Several months ago, I was invited to have a solo exhibit at The Arts Council of York County in Rock Hill, SC. This was significant to me because of my history with Rock Hill. I always say yes, so I said yes and began planning the exhibit. Devann, the Gallery Manager, was really great to work with and she helped get everything approved and organized so that the show could be what I wanted and what would serve the community best. When the time came to load up artwork and install the show, I was very busy but also very excited.
The semester of classes had just ended and I had a couple of other art happenings going on. My mind was in a million places as I drove into Rock Hill on a Sunday morning and as soon as I could see the Winthrop water tower, nostalgia kicked the door open and started flooding my brain with memories.
I went to Winthrop in the fall of 1990 as an undergrad art student. I graduated in 1994 and left town. Then, in early 1999, I drove back into town to meet with one of my mentor professors to talk about grad school. I enrolled in a class to get back into the groove in the fall and then was formally admitted into the MFA program in January 2000. I worked full time in Spartanburg and commuted through grad school. I graduated in spring of 2023 and continued teaching adjunct for the next 7 years. That spanned a lot of trips into Rock Hill and seeing that water tower when I was close to campus.
Devann helped me unload the artwork and within a couple of hours, I was drawing on the walls. One of the first things I drew involved a valentine style heart and I can’t think of hearts without thinking of the late Paul Martyka. Mr. Martyka was my 2D Design professor in my very first semester and what a wake-up call that was. He was the most challenging and enigmatic professor and a real art and design legend at Winthrop. Even today, you say the name “Martyka” and you’ll get a strong response either positively or negatively.
Mr. Martyka was a great teacher and he wisely told us to never draw hearts. Also, no stars and no glitter, though I may have just added the glitter part when I became a professor. I genuinely think he would have decapitated you if you used glitter in his class. So I drew the heart and immediately thought of him. I wondered if he would appreciate my use of hearts, stars and glitter in this body of work. (As a side note, there is glitter in this exhibit and you get bonus points if you can find it.)
I can’t think of Mr. Martyka without thinking about a moment I shared with him on my trip back in 1999 to talk about the possibility of going to grad school. We met officially and he gave me advice. Then we adjourned for coffee at a local shop and he suddenly became very human. In a moment that I still don’t quite comprehend, he lowered his guard enough to share a very personal story with me about his recent loss of a young granddaughter. It was a heartbreaking story of her untimely death followed by an eerie moment of him discovering a blooming violet in the middle of his yard under a pile of leaves. The violet was the granddaughter’s favorite flower and he told me he knew this was a message from her indicating that she was at peace and that he could let her go.
I was stunned by the magnitude of such a powerful story being shared by a man who shared absolutely NO personal information with his students when I was in undergrad. This was a moment I would recount in my head for years as I learned more and more about loss and love and grief. It was a story that immediately came to mind when I thought of him while drawing on that wall.
When I do murals like this in exhibits, I have no preconceived plans about what I will draw. I take my sketchbook and I allow myself to be inspired by the artwork and the place. Without hesitation, I began to draw an animated skeleton, a ghost, a heart, and a violet in bloom. This was my head nod to Mr. Martyka. I hope he would be proud of me.
During my freshman year, Tom Stanley was introduced to me as the Gallery Director at Winthrop and he was a frequent guest speaker in our Art Education classes. His wife, Kathe was one of the great local K-12 art teachers and Tom was a great speaker. When I came back for grad school, Tom was still doing the gallery job and soon he took over as Department Chair. He kept hiring me back as an adjunct and was kind enough to promote me to other universities when they were looking for full time professors. Tom recommended me for the job I have now and I have no doubt, I was considered because of him.
After I went to Lander full time, Tom continued to support me in various ways. He was very generous in donating several of his extremely wonderful paintings to Lander in recent years and just last summer, he and Kathe surprised me by coming to a public art event reception to see me.
My undergrad roommate, Chad and I skipped class one day and took a daytrip to Asheville back when we were in school. We looked at a bunch of art and in one of the hip galleries, we saw a painting by Tom. This was the first time I really thought about my professors and mentors being real artists and what that meant. I was so proud to find Tom’s artwork in the real world. When we walked the halls of the Art building at night, you’d most likely see Tom working on paintings in the hallway. His office was small and dominated by a very cool (at the moment) transparent Apple computer and a collection of folk art. When he painted, he often spilled over into the hallway. Eventually he started using the hallway as his studio where he would paint themes of architecture and ships.
When I think of Winthrop, I think of Tom. He had to be a part of my nostalgia trip to Rock Hill for this exhibit. This ship/house is my figurative high five to him.
When I went back to school in 1999, my first semester back was Shaun Cassidy’s first semester in town. He was the new sculpture professor. He was British, he was funny, he yelled a lot and he was great. I learned so much about teaching from him. I was really fortunate to have a great undergrad sculpture professor and a great graduate sculpture professor.
One of the best things about Shaun was that he was such an active art maker. He was ALWAYS working. When he wasn’t making 3D things, he was making hundreds of 2D things. When I graduated, we agreed to trade artwork. I gave him one of my favorite sculptures and I got a very cool framed 2D work from him. He was always experimenting and he had discovered a way of putting many coats of paint on a piece of paper, placing that paper over an object and then sanding away the layers of paint to reveal a ghost of an image of the object. The one I got was called “Mr. Rabbit”, as it was a sanding/rubbing of a stuffed rabbit toy. My nod to Shaun is my own version of Mr. Rabbit.
One of the only times I drove back to Rock Hill since I stopped teaching there was for Alf Ward’s celebration service. Alf was also legendary but not just in Winthrop lore. There’s a full post about him somewhere on this blog if you search his name. If you don’t want to bother, just know that Alf was also British and that in his lifetime he counted several Rolling Stones, Steve Winwood and Christine McVie as personal friends. (If you’re young, you should Google those names.) Alf was Department Chair when I was in undergrad and he continued to teach his mastery of metals to generations of students long after I departed with both degrees. You know how you can remember specific words spoken by someone for many years after the moment has passed? One of my high points in life was when Alf complimented my steel sculpture in a faculty exhibit when I was teaching. The king of metals liked my metal sculpture. There was no higher praise. I was elated.
During one of several talks I got to hear Alf give, he told stories of enduring German air raids as a child. He told us about the characters Punch and Judy and their symbolic life now among his paintings. At his celebration service, one of his paintings had been reproduced as the card for the event. The painting featured Punch and a little lamb wearing a pointed hat. That image became very important to me. Not only have I referenced Punch in one of my ink drawings in this exhibit, I also wanted to include the hat wearing lamb in the mural. That one is for you, Alf. Thanks for the compliment.
I mentioned Devann already. I met Devann for the first time on that Sunday for installation but because we both earned our MFAs from Winthrop, she felt very familiar to me immediately. I joke that this is “trauma-bonding”. All of the gallery people were encouraging as I drew on the walls and I can’t begin to tell you how important that is. I wouldn’t want people to know this, but an artist can feel very insecure doing an installation like this. I’m drawing with no plan, no pencil lines and absolutely no guarantee that it will look right. Every mark is public and terrifying. The encouragement is so helpful and Devann was a constant source of positivity. She would walk through the gallery and smile or laugh and say something nice. On one of her passes, she joked that I could draw her and her crazy hair. I hadn’t noticed any crazy hair, but I instantly began planning to include her. I let my mind run with some fun ideas for a while and soon I found a perfect spot. The cool bird with “crazy” hair is my head nod to my new friend Devann. (She was also fond of the tooth image.)
It was during my third year of undergrad at Winthrop that I took my first Sculpture class. Up to that point, I was focused on 2D art. I loved to draw. I got to have Marge Moody as my Drawing 1 professor and she taught and encouraged me well. When she included one of my drawings in a student show, I knew I was going to be a drawing person forever. Then I walked into the Sculpture studio and felt like I was in a cleaner version of my dad’s shop. I felt at home but I also already knew how to work all of the equipment. What I did not know is that I was now a sculptor, too.
Mary Mintich was the Sculpture professor and she was also a bit of a legend. She was a very small, very quiet lady who wore fun socks with Birkenstock sandals every single day. She loved to tell stories and she had a very old fashioned way of teaching with words more than with actions. She could explain things to you in several different ways until it clicked in your head. As I was a young student just discovering that my professors were basically famous artists, I started to notice their artwork. Mary’s work was always larger than her. She combined things like fine metals and resin to combine minimalist geometry with organic imagery. It was so good. I would make excuses to go to her office to look around at her work stored in the room.
Space is always an issue for sculptors and Mary had a sculpture in the hallway just outside her office for many years. It took me a while to realize it was created by her, but it stood guard in the hallway for the four years I was there and probably many years before and after. I would love to know where it is today. The sculpture was a tall pyramid with a mirror finish front. Near the top was a metallic resin cloud intersecting the pyramid. It was beautiful and elegant. I have recently discovered some significance related to this sculpture that will likely result in its own post. Until then, this sketch of her sculpture is my nod of respect to her.
One of the obstacles to planning an installation like this is finding a free place to stay for several days. I’ve had hotels put me up in return for some social media publicity. I’ve had inns and B&Bs put me up as a donation to the exhibition space. A school was kind enough to put me up in their special alumni housing. This time, one of the arts supporters in town offered to allow me to use their bonus apartment for the week. At the end of the first day of installation, I met Gale and Henry and one of their cats. They let me in their house and offered me food, tea, coffee and anything else I might need. They stocked the apartment with water, orange juice and cinnamon rolls. They led me to the apartment and made sure I knew where everything was and gave me a key. They were so much more hospitable than a hotel. Gale also had a Winthrop connection. She worked at the Ida Jane Dacus Library on campus, partially during the time I was there as a student.
They were so kind and loving to me, they had to have a drawing too. I have now forgotten the cat’s name twice but he was a cute cat sleeping under the dining room table when I visited and he was very important to Gale and Henry. He had successfully endured chemotherapy and he paid me absolutely no attention at all. He fit perfectly with the mural imagery. Those of you who know me, know I don’t draw cats. I do, however, make exceptions for special people. The cat dreaming of a mouse is my thank you to Gale and Henry for their immense kindness.
Kevin was in a stacked Sculpture class with me. He was in undergrad when I was in a grad class. I remember his sense of humor and I liked him a lot. He made a giant Lego piece that I can still picture in my memory. I’ve kept up with him in the years since he graduated. He’s now married to a professor at Winthrop and he spent years working at a sculpture supply warehouse. A while back I ordered some casting materials for my students and when he packed the box, he included an original drawing that I still have in my office.
We joke with each other on Instagram sometimes and back during quarantine, I started giving him a hard time about some flower imagery related to Georgia O’Keeffe. We goofed back and forth about it while trying not to go crazy during the pandemic. As I was drawing and thinking about my connections in Rock Hill, I just had to draw Kevin an iris. That one under the dinosaur is all yours, Kevin. *blows kiss*
During our last couple of years of undergrad, our friend Stan moved in with my original roommate, Chad and me. We upgraded our apartment and also upgraded our ridiculous antics. We built a life size paper-mâché cow in our kitchen. We started painting all over Chad’s truck and made it a work of art.
Stan and I started running at night from our apartment, across the adjacent neighborhood and around Winthrop Lake. It was a 5 mile trek and we did it 5 nights each week. Each run was a talk session as we decompressed, made jokes and talked about ridiculous things. Stan’s great aunt was the source of a lot of funny stories. She was very, very old and because of her health, she was being cared for by family. One story featured her eating from a bowl of decorative plastic fruit. She ate some fake grapes.
She was such an enigmatic figure for me from Stan’s stories, I decided to create a drawing based on her and it hung in our apartment, then in my first house, and now in my school office. Aunt Gene’s fake grapes live on in this exhibit and one of the grapes is wearing Stan’s trademark glasses.
So that’s, what, nine of the images from the exhibit explained? It’s just a small sampling of the imagery in the show from the murals and also in the drawings and sculptures. Does everything have a deep meaning like these? Maybe. The fun thing for me is that none of the images have a singular meaning. Everything can be interpreted multiple ways and that’s the joy of it all. You don’t have to know the scoop to be able to enjoy the narratives. I do hope you’ll visit the exhibit before it ends on June 7. I can almost guarantee you’ll leave in a good mood.
Awesome post
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