Artist Kip Farris, 61, loved building parade floats

Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 9, 2006 at midnight

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The next time you watch the Parade of Lights and spot the gingerbread house float, think of Kip Farris.

The former Denver-based artist, who died Dec. 20 at age 61 in a Richmond, Calif., hospital of a chronic respiratory illness, designed that confection, along with about 600 others, in a career that ranged from painting huge murals on buildings in Denver to founding the parade-float company The Floatworks in 1983.

Mr. Farris, who was born Nov. 18, 1944, also opened an early alternative-art space here in 1975 (the 1418 16th Street gallery) and was co-founder of the underground publication The Rocky Mountain Oyster.

The gallery opening was the beginning of the lower downtown art scene, a time of experimentation and growth.

"Kip and I shared a studio in the same building," said Karl Isberg, who with Farris helped found both the gallery and, later, the Oyster. "There was nowhere around town for cutting-edge artists to show their work."

The two met in 1966 at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Both were painting, and they worked on some murals together. The gallery lasted until 1977.

Isberg and Mr. Farris then helped found the Oyster. At the time, Isberg said, "it was a parody of an adult newspaper," with graphics by Mr. Farris and writing by Isberg. Ads were sold by partner Jim Ciccarelli.

Mr. Farris left after a few months, and the other two sold the publication about a year later "to people who turned it into an adult paper."

Mr. Farris was "just a quixotic, creative, wonderful guy," said Isberg, editor of The Pagosa Springs Sun.

Much of the lower downtown art scene has been "blown away by time," said Mr. Farris' brother, Kris Farris, who lives in Denver. And so has much of Mr. Farris' work.

"Murals are tough," said Kris Farris. "They don't weather well and businesses change."

Mr. Farris' murals - including one with giant sports figures that was visible from Interstate 25 near downtown until it was repainted a few years ago - basically have disappeared.

Mr. Farris was born in Beaumont, Texas. His family moved here when he was a year old. He attended North High School and enlisted in the Army in 1964. During his service, he earned a GED and spent time in Italy, where Kris Farris said his brother was influenced by the work of masters such as Michelangelo and Carravagio.

When he returned to Denver after his tour of duty, he studied art at both Regis College and Metropolitan State College of Denver.

"He was a problem-solver," said sculptor Robert Mangold, who was among Mr. Farris' teachers at Metro. "He was probably a better designer than a fine artist, but he was very motivated. He was a very good student."

After his brother's death, Kris Farris said he and his wife gathered up many pieces of his work in California.

"To see decades' worth of art astounded me," said Kris Farris. "His talent and artistic integrity amazed me."

That included projects for Floatworks. "He was trying to fight keeping the floats from being billboards and not artistic."

Former Denver artist Jud Hart, who has lived in the Bay Area for several years, agreed.

"Kip was a master of diverse media, from painting to sculpture to computer graphics. Over the years, these skills were reflected in his parade float designs - sometimes to his regret, as he often felt locked in by the parade float 'business,' hyper-bohemian operation that it was.

"Still, he managed to create a unique body of artworks. He was a generous, sometimes lovable, curmudgeon located on the personality curve somewhere between Hunter S. Thompson, minus the guns, and Charles Bukowski in his barfly days."

Floatworks made numerous floats for parades in Denver, San Francisco and Minneapolis, and the brothers worked on many of them together, as the Parade of Lights grew in size and appearance. In the beginning, it wound around one block in lower downtown.

Mr. Farris moved to the Bay Area in 1989, where he kept shops in Berkeley and Oakland, but continued working on Denver's Parade of Lights through the late 1990s.

That's how the Downtown Denver Partnership's Susan Rogers Kark met him.

"He loved that medium," said Kark, who came to the partnership in 1994 and, as vice president, oversees the Parade of Lights.

The gingerbread house, which Kark says is at least 15 years old, not only has survived several times longer than the average float but helped rescue other floats when a blizzard in October 1997 sank the roof of a warehouse where the they were stored. "It saved the day," said Kark. "It held the roof up so we were able to remove other floats."

From the many floats Mr. Farris' company made for the Denver event, there also remains a bright pink- and-purple-sparkled rocking horse, she said.

Jim Robischon of Robischon Gallery said he remembered Kip Farris from the one-time active artists' slow-pitch softball league, which fielded several teams.

"He was everywhere," says Robischon. "He was very soft-spoken, a good guy. He did floats. Whenever the parade comes on, I think of him."

In addition to his brother, Mr. Farris is survived by two daughters, Kayla Van Cleve of Plano, Texas, and Briel Farris, of Pittsburg, Calif; three grandchildren; and three former wives.

Memorial services here and in California are pending. Mr. Farris was cremated in California.

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