Interviews

When did you become a McGuffey member?

I came to Charlottesville in 1981 to be with my soon to be husband, John Casey. I needed a place of my own as a refuge from a life that would otherwise be centered on the English Department at UVA and found McGuffey. I left McGuffey in 2014.

What is your medium?
The history of the alphabet and the shaping of letters was the starting point for observing how form and language change over time and that study became the underpinning for ways to think about art making. Rubber, steel and silk brushes, paint, cardboard and cloth, sticks and stones, needle and thread, plumber’s pipe, acrylic and oil paint are some of the tools and materials I encountered along the way, but it was always the idea that preceded the medium.

Has your inspiration changed over time?
My work over time shows a number of evolving themes.  But there is a core belief that underlies my way of working: a respect for formal craft combined with the necessity to seek freedom from it. 

What is your favorite memory from MAC?
I have two. Attending a conference of Art Centers from all over America in Washington DC while I was president of McGuffey in the 90’s, and realizing how rare an institution McGuffey was and is. At that time many similar art centers all over the country were being shut down by real estate and economic pressures and forced to give up working studio space to showcase retail studios and events space managed by a board of private donors. We are unique in having such generous city support and being able to maintain reasonable rental rates for working artists so consistently over time. 

Why is McGuffey Important?
Another favorite memory and one more reason McGuffey is important. From 2005 to 2007 I launched the Spotlight Series at McGuffey. I chose a theme each month: What is Authenticity? Truth-Telling in Photography, Improvisation, How Ideas Emerge in Art and Science, The Art of Film Casting, Music and Art, Politics in Art, to name a few. The people on the panels were from the Charlottesville community and from UVA. It served as a great bridge between our two communities. 

What challenges did you face at the start of your career?
Art is a constant challenge. That is why we do it. It’s solving one problem at a time, from the practical and technical to the minutiae of aesthetic choices made in the moments of creation.

What themes or messages do you explore in your art practice?
Most recently in the past ten years, my figurative oil paintings have explored the stranglehold of our digital world; rising waters; what happens after the deluge.  An installation called Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders was an exploration of personal circumstances that drive art making as conceived by ten fictional characters. Two later installations: Men in Suits (a stations-of-the-cross display of images insinuating a moral teaching within the halls of power), Catch the Baby (an installation inviting the public in to perform a frictionless method of conversation-making with a chosen partner using a game device).

Are there any unique techniques you’ve developed over time?
My favorite was a tool for applying wide 360-degree range-of-motion swaths of paint onto a glass surface - made of steel, garage door weather stripping, silk, hair ties and a paint stirrer. You had to be there. 

Was there a defining moment in your art career that led you to where you are.
A defining moment was probably the installation I mentioned above, Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders, and its accompanying box set of ten books, a work I spent five years on. It generated a sale to the National Gallery of Art, a play I wrote based on the characters in the work which was produced by Live Arts in 2011, and a mixed media course I taught for many years after called Mapping the Dark. 

Did you have traditional training or were you self-taught?
I attended two art schools graduating with a BFA from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and also studied independently the art and history of letter forms. 

What would an ideal day in the studio look like?
2.5 hours in the morning and 2.5 hours in the afternoon. Alone and undistracted.

Is there anything creative you are working on right now?
I am finishing an addition to the studio which will include a storage area for my work and an upstairs bedroom/gallery space. Eager to get back in the studio. 

What do you most like about being an artist?
Everything. The space and freedom to unravel what drives meaning in my life. The hand and the mind working together reveal things the mind can never do alone.

What advice would you give to young artists?
Set an example no one else can follow.Description text goes here

When did you become a McGuffey member?

October 1981

What is your medium ?

Stained Glass

What is your favorite memory from MAC ?

Openings in the days where artists brought really good food.

Why is McGuffey important?

It is a community of artists which allows the public access to their studios. 

What challenges did you face at the start of your career?

Making a living from my artwork. A part time job was necessary initially to be able to afford the rent.

What themes or messages do you explore in your art practice?

Since I mostly do commission work the biggest challenge is working with clients to come up with designs that fulfill their needs and are also aesthetically pleasing.

Are there any unique techniques you've developed over time?

Yes, I developed a mold making technique for the Dalle-de-Verre autonomous pieces I produce.

Was there a defining moment in your art career that led you to where you are?

In my third year as a Studio Art major an instructor decided to teach beginning stained glass. 

Do you have traditional training or were you self taught?

After two years of beginning stained glass in college I worked in a professional stained glass studio as an apprentice for three years.

What would an ideal day in the studio look like?

The best days are the ones where all the preparation work (sketches, glass selection) for a commission is done and I begin to cut the glass on the light table.

What do you like most about being an artist?

Setting your own hours.

When did you become a member at McGuffey?

I attended the early organizational meetings, led by founding president Terry van Groll in 1975, for what would become McGuffey Art Center.  I signed on to share a studio with several other artists who got to know one another in an extended lithography workshop taught by Jessie Sheffrin (sp?), sponsored by the VMFA at PVCC.  I began cleaning Studio 14 with others in the group during August, 1975, moved in, and celebrated my 28th birthday there.  The building was hot, dark, and locked during the day as we worked.  Fred Nichols and Holly Quarles had also moved into that part of the first floor the summer '75.  McGuffey's grand opening to the public was in October, 1975, and for several years we had a "birthday" group show for all members in October.  I still have the t-shirt "Happy Birthday, McGuffey", designed by Judy McLeod. 

I became the first gallery chair;  Anne Slaughter and Ann Megibow were the other two members on the gallery committee, which organized and hung shows in the gallery, one of the empty classrooms on the first floor closest to the principal's former office. UVa Architect/professorTheo van Groll built some contemporary gallery furniture, and offered advice for hanging the exhibits.  I think he was the one who installed the hanging hardware in the ceiling. In the beginning, we had only one landline telephone for the building, and that was at the gallery desk, with perhaps an extension in the office. Those of us on the first floor had to run to answer it, and messages were hand delivered.  It wasn't long before we had assigned gallery desk duty for all the resident artists, with morning and afternoon shifts.  We also had community volunteers who were trained to work the desk.  The early silk screened advertising posters were often designed by Chica Tenney, and other members helped with the printmaking.  We distributed them to public places, even grocery stores.  Ruth Latter, "art critic" of the Daily Progress, wrote articles about those early, themed group shows, and gave us good, free publicity during an era when the public got much of their local information from the newspaper. The Daily Progress photographer regularly cruised through the building taking photographs that might end up in the paper.

We began reaching out to the public schools each year in September, and soon had multiple school tours every week, often with 50-60 students, broken into several groups. In each tour, four studios were visited for fifteen minutes each.  I remember chairing that committee with Tina Buck, and  it was a lot of work wrangling that many kids.

The so-called "City Committee"  met with McGuffey officers periodically to keep tabs on what was happening at the new art center.  City Attorney Roger Wiley was one of the ex-officio members of the 5-6 person group, as was Satyendra Huja.  City Council had backed the idea of using the shuttered school for a cooperatively run art center, inspired by the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA, but they wanted to check up on us periodically, and OK'd any new members joining the McGuffey Arts Association.  Whether or not members were adhering to membership rules was reassessed by Council each year thereafter before individual leases were renewed.  There were some interesting situations.

What is your medium?

The media I've used have always 'followed' the idea, and have varied over the last fifty years according to what I've wanted to express (or was curious to try.)  When McGuffey opened, I think l listed painting, drawing, collage, and mixed media next to my name on the members' list. Soon I was experimenting with fiber, off-loom weaving, and soft sculpture to explore color, pattern and texture in other ways.  (Lithography was a medium that combined drawing and printmaking, but our studio group never followed up on getting a lithography press.)  I thought of myself as primarily a painter.

I made lots of photographs, but originally members exhibiting photographs had to have personally printed them in a darkroom, and I didn't have that skill.  I was interested in graphic/book design and calligraphy, too,  having worked on my college yearbook and literary magazine, and worked professionally as a calligrapher on the side until computers largely eliminated hand done calligraphy commissions.  For a time, if you wanted to exhibit in a new medium at McGuffey, you needed to be juried in that particular medium.  When that rule was no longer in effect, I exhibited some of my calligraphy in MAC group shows, as well as hand made books.

When I began working with a digital SLR camera rather than a film camera,  new possibilities for photo collage opened up, and since 2006 I've been making digital photo collages.

Throughout my career, drawing has remained a favorite medium, as was easel painting early on; several of my solo shows have exhibited graphite, pen and colored pencil drawings.  My first large exhibit at McGuffey in 1979 was of landscape collages, drawings, and soft paintings on raw canvas.  I usually had on-going projects using different media, and for many years, I did most of my own framing, and worked part-time as a  designer/framer.

What is your favorite memory at MAC?

I have many, but I'll mention three. 

First, I remember leaving the studio, going upstairs to take a dance class, then returning to my work.  I knew I was experiencing halcyon days, some of the best of my life.

Second, I loved to interact with the public on a day to day, relaxed basis.  You never knew who would show up. People visited McGuffey regularly in the early days, and brought their children.  In some ways, we were the "only show in town" then, with few other galleries to see local art work.  Of course, that was decades before the internet, instagram and smart phones.  Friends and acquaintances could come see what I was working on, plus I could get commissions through my connection with McGuffey, and the Gallery desk handled the nitty gritty of sales.  The Christmas Show (as it was then called) was a community event with packed halls, music, delicious food for sale, and Darden Towe as a very realistic Santa Claus in the front hall.  The exhibition space early on was just the Main Gallery, and it was packed with work for that festive show.

Third, I treasure the relationships with other artists at McGuffey when I had a studio in the building, and the shared feeling that what we were doing was worthwhile.  We fed off each other's creativity, and often traded work.  Every opening was a potluck, with every artist expected to contribute something delicious.  For solo shows, the highlighted artist brought most of the food and beverages.  We sent out invitations to our exhibits by snail mail, and I saved many of those.  There was a strong connection to the University, since many early members had spouses in the Architecture School. We had an appreciative viewing public coming in and supporting our work with their presence, and sometimes their purchases.

Are there unique techniques you've developed over time?

When I began playing with making digital photo grid collages in 2006, I worked independently and tried a variety of approaches, trial and error, with countless drawings of possible compositions.  I've had inspiration from music, math, quilts, architecture, nature, my garden, my hands. I gave myself assignments, then broke my own rules. I've made thousands of photos with my trusty Canon SLR of textures, patterns, colors, and details, and stored them on my hard drive - just in case they might be useful for future collages. I've tried having the completed work printed on metallic paper, cotton watercolor paper, canvas, and even ceramic tile. I've tried painting with acrylics on a canvas-printed collage. It's been a lot of fun going down the rabbit hole again and again.  Inevitably, one collage leads to another. 

If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would be using my desktop computer to make art in my 60s and 70s, I wouldn't have believed them.

Is there anything creative you are working on right now?

I'm working from two different impulses: a carefully planned, interwoven architectural collage that I want to convey strength, and a slow ink drawing representing my state of mind.  The collage will probably read best printed large.  I'll see where the drawing ends up. 

I'm planning an abecedarium collage for my new grandson, too.

What do you like the most about being an artist?

Deciding how to express the next idea, then making it happen.  Getting in "the zone", and being lost in my work.  Art is the best way to escape without running away from home.  (Who said that?)

What role do the arts play in a community?

The arts are one of the most effective, powerful, beautiful ways human beings have to communicate with each other . 

They are essential for a vibrant, creative community. 

The arts challenge us to think and form opinions.

Through the arts, we better appreciate one another as creators of music, dance, theater, poetry, visual arts, fine craft, architecture, gardens...

The arts enrich the lives of all community members, no matter how young or old.

Support for the arts is an indicator of a community's overall good health.

When did you become a McGuffey member?

2021

What is your medium?

I work with whatever medium is best suited to the project at hand. I favor found and second-hand materials, from old bed linens and wood scraps to botanicals like acorns for making ink. One constant throughout my practice has been oil painting.

Has your inspiration changed over time?

Of course! What hasn’t changed is that I’m willing to find interesting compositions in mundane things, and that I take a critical stance toward what’s considered normal. I think that an artist’s greatest asset is to have a non-standard way of seeing and thinking about things.

What is your favorite memory from MAC?

This was way before I was a member: in 1982 I was a rebellious teen and I had ‘run away’ for a couple of weeks. My mom managed to find the phone number where I was staying and called to tell me I had gotten a job I applied for – my first. I came back home and worked for Linda van der Linde and Cassandra Hughs (later Midelfort), making wax and porcelain jewelry in McGuffey Studio 16. I had already known I wanted to be an artist, but the experience of working with my studio-mates and among all of the artists at McGuffey helped me grow up and begin to find my way.

What challenges did you face at the start of your career?

I am still facing them: the difficulty of balancing a desire to practice art in a way that’s true to my beliefs, with the need to make a living; and social and family pressures on my time and mind-space.

What themes or messages do you explore in your art practice?

The connections between humans and the land. Infrastructural landscapes, ideas of property ownership, dispossession, Indigenous sovereignty. Landscape oddities like the shocking abundance of orange traffic cones in America.

Are there any unique techniques you’ve developed over time?

Right now I’m working with an early photographic technique called cyanotypie. I make negatives by tracing map features and print on old bed linens. As a student I blew glass into metal forms that I had welded.

Was there a defining moment in your art career that led you to where you are?

A few years after art school I realized I didn’t see any older women waiting tables at expensive restaurants like the one where I was working. I figured I’d better find a new second career, so I went to grad school for architecture and landscape architecture. These fields really helped me find my way as an artist. I’ve incorporated not just techniques, but ways of seeing and interpreting and thinking into my practice.

Did you have traditional training or were you self-taught?

Yes to both. I studied Sculpture at VCU, but I taught myself to paint.

What would an ideal day in the studio look like?

I would have a studio that wasn’t also the dining corner!

What do you most like about being an artist?

How it has made me think critically and creatively about everything. I don’t take anything for granted, I see possibilities everywhere even though I also see doom and gloom. I’m inspired by artists of the past who have lived through hard times and maintained their practices and in many cases made a difference.

What advice would you give to young artists?

Be aware that a vanishingly small number of artists make their living exclusively from their art – about 1%. Don’t feel like a failure if you’re not ‘making it’ or you have a rough patch. Consider setting yourself up with a second career that will allow you the time and freedom to practice. Keep making things.

Why is McGuffey important?

McGuffey is important because of the physical space it provides, but also because it insists on community. Even though I now live on another continent, I can be an associate member and take part. And the formative impulse to bring the arts to the greater community persists.