Ripley’s … Believe it
Tuolumne County-born artist to be featured in 2021 edition of ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not’ book
The opportunity to be featured in a twopage, full-color spread in the 2021 edition of Ripley’s Believe or Not was apt for Phil Vance, a local artist perpetually fascinated by “strange oddities” throughout his life.
“I’ve loved Ripley since I was a little kid,” said Vance, 42 of Oakdale. “I liked Ripleys because it was weird. I always felt like an outcast when I was younger, so I liked the weirder things.”
The Ripley’s Believe It or Not feature includes five of Vance’s pieces from his “In Their Own Words” series that depicts famous or iconic historical figures and characters composed completely of their famous quotes.
The centerpiece of the features is a full-page depiction of Batman villain The Joker, depicted as the character from The Dark Knight (2008) played by Heath Ledger, for which the late actor was awarded a posthumous Best Supporting Actor at The Oscars.
In 2018, Vance put a photograph of his piece on Reddit, where it ended up “going viral.” He was interviewed by My Modern Met, a popular online art blog and a TV interview on Right This Minute.
Vance estimated he has articles about him in at least 20 different languages on the internet. He was even contacted by Sotheby’s, an auction house and valuables broker, who apparently knew him as the “word-portrait guy” and asked him about the value of a piece.
“It just kept blowing up,” he said. “People saw The Joker and when we did interviews, they asked to see more of my art.”
It was later that Ripley’s Believe It or Not, an over-centuries old franchise of freak-show attractions and bizarre happenings in brick-and-mortar museums and publications, contacted Vance about his involvement.
“It was an honor,” Vance said.
Pieces like The Joker take up to hundreds of hours to create, with Vance layering handwritten words with different colors, font size and emphases. Vance refers to it as “cross hatching with words,” and creating density with their organization.
The end result is a balance of textural realism in more ways
than one: It synthesizes the written word into design, as if every line could be reduced, understood and read like a literal “picture book.”
“Taken from inspiring quotes, the words get repeated thousands of times in different sizes and layers. They create shadows, contours, and details. Like pointillist paintings, the words blend into one image from a distance. But up close, they fragment into phrases, as if the viewer is peering into the thoughts of each subject,” reads part of the description of Vance’s work featured in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not book.
“I’m always trying to increase my difficulty,” he said. “If I feel like I’m not going to make myself crazy on a painting, it’s not worth doing. I like details. I like getting into the nitty-gritty of a painting. I love abstract art, but there’s got to be a purpose and meaning behind it. I like patterns and rhythm.”
Vance said a project to do a video time-lapse of his work with Ripley’s is also in the works.
Vance’s inspiration for the pieces are multi-faceted. He remembered seeing American artist Chuck Close’s paintings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and being inspired by the technique of “optical mixing,” using organized color tabs to create toned-down colors in the eye of the viewer seeing the piece from a distance.
Somewhat similar to the technique of pointillism pioneered by the French post-impressionist painter, Georges Seurat, the viewer sees a complete, photorealistic painting at a distance, but up close they see the details of contrasting or complementary colors.
Other inspirations were more personal.
Vance decided to do a portrait for his dad following his graduation from University of California, Davis, in 2003 in studio art. It was based on a picture of Vance’s dad holding him when he was three years old, but wrote a letter to his dad on top of the portrait. The idea came from his brother (who also dabbled in painting), and Vance referred to it as “confessionalism.”
Even during the process, Vance remembered typography classes at an art institute in Orange County and when he was assigned to use a word to illustrate what a word means. He used the word illuminate, and portrayed it like a candle.
“Over the years, the words became more front and center,” he said. “The words became the delivery device as well as the vehicle.”
Vance grew up in Mi-wuk Village and attended Twain Harte Elementary School and Summerville High School. During his upbringing, he said he spent hours in his father’s Sonora bookstore, Heritage Books. He graduated high school in 1997 and left the Sierra Nevada for about 15 years before returning in 2011.
Vance said he was working as a graphic designer in Southern California when he was urged to quit his job and pursue art full time. He ended up back with his parents in Twain Harte, but he found success with solo shows and his portrait of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (which is featured in the Ripley’ Believe It or Not book) hung up in CIBO Famiglia while he worked there as a bartender.
“I saw people come into CIBO and be sucked into the piece,” he said. “I thought, this is the art I’ve been meaning to make my whole life. It draws people in.”
Vance taught tai chi at the senior center for the last six years before the COVID-19 pandemic. He also does IT and design at a family company based in Sonora, Vance Capital Management.
Currently, Vance is working on a 40-by-60-inch piece based on the recent Netflix special “8:46” from American comedian Dave Chappelle about the death of George Floyd and violence against African Americans.
“We don’t get the black experience,” he said. “I want to use my art for good, not only make it beautiful, but make people think.”
For the most part, Vance said he chooses people for the “In Their Own Words” series that had a positive impact on the world or whose words were funny and meaningful.
Some of his additional subjects include Bob Dylan, Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, Pablo Picasso, M.C. Escher and Mitch Hedberg, which are all in black and white.
The Joker and a portrait of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill are notably in color. The color pieces are done free-hand and without a grid system.
“You can’t change people, but people can change,” Vance said. “I think art has this capacity for self examination and leads us to make that change.”
Later, he hopes to work on pieces about Bruce Lee, Willem De Kooning, Tom Petty and local musician Willy Tea Taylor. He recently designed the art from the latest album by local band The Brothers Strong and is continuing a series where he designs punk-rock musicians as sheep.
“I thought it was funny because the least punk-rock thing you can be is a sheep,” Vance said laughing about his most recent piece, “The Baamones.”
Vance also hopes for a regenerative movement of like-minded artists in Tuolumne County following the closure of multiple galleries in downtown Sonora.
“When I first moved back here, there were hundreds of people downtown during Second Saturday,” he said. “Like three years ago, there was just a fraction of that. We need to do something different.”
Vance’s other work includes “Self#me,” a series dedicated to social media and narcissism that’s loosely inspired by Pablo Picasso’s cubist style in Vance’s all-time favorite painting, “Portrait of Ambroise Vollard” by Picasso.
Other series on his website are “Abstractions of the City,” a portrait series, illustrations and landscapes.