana elements with a folk art vibe in his paintings, which accounts for the Cajun part of his name, and his use of the cubist style pulls in the Picasso part.

"Art is meant to express, to communicate," he said, and folk art-cubism is his language.

Reed avoids glue and instead finds mechanical solutions like nails that connect two pieces and serve as eyelashes around a metal washer for an eye.

His paintings include sections defined by black lines. One corner features an angular alligator above a crawfish claw, fish and other Louisiana elements.

"I want the whole canvas to tell a story, not just a part of it," Reed said.

There's more of his art in his workroom in the back of the building. In there are wooden blocks adorned with metal dresses, rusty nails for legs and feet, and brown "gumballs" from American sweetgum trees as heads.

His work table is lined with tulips carved out of wood and painted in different colors pays homage to his "Mawmaw Fontenot." Their crafty aesthetic is a nod to the crafts she would design in the 1980s.

"I create every day," he said. "If I don't, I'm thinking about creating."

Reed encourages others to do the same.

"We all have a need as humans to create," he said. "The whole thing is to not worry about what you can't control.

"What people want is a piece of you — something that looks pretty and is a piece of you. Don't overthink it. Just do. Just create."

Contact children's issues reporter Leigh Guidry at Lguidry@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @LeighGGuidry.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: 'Cajun Picasso' creates 3D folk art with Louisiana flair