By Amy Williams with Charly Jupiter Hamilton

A striking use of color, intriguing shapes, crayons and markers used to make see-through cars and houses, funky figures going every which way — the work of West Virginia artist Echo McCallister has made it’s way in a big way to Museum in the Community in Hurricane.

The new exhibit is part of a traveling show for the National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Ill (NAEMI). Museum director Kelli Burns co-curated the exhibit with Juan Martin from NAEMI. This is the MITC’s first national touring show and major catalog.

Discovered as an outsider artist through the help of Tim and Melody Urbanic of Cafe Cimino’s in Sutton, McCallister’s work has been seen in numerous group shows over the years. It has been shown in Washington, D.C., Miami, even London. The current exhibit, McCallister’s first one-man show, has already been seen in New Jersey and Florida.

“He has an international reputation and is one of the top five best-known artists from West Virginia. His art is good. His perspective is good. His abilities are great,” said Burns.

Seeing through things

A resident of Clay, McCallister’s work and story is remarkable on many levels. He has been able to create art and have it shown widely in spite of having autism. He has lived through child abuse and spent many years of his life in state institutions.
The fun and colorful creations he draws and colors feature all kinds of houses, trucks, people and interesting figures. You often see right into them — the inside of a car with its parts, the inside of a person or a house.

One might say McCallister’s work is childlike, and artist Charly thinks that is a good thing. “Frankly, I like the work that kindergarteners do. I want to approach art like a child. Where do we draw the line on beauty? The root of prejudice is that people say it’s not art because it’s child-like, or a woman did it, or it was done with a camera. To me, the best page in Sunday’s newspaper is the comics where kids send in their drawings.”

The exhibit features more than 30 pieces. The collection of drawings includes work that is both wild and contained, elaborate and yet simple. Charly relates to McCallister’s way of looking at the world. “I see that way: two dimensional, twisted. I like the way he looks at things, the car with the carburetor. It’s like that little dance music is going on in his head. I have that, too.”

Outsider art is an art world term for work created by technically untrained or not traditionally trained artists. Burns says of McCallister, “He is very communicative, but in a non-traditional way. He’s calming and gregarious in his own way.”

CHARLY CONCLUDES:
“Looking at Echo’s work makes me feel as an artist we’re kind of in a childhood… oblivious to the fact that the world already exists. So you create a new one. Not to destroy what you encounter, but simply not to find anything complete. So there are countless possibilities, countless ways of seeing, dreaming and drawing. It will never be done. Never have the seventh day. Never to see that all is good… so you draw on. Echo in me, Echo in you…”

If You Go: See the McCallister exhibit and meet the artist at an Alternative Health Fair, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1 at Museum in the Community. Exhibit catalogs are for sale, $20 signed by the artist, $15 un-signed, and t-shirts and unframed art are available. The exhibit closes Jan. 21. Another exhibit and book signing with a dinner will be held at Cafe Cimino, Sutton, from 5 to 8 p.m., Oct. 22. Call 765-2913.

Photos of artworks by Mark Wolfe of Mark Wolfe Design

Mark Moore, Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Charleston, forwarded a request to me from a Louisiana colleague regarding the need for art supplies in their area.

There’s a need in Baton Rouge and at LSU for: any art supplies, especially drawing pads, sketchbooks, pencils, markers, watercolor sets, crayons, charcoal, printmaking supplies, sculpture tools, papers, rulers, t-squares, and anything else that is not toxic or dangerous (e.g. oil paint chemicals). This will help people a way to express their feelings in this very traumatic situation. Financial gifts to LSU also cant count as tax benefits.

In his request to Moore, Stuart Baron, director of LSU’s School of Art, wrote:

“Art is such a powerful means of achieving those true expressions of loss, fear, confusion, grief, and, most importantly, hope, which words alone cannot convey. No donation would be too small. Please, please help us by providing what you can. This is only one form of positive intervention, coming quickly from the entire country, that will enable the people and artists of the greater New Orleans area and Mississippi to sustain any possibility of a future whatsoever.”

In Charleston, Pro-Art at 187 Summers Street has agreed to accept donations of supplies.

On a side note, James Thibeault has been working on Katrina boxes, along with area artists including Charly Jupiter Hamilton, Mark Wolfe and myself. The boxes are reminiscent of AIDS and tsunami boxes where remnants or found items from an area are combined with other themed artistic creations and sold to raise money for affected areas.

– Amy Williams

THE SHOW: “Grid, Pattern, Surface: Image as Process,” Frankenberger Art Gallery, 2nd floor of Geary Student Union, University of Charleston, through Oct. 6.
ARTIST: 38 works by Thad Settle

By Amy Williams with Charly Jupiter Hamilton

Thad Settle’s exhibit at the University of Charleston drew a small, but nice crowd for his opening and artist talk on Tuesday, September 6. His Buddhist leanings (he’s a founding member of the Meditation Circle of Charleston) and employment in the telecommunications field have played a role in the focus of his art: a kind of Zen grid-ism.

Settle worked in cubicles and doodled hundreds of drawings, or as he calls them, “paintings” on Post-it notes. Although not in the current exhibit, there is evidence of Settle’s interest in grids throughout most of his work. In “Heart Sutra: Indra’s Net” Settle combines acrylic, metal leaf and wood on canvas as a reflection of the Buddhist idea on the interconnectedness of all things. While this was Charly’s favorite, I enjoyed the figure drawings–they were still tight, but freer and wilder in a way with a good use of color.

Some of the pieces were reminiscent of mini-Rothkos, little squares of color. Settle’s work is more of a pictogram, where you see pictures within the pictures. Two silver acrylic paintings caught the eye of our companions at the exhibit. One companion wished they’d seen more of a Buddhist influence in the show. Charly summed it up well, “Here is this artist, a family man working in office cubicles, doodling hundreds of grids on Post-it notes, being a part-time Buddha with a fanny pack and painting meditational-like grids. Is it life imitating art or art imitating life?”

CHARLEY SAYS:
“‘I’ve gone from a size 6 to a size 12 in 5 months because I quit smoking,’ I hear as I walk into an art show with some of 30 years of a person’s art life on the wall. I just get a faith in resurrection that a beautiful life lies buried somewhere in the application of paint on canvas. And like Nelson’s captains in the battles of the Napoleanic wars, I feel that the individual’s uncompromising pursuit of the end that will satisfy him will also serve the general good. Strawberries and chocolates… I gotta go!”

AMY CONCLUDES:
For original art (and at a reasonable prices, as these works are also for sale) this is a great show to visit. And it’s a nice meditative way to spend some time.

THE SHOW: “House of Leaves” by Gregg Oxley
WHERE: Museum in the Community, near Hurricane (show now closed)

“She drank the same rock-gut sherry I did when I drank and not a bad view from the window except the roof was caving in…” –Charly Hamilton

By Amy J. Williams with Charly Jupiter Hamilton

Haunting, funny, lonely, disturbing… These were feelings I felt upon seeing Gregg Oxley’s installation exhibit, “House of Leaves,” at The Museum in the Community in Putnam County. Although the exhibit closed in early September, it’s worth mentioning and describing the work’s ambitions.

According to Oxley, a recent Hurricane High Schol grad who is heading to school in Savannah, Ga., “House of Leaves” is based on the idea of sudden, tragic changes to any one individual. The main piece reflects the story of a woman who lost her husband and then, slowly, must rely on the help of others to get through day-to-day life.

My first visit to the exhibit was before Hurricane Katrina, but on the second visit it was intriguing how the recreation of an abandoned home was a reminder of the disturbing new reality along the Gulf Coast.

Oxley created a moving installation based on his interest in exploring abandoned homes. He took pictures of what he found and they were exhibited on a side wall — dead kittens and mold in the refrigerator are juxtaposed with colorful flowers blooming in the yard.

The main exhibit featured a recreated room: a television screen full of static, empty hair-coloring bottles, so many other of the stray pieces of the lives we each live.

Each wall of the exhibit was a work of art itself — found pieces, an altered book, a large mural of telephone poles reminiscent of crosses. The wall murals were intricate, and each piece a work of art itself.

WHAT CHARLY HAD TO SAY:

Charly thought the abundance of hair color bottles fascinating. “What do we hold onto?” he asked me. “When everything else fades, sometimes we cling to those simple things like coloring hair to keep us alive. It’s like the mirage of having your hair done, the hope of having a husband, and so we work at this one fake thing.”

“For awhile,” Charly continued, “when I was in the Navy around the Philippine ports in the North China Sea, sailoring in a kind of uncontrolled AWOL squalor, I took to smoking English Oval cigarettes and would imagine myself the whole empire in one person, smoking as the edges of my vision gave away to chaos. I felt some of the same kind of feeling looking around Oxley’s back-room mobile home deconstruction. Mobile homes, the illusion of a home, marriage, and black Clairol hair dye. The illusion of happiness. Art can scare you, and doesn’t always fit on the living room wall. Sometimes it is the living room wall, falling in. Please remember it all as long as you can. If you don’t have a life, no one can take it from you.”

As we left Charly said, “What would the woman who lived in this house think was significant? Would it be the muffin pan? Did she make muffins? Did her husband call her ‘Muffin?’”

AMY CONCLUDES:

Walking into this art was like walking into a picture, a tragic picture. Yet it was hard to leave.