Color my world

Man relies on moody hues for unique artwork

Much about Larry Lucas is an enigma.

He has Down syndrome. An extra chromosome creates a type of mental retardation plus learning disabilities for the 53-year-old Kalispell man.

Larry's speech consists of a few words that are hard to understand.

He's typically cheerful. Super friendly.

But he's like other people - thoughts and emotions ebb and flow within him.

The problem: People can't see into his mind other than reading his facial expressions. And he can only communicate at a level that's more guesswork than anything else.

Art provides an extra window into his heart and soul.

Drawing with crayons.

Each day, Larry goes to Flathead Industries to hang out with his friends with similar disabilities.

First, Larry does his chores. Empty wastebaskets. Sweep the floor. Put the right recyclables in the right containers.

Then he sits down at his own small table in a recreation room with his friends.

Everything is precisely placed in perfect rectangles - all at right angles to the table's edge.

The drawing paper. A photo of a friend. Three small stacks of music cassette tapes - Kenny Rogers, Elvis, Chuck Mangione, Ike and Tina Turner. About 20 crayons - mostly red - lumped together to as close a rectangle as a messy pile could be.

"He's a regular Adrian Monk (a television detective with major obsessive-compulsive tendencies)," said his sister, Sharon Slattery, 49. Sharon and her husband Mike, 63, are Larry's guardians.

Larry puts a plastic container filled with about 100 crayons squarely in his lap - his right leg crossed over his left leg in a perfect right angle that never wavers for the next hour.

He sifts through the crayons for about 15 minutes. Examining several intently. Keeping some. Discarding others.

Settling on four or five - all in the same narrow range of the color spectrum.

This day, all the crayons are tan or brown.

A window has just opened between Larry and the rest of the world.

"Color depicts his mood. … Something goes on in his subconscious when he picks those colors," Sharon said.

Blues and greens usually mean he's in a mellow frame of mind.

Bright reds and pinks mean he's walking on sunshine.

Browns and blacks usually mean he's feeling crappy, or senses that someone else is having a bad day.

"He's done some really dark ones," said Gail Funke, a Flathead Industries employee who works with Larry and his friends.

Unless he's visibly upset, it's almost impossible to tell his moods from his guileless face - which varies from intense concentration to friendly to a good-time goofiness.

When he draws, Larry is deeply focused, studying the paper before each attack with crayons. His lips purse together. Then he grins. Lips purse. Then grins. Over and over.

Today, he starts off with two cassettes of Kenny Rogers. He listens to music for most of his waking hours; the beats of late '50s and '60s rock plus disco are his favorites.

He never scribbles.

Instead, long, powerful strokes are bunched together, punctuated by sharp staccato taps of the crayon.

It's like Larry is expressing himself in Morse code.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke. … Dot, dot. … stroke, stroke, stroke. … Dot, dot.

Brown and tan lines create a big crude letter M.

Larry doesn't draw objects. His art is more of a collection of colored lines and crosshatches. But there is an obvious order and purpose to each of his works.

The second Kenny Rogers tape ends. Larry puts in a cassette of Ike and Tina Turner.

"Proud Mary" kicks off way too loud.

Larry's hands clamp over his ears. His head bobs and weaves to the music. He laughs and laughs and laughs.

Larry wasn't always this extroverted.

For much of his life, he was quiet and shy.

Larry moved from Missoula - where he lived with his mom - to Kalispell in 1994 to live with his sister, who tries to get him out of the house more.

Several years, ago, she enrolled Larry in a horse therapy program for the developmentally disabled. He stayed in that program until about a year ago. The horses loosened up Larry, getting him to come out of his shell.

Meanwhile, he worked and spent his days at Flathead industries. A few years ago, he began to concentrate on drawing for some reason that his family cannot really figure out.

"It's some form of expression because he can't put things into words," Sharon said.

Mike Allen, Flathead Industries' business manager, would frame and hang some of Larry's crayon drawings in the organization's thrift store across the street on Fourth Avenue West North, just north of the railroad tracks.

Three weeks ago, people began buying the framed drawings for $5 to $10.

Something in those colors and lines clicked within their hearts.

Larry passed on something intangible to others.

Flathead Industries employee Tomi Ann Clark, who also helps look after Larry, said: "He's a lot smarter than you think."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com