ROB PETTIT

Mounds and mounds of cellphones

By JENNA SCHERER

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Last Friday, I found myself trapped in a sort of living Purgatory—the repairs line at the Verizon store. My cell, a snazzy-yet-fragile LG Chocolate, had conked out on me yet again. Just as I was coughing up the $50 fee for a replacement, I noticed a girl next to me eyeing my lime-green lemon of a phone.

"That's pretty," she said, before turning to a simpering customer service drone. "I want that one."

"It breaks," I muttered. "A lot." Even as I said this, I glanced at my phone's scratched screen and thought of all we'd been through together. The fact that I was giving my phone war-buddy status seemed patently absurd.

If anyone understands mankind's complex relationship with cellphones, it's Rob Pettit. The artist has spent the past seven months literally knee-deep in mobile technology.

"It started about a year ago, when I lost my 13th cellphone for the millionth time," Pettit explains. We're standing in his studio, a Lower Allston enclave in the shadow of the Stop & Shop. He's making the final preparations for his showing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts' Fifth Year Exhibition 2008, which features the work of five selected SMFA alums. Pettit's portion entails 11 pieces made of and about cell phones.

"I was looking for something that I could work with that was contemporary and had to do with our point in history," Pettit says of his chosen medium. "I also wanted something that I could get for free, and get lots of."

The studio is aflutter with phones of every stripe—bins of LGs, boxes of Samsungs, even a couple of bulky oldies. Over the past few months, Pettit has amassed around 6,000 out-of-commission mobile devices.

"I like to think about all the people who cherished these phones, and all the conversations that went on and the text messages," Pettit muses.

Of course, 6,000 mobiles didn't spontaneously appear in the studio. Pettit began by asking for donations from friends and family, but soon turned to the big boys—cellphone recycling companies. Most came from ReCellular, a Michigan-based outfit who agreed to donate to Pettit's project. Usually, these old cells are either reactivated or ground down for the precious metals found in their circuitry.

Pettit's collection is only the tip of the iceberg. "When you consider that there are an estimated 500 million unused cellphones just kicking around people's drawers, 6,000 isn't really a huge amount at all."

He's channeled his hoard into a variety of pieces, including circles and sunbursts made up of hundreds of phones. Intricately arranged patterns on the floor and walls look like mandalas more than anything else, those elaborate sand paintings that Buddhist monks spend weeks making that are meant to encompass the breadth of the universe. It only takes Pettit a few hours to set his up, but they carry with them the same air of spiritual significance.

He leads me to a set of drawings that, from far away, I had taken to be pointillist pieces. Up close, I see that each dot is actually a tiny ink drawing of a flip phone. Pettit explains that he spent the first four months of his project drawing thousands and thousands of eensy phones, tally counter in hand. He can rattle the number in each piece off the top of his head—3,557, 15,751. I fear a little for his sanity.

"I quit smoking in September, so the repetitive mark-making became this really meditative process," he explains. "I was just trying to get to the idea of how inundated with technology we are."

So inundated, in fact, that we practically revere it. One of Pettit's drawings is a riff on Caspar David Friederich's "The Cross on the Mountain"—an 1808 painting of' Jesus nailed up on a hilltop crucifix. In his version, Pettit replaces the familiar cross with the bristly silhouette of a cellphone tower.

"This is contemporary religion," Pettit says. "People worshipping technology."

To find the time and money to work on his installation, the SMFA grad was forced to rely on student loans. It all went toward paying rent; everything else was pretty much DIY. He shows me a desk constructed from wooden pallets he found behind the Stop & Shop. But Pettit's got no regrets. "I wanted to be able to work everyday for seven months on this project."

It'll all be worth it if he comes out on top in the Fifth Year Exhibition. It's a juried show, and the winner gets money toward traveling and developing as an artist, plus his or her own exhibit at the MFA. If Pettit wins, he's heading to China—"the birthplace of these cellphones," he explains—and then to Berlin.

On my way out of his studio, I spy a row of Zack Morris phones lined up on a table like tin soldiers. "You weren't able to use those?" I ask.

"No, but I always wanted one of those phones," Pettit says, smiling. "Now, I've got 10 of them."

ROB PETTIT

FIFTH YEAR EXHIBITION 2008

OPENING THU. 4.10, 5PM.

RUNS THROUGH 5.3

MON.-WED. 10AM-5PM

THU. 10AM-8PM

FR.-SAT. 10AM-5PM

GROSSMAN GALLERY @ SMFA

230 THE FENWAY

BOSTON

617.369.3718

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