Candy coated
About a year and a half ago, Henrietta artist Keith Avery
set his artistic talents on an unlikely canvas: Pez
dispensers. You know Pez — it’s the tablet candy
sold in supermarket checkouts that pops out of cheap plastic sticks, typically
topped with the heads of cartoon characters like Donald Duck or movie monsters
like Chewbacca. Avery, a former illustration major at RIT, started collecting Pez memorabilia in high school and realized that the
dispensers offered a great intersection for his creative urges and love of
collecting. Since then he’s redone roughly 1,200 dispensers in 120 different
designs, transforming, for example, soldier Pez into
Harley bikers, re-painting the Simpsons family into
African-Americans, and creating several original designs.
Avery says that his redecorating work is hotly debated
within what he refers to as the “Pez community.” He
understands the concerns surrounding his “fantasy Pez”
(in Pez-collector parlance), which admittedly skirt a
legal gray area due to copyright issues.
In the world of fantasy Pez
creators, Avery’s painstaking exactitude sets him apart. When he, say,
re-paints the face of a Road Runner dispenser in green then re-seals the
plastic packaging, only a trained eye can tell that his work wasn’t made at the
Pez factory.
Don’t laugh — people are willing to pay, and handsomely at
that. Redecorated dispensers go for about $20, but can
fetch more than twice as much, and some collectors are willing to spend
thousands ordering sets in large quantities. Averyuses
the sales to supplement his income — he works for a firm that specializes in
aerial mapping technology — although much of his profit goes toward
purchasing official Pezmerch
anyway.
While dropping thousands of dollars on Pez
dispensers seems a little extravagant in the face of world hunger and declining
education, Avery jokes that at least his habit keeps him off the streets. He
has also found less legally barbed outlets for his efforts: he has designed
dispensers that bear logos for his hair-dresser, Fusion Salon, and his favorite
local band, the Isotopes, and recently got the green light to do the same for
popular nightspot Lux.
“I never realized when I made the African-American Simpsons that it would sell,” Avery says. (It did,
interestingly enough, to the manager of Kool &
the Gang.) He appreciates the personal component of his work as well: “If
you’re a Heineken lover, I can make you a Heineken Pez.
That conveys personality and charm.”
Still, as we conclude our visit, Avery pauses nervously
before asking, “Pez didn’t hire you to come out here,
did they? Some collectors, if they don’t like what you’re doing, will try to
report you.”
For more information about Avery’s Pez
art visit ww.art1080.com or contact him at keithmavery@gmail.com.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2006.
