RICK PROCTER

Works of art emerge from Rick Procter's basement maybe six months or a year after they were created. A piece appears only with the weakening of his emotional attachment to it. Then, Procter will tell his wife Frances, "I'm going to bring it up for a look."

This is the way Procter's mentor, "Skinny" Schooley, worked in his studio in New Mexico. "He was always bringing things up for a look," he says.

The latest works of art to escape from Procter's basement will be displayed during January at Gallery 100.

An opening reception for the artist, a retired professor of art at Southeast Missouri State University, will be held from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at the gallery, located at Main and Broadway.

The gallery describes his work as "serious, cerebral and comical," a scrambling of adjectives which hint at Procter's individuality.

X's and O's or are they cross-eyed crosses and spheres? figure prominently in many of the compositions. "I guess they're archetypal," Procter observes.

Almost all of the works have a three-dimensional feel, since Procter likes to put them in frames that look like boxes. He recalls that when his two children were kids they were always climbing up on things to look into his paintings.

A few of the pieces might even be said to transcend three dimensions, quite a trick for an artist working basically in acrylic on canvas.

In the blink of an eye, a sphere can seem to switch from foreground to background.

Some incorporate objects which most people put in their trash. A few feature cartoonish characters summoned from somewhere in his psyche, and occasionally a mirror invites the viewer to become part of the art work.

The titles, which he assigns only because "people like titles," range from "Ghost Box" to "Cid Chemise." The sum of the images, he will allow, has "a Halloween effect. But then you realize they're just pussycats."

Many of the works also invoke a cosmic mood. Procter shakes his head and shrugs at such an observation.

"It's all emotional," he says. "That's all it is."

Procter grew up in Amarillo, Texas, a town where Georgia O'Keefe once was the art supervisor for the public schools.

O'Keefe's influence made art socially acceptable even in his football-crazy hometown, Procter says.

He graduated from West Texas State and received his master's degree from New Mexico Highlands University.

He taught at Southeast from 1968 until retiring in 1987.

His work is in 14 museum collections, and has been selected for 13 national and four international juried competitions. He has won eight purchase prizes in exhibitions in 20 states, but no longer enters competitive exhibitions.

Despite all the honors, Procter delights in questioning the value of "my addiction, my affliction."

He talks about using mirrors because he found a bargain on them at Kmart. All these boxes and mirrors he calls "the dime store effect."

Though proud of his painting accomplishments, he says, "Periodically you think, `This is so crazy.'"

One of his daughters is a hematologist, the other has a Ph.D. in anthropology. Procter wonders aloud, "Why would a grown man do this?"

Walking through the gallery, Procter touches his works often. "I don't mind people touching," he says. "Museums hate to see me coming."

He likes to play with his paintings, almost as if they are board games. Often he finds himself looking at them from the side, as if he could see behind the dimensions his contrasting colors have created.

Procter is slippery when it comes to talking about the process he uses to create his work. He will admit to being influenced as a student by abstract expressionism. Its adherents began work by clearing their minds, then making marks on a number of different canvasses.

"If one seemed to `speak to you,' you would make another mark and then you'd make another mark," he said.

Indeed, Procter's work seems to have sprung forth from his subconscious mind without passing through the self-editing process that makes most of us afraid to draw a stick figure.

"It's child-like without being childish," Procter says.

Perhaps the lack of intellectual distancing is one reason it is difficult for Procter to separate himself from his works. And perhaps it is one reason all kinds of people respond to his art.

The exhibit will be open from 1-4 p.m. weekdays through Jan. 28.