Review

"Free Throw", Bottle Openers and Found Objects.

Charlie Paynter
Opening a New Life

8 a.m.-4 p.m.

Pi Art Gallery
419 East 18th
Kansas City, MO
816.210.6534

Special Weekend Showing
Hours: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday.
Runs through: Aug. 30

Gallery site: http://www.piartgallery.com

Some people putter around the garden after they retire. Some take up golf. Some quietly slip into aimlessness.

Charlie Paynter raided his collection of bottle openers and started an art career.

Paynter retired early last year after more than five decades in the mailroom and office supplies division of The Kansas City Star.  Since then, he has come up with more than two dozen sculptures incoprorating bottle openers, along with found and recycled materials. Twenty-seven of his creations -- in a show aptly titled Opening a New Life -- are on display in a special this-weekend-only show at Pi Art Gallery in the East Crossroads.

 These are playful works -- and really, how could they not be? They're made of bottle openers, after all.

The self-taught Paynter depicts everything from a basketball game -- in Free Throw, pictured above --  to tango dancing to a poker showdown, filling each piece with imagination, warm good humor and telling detail.

However, as with a good deal of other "outsider" art  -- the term applied to art produced by those with no formal training -- Paynter's work does not confine itself to small things. (Note, for example, the opposing sides in the basketball game. This is more than a friendly contest; for all of its whimsical visual appeal, it's a cosmic showdown.)

You'll have to hurry if you want to get in on the action, though; Paynter's show runs for only three days and closes tomorrow afternoon. That's the bad news. The good news is that there's likely a lot more work to emerge from his studio.

He has plenty of time on his hands, after all ... and more than five thousand bottle openers still left in his collection.

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