Amherst’s Rich and Flo Newman wear several hats, and every hat is unusual. In one, you’ll find a rabbit. Not only do the Newmans have a penchant for bunnies of the pet variety, big-eared rabbits are a motif in all their work, popping (hopping?) up in small details or in more overt ways, like Flo’s rabbit guitar.
With that guitar, she makes weird and wonderful music in collaboration with Rich under the moniker Tagyerit. The two don’t play gigs, but they’ve offered their unusual sounds on record for a good few years. The music is like pop with alien sensibilities, a fun listen that’s full of surprising fizz and tang. Flo’s often-ethereal vocals float along, buoyed by her off-kilter guitar playing and Rich’s propulsive bass lines. Chances are high that you won’t find anything quite like it.
That’s hardly the end of the Newmans’ unusual activities. They’re accomplished woodcarvers (Flo carved her rabbit guitar herself), and creators of unusual sculpture, not to mention carved pumpkins. The side of their house illustrates another of their habits: using shingles to create pictorial art. Along a stairway, a giant made of burnt and shaped shingles climbs toward a window, where a shingle bunny peers in.
The interior of the Newmans’ house is a showcase of many sorts—not only do carved and shaped forms fill the space, old toys and just plain stuff of many a bright and shiny sort fill the nooks and crannies. The kitchen boasts a small door in the cabinets for, apparently, gnomes. Whimsy and pleasant overload abound. It’s a highly personal manifestation of what Flo calls “the collecting mentality.” At the Newmans’ wonderfully manic website (tagyerit.com), you’ll find galleries full of their strange and intriguing things, some crafted by Rich and Flo, some acquired by them. A lot of it is for sale.
When it comes to collecting, the Newmans have a singular claim to fame. They boast an extraordinary collection of the ultimate ephemera: toilet paper. Their “Whole World Toilet Paper Museum” landed them on the Smithsonian Channel, and it’s a wonder to behold. There’s early toilet paper from the 19th century, World War II toilet paper bearing Hitler’s face, and many a ply from the water closets of the famous. Among the prizes, you’ll find sheets from Woody Allen (who wrote “Why this?”), Ray Charles, and Harrison Ford (“To two good shits”). It was, the Newmans say, an attempt to collect something completely worthless.
And then there are the Newmans’ holiday pursuits. At Christmastime, they’ve made a habit of creating Christmas trees from items like vinyl LPs and plumbing fixtures. But things really take off this time of year. Every Halloween brings the arrival of pumpkin-carving time. Most of us labor away with big kitchen knives, mostly avoiding the loss of extremities, to cut a crude face into our orange gourds. But when the Newmans slice into a pumpkin, they put their woodcarving skills to use, creating scenes of whimsy and remarkable detail. When the candle goes inside one of their works, the scene comes to life. The results are often exquisite. But, in keeping with the Newmans’ love of the ephemeral, these organic canvases don’t last long. Flo says that some aspiring pumpkin carvers soak their gourds in bleach so they’ll last a little longer, but most of the time, the deeply carved pumpkins sag and rot within a few days.
Not to worry—the Tagyerit site includes a massive pumpkin gallery featuring the Newmans’ work and others’. Their disciplines combine in a section called “Songcarvers,” in which Tagyerit’s music accompanies stop-motion video detailing the creation of many of their intricate pumpkins. So far, this year’s carvings include one protesting Whole Foods’ addition of rabbit meat to their offerings, and another of a cat’s face, in which each element of the face is made of cat shapes. You can check out more pumpkins at tagyerit.com/pumpkin.htm.•