Monkey creates Warhol-like masterpieces

[oneh2obabe]

Pockets, whose owner had to give him up, now resides at a sanctuary near Uxbridge. As part of his therapy he paints Warhol-like images. His works will be on exhibit Tuesday in Toronto as part of a fundraiser for the sanctuary.


Carola Vyhnak
Urban Affairs Reporter

With two hands, two feet, a tail, tongue and furry butt as tools to unleash your artistic wild side, who needs a paintbrush?

Not Pockets Warhol, a painting primate whose use of body parts has turned into a lucrative monkey business.

Art collectors are going bananas for the clever capuchin’s colourful abstracts, which fetch up to $300 from buyers as far away as Europe.

Now Pockets — we’ll use his first name to avoid confusion with that other giant of the art world — is having his own show. Following a reception Tuesday night, 40 monkey masterpieces will hang in Sadie’s Diner and Juice Bar on Adelaide St. W. for the next two months.

Pockets created the works during weekly therapy sessions at Story Book Farm sanctuary near Sunderland, where he lives with two dozen primates rescued from research labs, zoos, pet stores and private homes across the country.

But the proceeds from sales of his artwork aren’t going into Pockets’ pockets. He’s raising funds for a new barn to replace the cramped facility an hour northeast of Toronto.

It was Pockets’ resemblance to the American pop artist that prompted volunteer Charmaine Quinn to introduce him to non-toxic children’s paint as a way of keeping him busy.

“He looked a bit like Andy Warhol with that wild, white hair,” she says. While Pockets has done his own version of Warhol’s famous Campbell’s soup and Marilyn Monroe images, his splotches, splatters and sweeps of colour are more akin to the work of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.

“He seems to like bright colours,” says Quinn, one of 30 volunteers who keep the primates fed and entertained. But as visitors hover impatiently, Pockets, who has a Facebook page and a growing fan club, makes it clear artistic genius can’t be rushed.

“He’s easily distracted and he has the attention span of a 3-year-old,” explains Quinn, who also works with orphaned orangutans in Borneo. When the mood is right, the teenaged monkey takes mere minutes to smear colour on a canvas that will sell for $25 and up.

Sherri Delaney, a Durham Region police officer who opened the sanctuary 11 years ago, relies on donations to help with the $50,000-a-year cost of caring for the primates.

Among the residents are Komoto, a lemur who only knew how to run in circles after being confined to a tiny cage, and Lexy, a Japanese macaque who was duct-taped into a laundry basket for misbehaving.

Pockets wasn’t mistreated but his owner had to give him up because her health was failing, Delaney explains.

“The need is so great out there until we get some laws,” she says of the trade in exotic animals. With 19 at-risk monkeys waiting to move in, Delaney hopes to win a $100,000 grant from the Aviva Community Fund so she can build a bigger barn. Supporters have until Dec. 16 to vote online for her “monkeys in our midst” entry in the funding contest.

Failing that, the sanctuary’s future rests in Pockets’ talented hands — and feet and tail . . .

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/109 ... nanas?bn=1