What happens when you follow your HeArt
“I want to have my own little part of life that is enjoyable where I don’t have to think about somebody getting bombed on the other side of the planet for some dumb reason. I try to create a world that is bright, happy and colorful. Things that make people laugh. If you act like a kid again, you just saved some years.”
Stephen Feilbach is a local artist and member of the Arts Council. He has 3D art installations around town, most recently Humpty Dumpty in Basin Spring Park and the Giant Frog at Sweet Spring. He’s the creator of Bigfoot on a Bench at Lake Leatherwood.
I caught Stephen in his studio behind the Community Center as he was getting back from an art show in the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River. He described the show as a collection of people on the fringes of the art community.
“A ship can’t leave its harbor if it doesn’t know where it’s going,” he said. “We as humans, if we don’t have direction, we randomly roam and then hope something works out. And it doesn’t. Not very well anyways. I try to figure out where I fit.”
Feilbach gives Eureka Springs credit for helping him grow and shape his art over the last ten years. When he arrived, he was doing chainsaw carving but knew that he was ready to go bigger.
“Eureka Springs is open to the arts, and the people are really cool. I’ve always been traveling around trying to figure out where I can make money doing art. Eureka has taken my skill set to a way higher level because of the people I know here,” he said. “Larry Mansker, Mel Shipley, KurtzMiller, they are all such masters. They are all successful differently. But they are all successful. You don’t find these people anywhere else.” Stephen pays it forward by mentoring other local artists.
“To have Larry Mansker come over and talk colors, talk about what he sees and what I see. It’s pretty awesome.” Stephen says he has learned as much about marketing as artistry from Larry and that they both believe in the baker’s dozen mentality of giving a little extra.
Mansker describes Stephen as a recovering hippie. “I’ve dealt with a lot of artists who said they were going to be artists. But they didn’t work at it. Stephen works at it. He’s come a long way in five years,” Mansker said.
“I realized there was nobody coming to save me,” Feilbach responded. “I enjoy that part, the next challenge, a new skill set. I’m more commercial art. I want to bring art to the masses. Does that make me commercial? The drummer for Metallica was asked once if he was a sell-out. He responded that they sell out every arena.
“The difference between commercial art and fine art is the intent. Fine art is what you create out of emotion, trying to take a stance. Commercial art is trying to find somebody to buy something that’s going into a public setting. That makes it commercial art. But it still puts off emotion and gives has the qualities of fine art.”
He said based off this definition his art might be a blend of both.
“Art is a subjective word, it’s my passion. Nuts to reality, I want to do giant, fun stuff. I want to make people smile and help them enjoy life. I enjoy that. As long as you smile like a five- year-old sitting on my pieces, I don’t care what you call it. And at the end of the day the people who sit on it and enjoy it don’t care whether it’s called commercial art or fine art.”
A defining moment in his life was when he realized that public installation art could be used as art therapy. He painted a giant smiley face just off a St. Louis freeway. He never told anybody that he did it and would hear people talking about it in such a positive way in his local cafe, that something as simple as a smile could brighten one’s day.
Feilbach came to Eureka Springs from Columbia, Mo., with the giant gnome that’s at the Art Colony on N. Main. He was on MTV for taking that giant gnome to a World Series game, but his business wasn’t structured enough to make use of the attention. “When it’s hot it’s hot and when it’s not, it’s over. You only get a little time. That’s the world we live in.”
Even though his art business is growing, there are days his confidence is high and days it’s low. He advises artists to go to businesses that have money rolling and see if you can do anything they want. Don’t do only what you want to do. Be open.
“You make your clients happy, get others to want your stuff and get known for what do. Listen to others and give a little extra. It is important to be growth minded.”
Stephen says he has a laundry list of clients all from different fields. He is very interested in learning how he can work better with people, and compared marketing and working with people to gardening.
“Art is planting seeds. If you’ve ever grown a garden, it grows when you’re consistent. It doesn’t always work. And sometimes it does more than you thought. It’s kind of that life thing. If Eureka wants you it will keep you. It has that energy about it. It either attracts or repels. It has given me so much.”
Stephen thinks that every artist should learn about marketing and market themselves. He has begun using Chat GPT(AI) to help him with grant writing. I’m about to dive off into that. It’s already at 140 IQ, which makes it smarter than everybody on the planet.”
One of Stephen’s first jobs in Eureka was carving OZ Trails logos into the rock at the hubs for the downhill trails. He camped out in the woods while doing it. Stephen Feilbach’s career has gone from woodworking to chainsaw carving to rock carving to sculpting and now even painting. He loves passing on what he knows. Find him on Instagram @stephenfeilbachart and Facebook.