Episode Transcription: 

Peeler Howell – William Campbell Contemporary Art

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welcome back to four to two folks jw wilson with my co-host brinton payne across the table uh we are brought to
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you by captex bank the greatest thing going in banks around this town you know

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why brinton because they’re local bank they’re not some big national conglomerate and if you want to talk to

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the boss mike thomas no cap i’m back you can talk to him whenever you want like

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two o’clock in the morning sometimes we text him there to see what he’s doing he doesn’t respond always instantly but he

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will get back to you he’s one of those time guys so uh think think cap text me think about banking he is the guy who

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introduced me the concept of buying a certain type of bed too so you don’t have to wear the cpap deal do you have

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snoring issues either you guys not that i know of i’ve never heard myself i don’t think so i don’t uh

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yeah right i mean that’s i don’t think now we’re pretty okay i got a humidifier by the bed i got nervous this is not

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surprising uh yeah but no cpap but one time i did go to a buddy’s place uh jay

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barksdale and he was living in this small place in austin for the legislative session and i was like what’s this contraption by your bed and

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he just looks at me and goes that’s marriage saver man that’s what that is and i guess that the cpaps are so i

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guess we’re not gonna talk about uh what we had planned to but we can talk about peps if you want no let’s talk about let’s i want to ask you about the the

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situation in ukraine the war with russia we’ll just get off a light topic and go ahead let’s go because i want to know

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what you’re thinking i’ve never known so i got a friend from russia who i grew up with and um he

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lives in the uh he lives actually in denton county but he’s he owns a couple businesses around here he’s got like 100

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i.t guys in belarus and uh he has he sends me plenty of information that he sees is like

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very objective you know and just kind of has tried to explain and done a pretty good job on the history of what’s going

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on there i mean it’s a different place i watched a documentary on netflix called i think it’s called winter on fire and it talked

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about the 2014 activities that took place right and the one common theme with all this is

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somebody read a post on social media and somebody took to the streets like i mean i do think that that is kind of just

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part of this rhetoric now with this but um yeah i hate to see that that conflict like

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that but there’s also a part of me that’s like this has been going on going on over there for a long time and you know how much of a part do we do

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what do you guys think peel what do you think i think it’s pretty interesting um i didn’t think we would ever see like

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air-to-air combat really again um i thought it would any future wars after

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probably um you know our shock and awk campaign and that sort of thing would be insurgent

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type war so i thought it was interesting to see um dog fighting and tanks and and that sort of thing i read or i heard on

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the radio actually um that a lot of their that ukraine has recruited zolinski has recruited 300 000

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ukrainian i.t folks to wage essentially social media war but

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not with misinformation they um it’s very important to uh the ukrainians to only

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present truthful information because they don’t want to sink down to the

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putin level sure of uh trickery and nonsense so i i think um i think it’s

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interesting i think zolinski has presented himself as being really competent and i mean at the risk

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of being too casual really cool throughout filming himself in the streets and um carrying his iphone

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around and wearing his gear and and it’s a it’s an interesting situation it is i mean it’s

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interesting in the like cultural difference of like us in this country and there where

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it seems real commonplace to just to fight like that like it’s like a very like warring part of the world i don’t

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know how else to say it you know where i mean we’d be lucky to get our kids off the couch you know like i mean i can’t i

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cannot imagine if just imagine our lives like come on guys we gotta gather up the family um wives and children you know go

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one place and then the dads are all going down to sundance square or something yeah yeah take to this yeah with your cowboy gun

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yeah whatever you can find yeah exactly and then and the weather like that the whole thing winter on fire was like it

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took place from like october through february or march and it’s just brutal man i mean you’re

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freezing out there it’s just it’s like there’s a ton of history and well i

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think it kind of leads to this subject we’re about to talk to you a ton of art is probably and maybe you guys know more

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about this does art emerge from places like this you know it’s like it’s almost like the

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the the pain has got to come out and come to the surface one way and it seems like through arts and music it a lot of

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times it does you know i’d be really surprised if if no really if no art came out of this at all

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that would be really surprising so i think the the the only real answer is yes i mean for sure it will it will

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inspire all of the above the voice you’re hearing brinton payne belongs to that of a good guy a long time friend of

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both of ours the managing partner of the william campbell gallery here in fort worth

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welcome to the show peeler hal we are honored to be in your presence today thank you for having me we made him smile it’s been a long time since i’ve

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been able to make peel smile man peel’s one of our one of our buds like i said we’ve known you a long time you’ve

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got a really cool story you do a really cool thing now which we’re gonna delve into here uh before we talk about the

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gallery that you manage so well uh where are you from i am from fort worth third generation on both sides very nice your

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family does got a little bit of a story right some of your distant relatives have done some things yeah they’ve done some things talk about that or um

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it’s kind of a long story um give us the give us the one minute or two minute version of that

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uh let’s see i guess it has i guess the quickest way to do it is to talk about my wife’s engagement ring and that it came from a

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filipino estate that belonged to my grandfather’s aunt’s husband and they

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were put in a concentration camp during world war ii when the japanese invaded the philippines and uh

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my great great aunt uh buried all of her jewelry in a 50-gallon drum in the philippines

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and then they dug it up after the war and brought it back and so that’s that’s where my wife’s that sits on your wife’s finger that’s pretty cool that is a cool

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story what about what high school did your like your parents go to pascal my dad went to eastern hills and my mom went to

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arlington heights okay and then what about your grandparents uh it’s my grandparents um my grandfather my dad’s

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dad is from georgia he came over when he was 14. he wound up going to tcu i actually don’t know where he

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went to high school okay and my my um my mother’s mother and father were from east texas um

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a little town called kasi i believe originally and uh i also don’t know where i think no wait no my my mom’s

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mother went to um i think she went to northside oh okay yeah yeah i could be wrong about that

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yeah it’s something what are the old forward so when did art during your course of

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your childhood when did when did you realize you had an affinity for arty you were you’re an artist and you’re an art

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gallery manager or director when did you realize the art was something special in your life probably in high school

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um it was in high school i mean i always enjoyed it we went to santa fe quite a bit and did a lot of gallery walking

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when i was a kid and i probably absorbed it then um when i went to trinity valley and

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trinity valley had a really sweet art program when i was there in high school they built a big

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big studio art room with you know

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two stories essentially two stories high north facing windows natural light concrete floors all sorts of tools and

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lumber and everything and that was a nice place it was real so you could get in there and get after it especially in those days they would just turn you

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loose with the miter saw or power washer or whatever we got to build all our own stretchers and that sort of thing so

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when i was a senior um there were two sort of created classes independent art and advanced art which

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really just meant you got to hang out in the art room in the afternoon which was and they just turned you loose

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you know it was like a it was a very environment very geared towards cultivating creativity

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let you go in the direction yeah yeah absolutely yeah that’s really cool so when i got to tcu i mean i had pretty much already done what they were

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teaching at tcu at least for drawing one and some of those what did you study at tcu i studied studio art for the first

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two years until i was required to present a portfolio

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and i wasn’t ready and i i didn’t really want to uh

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for a number of different juvenile and immature reasons so i uh i switched my major to uh philosophy and got a degree

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in philosophy very nice you’ve had a little bit of a delve into politics prior to this yeah yeah

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i worked uh as a district director for a state representative for two sessions

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um and then did some uh political consulting social media data aggregation

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so today we find you find yourself as the managing partner william campbell gallery like i mentioned tell us about william campbell please

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william campbell gallery is in its 48th year

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uh it yeah it was founded in 1974 by bill and pam campbell

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they had a little store over on camp bowie which is only about 100 yards from where the gallery is now

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started out as a poster store um and then switched over into contemporary art

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and uh moved into the buyer’s location building in 1981

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bill bought the building in 1980 but they didn’t move in until 1981 so they’ve been that gallery and that space

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has been there for count it 42 years oh really yeah is

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there like a common theme i’ll ask you more about like just art in general but

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is it all local artists does that can it be from all over like how you know when you have a gallery what’s do you you set

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up the gallery like the goal is we’re going to do just do this kind of artwork and these type of

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artists or does it does it vary or you don’t even want to hinge yourself to something like that well it varies um

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i’ve found that anytime you put a rule in place in the art world it’s bound to change it always changes something will

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come up there’s always exceptions there’s so no there’s no hard and fast

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quality or property that that our gallery looks for in artwork it’s all

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contemporary art in other words it’s all being the artists are all making art in the present

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we don’t look for anything apart from i think a real uh mastery of

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material a certain sense of direction a certain sort of cultivated perspective

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a paradigm a way of looking at the world from the artist’s perspective we have about 42 44 artists depending on

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how you count them about half of those are from texas about half of that are from the fort worth area

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a couple from south texas the rest are throughout the united states um vancouver

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germany by way of vancouver by way of the netherlands and then two german artists one who lives in

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maine so pretty much spread out yeah yeah how difficult is it for an artist generally

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speaking i’ve heard stories about new york people new york artists trying to find a place to represent them a gallery and it’s it’s it’s really really tough

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but how hard is it for an artist these days with the internet and all that it’s doing how difficult is it for the artist

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to find a gallery to represent them i think it’s it’s still very difficult there are a lot of artists and

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that’s not to say that they don’t all deserve some recognition and representation but

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it’s about like trying to get a record deal yeah you know i mean there’s great a ton of great bands that make a ton of

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great music that are never going to get a record deal so it is very difficult still and um

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what do you think that like reason is i think it’s just volume yeah i really do

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it’s a great analogy by the way the record i like that yeah thank you there’s just too too many just there’s too many yeah i mean we heard that

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pushback on our podcast a little bit but we we pushed through and continued you guys endured yeah

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no but it’s just yeah you think there’s just so much out there yeah there’s so much and at 44

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we’re really at capacity because each of the each of those relationships is very personal art is a very personal endeavor

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it takes a lot of emotion and passion and investment

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so you have to reciprocate that with your artists because you don’t have a good gallery

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unless you have good artists and good art so it’s it’s it’s a a time

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thing you know you just don’t unless you have unless you want to get get bigger and hire more people yeah more people to

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handle the work and the inventory and the artists and artists relations and all the things that go

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into that can an artist uh like have multiple galleries sure they’re represented by

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yeah okay is that typical uh it’s different typically for sure right some

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artists only have one gallery some have five or six um it depends kind of on what stage of

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in their career where they are in their career and their demand if they can maintain that kind of

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representation yeah or if it’s a better fit for them to just have one gallery otis jones

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shows with us he shows uh barry whistler he shows that neenah meyer in l.a shows

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at sun sunday s in copenhagen sorry we’re closed in brussels so he’s all he he can

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that’s a good model for his career at this point because he can sustain that kind of demand now does it do like a tour where

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he like goes gallery to gallery to gallery at a gallery kind of thing or no it’s individual shows that go out to the

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gallery okay and then let’s say if there’s like a hundred artists how many are starving and how many are

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in this space you know like because i got to think you’ve accomplished something you’ve made it yeah if you’ve

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got a gallery right you know but how many like what’s the break on those numbers and then how many are maybe in a

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gallery but they’re not selling any art they’re like are actually making a livable wage right right um

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so we have artists that i i think you could plot across the spectrum for that um

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it seems like a good career choice for a professional artist is to also be involved in academics so we have a lot

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of artists that are tenured professors um either uta

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a number from ut austin san marcos has a great art school

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so that’s a good because you get to be around the work yeah you know you live in

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in and around art and artists and that that’s your life we have some that work other jobs too that are

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not related at all to making art yeah um mostly out of necessity i think they would all just make art if that’s uh if

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that was feasible for them something recent has happened to the gallery uh something big can you

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describe that for us we opened a second space which i’ve not a new space because that can be it

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is new but it’s not the new space right it’s the second space because the buyer’s location is still

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open the new location is on faux street uh over on the north side of

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7th street so in between white settlement and seventh street in the foundry district you’re trying to think where that is it

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conjoins with another business of friendly right yeah charlie and company who just moved in this week

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it’s over there by angelo’s yeah by angela it’s right across the street right down the street from uh clay pigeon oh yeah right same side yeah oh

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okay and what what and so what currently what shows are up currently in that location we have a

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show called cramer kleberg reverb which is a true collaboration between paul

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kramer and matt klieberg they worked together from the genesis of

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the idea of the show and came up with 18 paintings total matt’s

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got eight paul’s got 10. uh it’s a it’s a really it’s interesting to watch them work

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together because artists don’t always do that well yeah it’s um

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but they it was almost seamless i mean they did it paul took paul is a graphic designer by original trade and so he

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took some of matt’s paintings and did little vignettes and blew them up combined some of matt’s colors and and

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created his own palette but they’re they’re interesting to see together because you

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can tell that they weren’t cr the paintings weren’t created separately and then just hung together for a show like it’s not a

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two-person show in that it’s not like separate it’s coming from separate places they’ve

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you can tell by the work that it was collaborative like from the onset from the beginning right yeah yeah does that

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happen very often like did they or did you guys do that by saying hey you two dudes should meet each other and do this

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it happened pretty quickly we just got on a conference call and asked them if they wanted to do a show together and

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they sort of took it over from that i didn’t hear anything for two months you didn’t even know i knew they were doing it but i kept

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having to check in and say yeah you guys need something like is everything cool yeah and they were they’re both so good

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and so laid back paul finally called me and said yeah we’re good yeah no worries

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do you need anything yeah like because a lot of artists you know they they like to check in a lot they kind of

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have to have to maintain sure two or three times at least a week and these guys were just

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super easy yeah like we’ll have it done it’s cool no worries that’s cool yeah so peeler we have put together a slideshow

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presentation behind you for you to go through some of the artists in their respective pieces

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um probably go six or seven pieces these are artists represented by william campbell correct

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yes i hope you spend a minute or two on each piece kind of give us the the really the good nuts and the bolts on it and who it

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is and maybe what’s interesting about the piece because i think everything everybody has oh these artists have something to

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really specialize in and what they’re really good at it’ll be fun to learn kind of a little bit about what’s going on all right but before you start

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like what makes great art like i mean you know i could draw a little pic like it’s very

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hard especially in the kind of art that you guys are dealing with yeah you know eric lee came on he spoke a lot about

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the historical aspects like this guy’s the first guy who paints a landscape like in in the beautifying of the

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landscape i remember that kind of stuck out and like there was a lot of historical aspect in this day and age

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with so many tools you know uh including what’s behind you and i think that we’re gonna pull up one of

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these pieces maybe it’s like using digital like all this stuff it’s like

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what makes somebody sit there and go that’s art man like that’s good i want to put i want to pay like thousands is

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it that is it demand is it simply demand somebody wants your stuff no i don’t

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think it’s demand i think that that has a component that’s certainly relevant when you’re running an art business or

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have it even a museum or or something like that but no i think it’s um

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i think it’s packaging and presentation it’s consideration

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and then by packaging that sounds kind of trivial but that gets you into material and the

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decision to use certain materials and then using them correctly and using them very well um the consideration is

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what do i want to demonstrate with those materials and

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then there’s an intention like then to go out and present it with this idea of

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creating an aesthetic emotion or movement in the viewer yeah so all of those things together so you have some

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like consideration even you know um like the duct tape banana that showed up at art

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basel miami i saw that right i saw it yeah i’m not familiar a lot of people would say you know that’s that’s not art

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but i would ask you know i think it’s it’s the um

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i think the burden of proof is on the person that claims that because well why not i mean it’s been it’s

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material and items that have been considered and then presented

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to elicit a certain reaction in the viewer and it certainly did i mean you you know about it yeah i know about it so the guy

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duct taped a banana to the wall and we’re sitting here talking about it so there’s that component too

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is it great no yeah really yeah i think it’s kind of fun and interesting but how much of it is like the story behind it

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right like so i remember reading about at the modern they had this guy who would build like out of paper

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these scenes like he built the scene from when they grabbed those guys from the boat from the boston marathon bombing yeah like he recreated it and

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then all that and then he takes a picture and then he burns it down yeah there’s like this whole process that

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exists where it’s almost like with some music where it’s like if you’re just to listen it’s like i don’t know man if i get that

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but then if somebody explained to you like how many samples or whatever like the process

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it’s like wait a minute and then maybe that’s kind of like the eye of the beholder too where it’s like the

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satisfaction of the the actual peace owner is like why i love it is because this guy went through so much to do this

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and then that makes me feel really good that something was so painstaking yeah yeah um

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that’s i don’t think that’s an original idea really that’s um i think the idea behind the buddhist

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um sand mandalas that they create and spend all of this time it’s like hyper

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involved hyper tedious and then it just it blows away you know so there’s this idea of of sort of the temporary nature

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of almost anything a lot of artists and i look for this in particular make work that is durable and should endure we you know

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we have a frame shop and we um use archival materials so that it will last forever yeah right you know

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but it never it never does i mean it can last a long time and we can wander off

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down these you know tangential roads but i think the idea behind that is like there’s this huge investment

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this very tedious investment to make something beautiful that just

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floats away burns away gets you blown away you know yeah whatever yeah like thanksgiving dinner you’d spend three

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days cooking it in 10 minutes each it’s a great analogy man destroyed before as

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soon as certain family members show up through the door like the tone boom done

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okay should we get started yeah well the split show today is his gallery is art from your gallery uh this is brought to

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you by captex bank so thank you captex for making all this stuff happen for us um put some little like uh thoughtful

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music in there just so we can just lovely people are you ready all right here we go

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this is otis jones uh it’s one of the more recent paintings that we had from

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otis it was a commission that went down to a gentleman in uh dominican republic

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but it’s a great example of where otis is now in his career um so this is acrylic and a linen canvas on

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a wood platform and otis has really pushed expanding his

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paintings out into a sculptural area so this isn’t a picture of a sculpture

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this is a painting well it’s both it’s a it’s a painting and a sculpture so he’s blurring the lines between painting and

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sculpture between two dimensions and three dimensions and showing you at the same time this this

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celebration of material with the staples and the glue and the paint it’s a it’s very

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it’s raw for sure but it’s also very refined if you were they’re very tactile if you were to

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touch it it has this great tactile rawness but the paint is like paper smooth it’s got

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it’s just great it’s this kind of saturation of the senses all the way around and the color

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is in person this beautiful kind of periwinkle color doesn’t translate well

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digitally but art doesn’t really translate unless it’s digital art yeah like i can’t tell is this like hanging

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on a wall or is this the picture of the sculpture this is a picture of the painting that’s hanging on a wall but it

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comes out like five inches yeah yeah so um you know this is for peeler by the way

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i’m just wondering i’m asking you to get peeler to explain it more i’ve known peeler

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maybe longer who’s no peeler was in my wedding can we get back to the slideshow do you mind um

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okay one quick how much points do you get as an artist for that inventiveness

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right the newness of what you kind of right because he’s kind of is he new at adding the two together or no no not not

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new but no to anybody that was familiar this would be immediately recognizable as an otis

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jones painting okay um and yes points for that sure but he’s a he’s an

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a master craftsman again we get back into materials he’s a master at handling the materials and he’s done something

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unique and really really interesting with the material although a lot of

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people don’t it i didn’t understand otis’s work at first i thought it i didn’t really know

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what it was yeah and in fact this particular painting um a dear friend of ours my wife’s was uh

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cleaning up the gallery and she put it in the throwaway pile like the junk pile yeah no kidding

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and uh otis jones local guy he’s in dallas fairly local so how much is something

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like that is there an asking price can i ask that is that rude to ask that or i don’t know you just did well i mean why

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are you looking at me because you stopped me from asking other questions so peeler uh this is a handout i’ll give

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you i’ll give you a range this is um depending on dimensions this one was about 24 by

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19 or 20. it was about 16 000. all right moving on to the next one people that was the longest two minutes

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of i know ever i’m sorry it’s all right each one will be like this and getting longer okay this is a matt cleber

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painting that’s in our current show it’s uh 11 feet by 9 feet

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and it’s oil stick on canvas this one is called

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cast family portrait and matt has this idea of creating these three-dimensional

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portals in two dimensions and he considers each of them to be

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um an individual in this case his family i think the idea came to him like when

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his kids were climbing on top of him um and each portal is is sort of this

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existential entity of individuality and

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he stacked them on top of each other because his kids were climbing all over him like you know kids do um

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they could go on about that one too but he’s in the new show you said yeah he’s in the news show and what’s his name again matt cleburne

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very good okay this is pete meyer who we got introduced

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to last year he paints out of buckhill falls pennsylvania this is um it’s a

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painting yeah this is a painting it’s a a waterborne um paint that he gets from

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dupont and uh it’s about 28 or 30 layers of this waterborne paint he uses an

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airbrush traditional brush his finger um it’s not waterborne mean waterborne

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like yeah waterbase right like acrylic is a waterborne paint because it’s water-soluble and the i that’s

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that works well because pete only uses 10 colors and then he stacks the colors to create new colors and you have to be

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able to see through them to do that so at like 30 layers this is

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painted on aluminum and then it’s clear coated and what you really get is sort of this mirror effect the light

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really refracts through the paint and bounces so they look like they’re illuminated but they’re not but so it’s it’s

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aluminum substrate waterborne paint and then they’re clear coated at a body

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shop it’s really it’s a for sure it’s a paint job

28:28

over a photograph no no he in fact he only uses photographs as a reference but this is an original image

28:34

um in other words it’s a painting of a snow monkey but it’s not a painting of a photograph oh no kidding yeah so in that

28:40

in that sense pete is not a traditional photo realist because he doesn’t paint photographs he uses photographs for

28:46

reference and then he creates his own image do you think that he tries to find subjects that are like super popping

28:52

with light yes in order to like do that with his he likes really strong right

28:58

in your face kind of stuff he’s a car guy he was the senior designer at gm from 1969 to 1980 so he likes to paint

29:05

cars two scale one to one scale he painted at clydesdale for anheuser-busch

29:10

corporate headquarters that’s the size of a clydesdale that sort of thing so approximate price

29:15

for this one um i believe it’s

29:21

for this one or clydesdale the clydesdale i don’t know because that went straight to uh yeah uh this one i

29:27

think is the 90 90 range 100 oh how long does it take peter to make a

29:32

piece like this wait 90 000. but that’s large it’s large yeah how

29:38

long does it take peter to make his pieces about three or four months generally more than two minutes more

29:43

than uh yeah but he works pretty fast he works really fast seriously yeah he’s just good yeah he’s

29:48

just he’s a master he’s he’s just a master at it i mean it’s just it’s really incredible to watch him

29:54

work which i’ve had the privilege of doing he just know and i asked him like for a hubcap that he painted how he

30:00

knew what the reflection in the hubcap should look like and he just he very he said i just i mean i just know it’s like i’m

30:07

i just know it’s like having perfect pitchers he just yeah and then what happens you see people like that

30:14

then their confidence takes over and it’s like unstoppable right like they don’t approach it with any apprehension

30:20

and when that confidence is in there then it’s like they’re working on another level you know it’s crazy and

30:26

pete’s in his mid 70s he’s from brooklyn he was an mp in vietnam he’s a confident guy yeah he’s real very cool music guy

30:32

you’d like you can tell man yeah very cool people all right moving on to the next one this is a beverly pin this one is

30:40

um cast bronze and so beverly was trained as a jeweler um

30:48

this one i think it’s 80 but yeah it’s 80 by 80. wow so um like as big as this tv yeah seven

30:55

seven feet eight inches by a few inches uh it’s cast bronze she uses

31:00

actual plant clippings to make the casts and when she fires the molds around the

31:06

plant clippings it obliterates the plant matter and then she has a centrifuge that throws molten bronze up into the

31:13

that casting so she gets these very these they’re they’re cast bronze

31:19

um botanicals and then she arranges them in these sort of these beautiful

31:25

arrangements which has this sort of ironic effect of being exactly like nature but

31:30

not at all like what you would find in nature well and then you go back to this theme of like something being born out of just something destroyed yes exactly

31:37

yeah kind of similar to that other that’s fantastic and she’s local uh san marcos san marcos very nice that’s

31:42

incredible people all right we’ll call that local yeah this is michelle benoit she is a

31:50

sculptor out of rhode island this is um one of her wind rose series sculptures

31:56

she works with recycled lucite and a lot of her lucite she gets from old

32:03

sheets of bulletproof glass so she makes these whimsical

32:09

but very accomplished sculptures out of lucite which had were

32:15

born out of you know sort of with this sort of violent purpose

32:21

and uh repurposes them into something beautiful they’re also very heavy which i love

32:27

because they look light and ephemeral but they’re really really heavy um she

32:32

dye the lucite she paints on the back of the sheets with acrylic okay and then she stacks the acrylic she makes these

32:39

shapes with a miter saw so when you get one that works there’s this huge amount of time and work

32:46

between uh getting the material working it you know

32:52

making sure it doesn’t chip or fracture or break and then the final product is an accumulation of a huge amount of work

32:57

and then she’s got something behind it so it stips keeps off the wall yeah they sit on a cleat on an acrylic cleat

33:04

they’re this one’s about like five inches deep yeah it’s cool nice feel

33:10

this is paul kramer this is one of the paintings that we have in uh the reverb show with matt kleberg um and and paul

33:19

where he’s again like i said he started out as a graphic designer moved into painting

33:24

he designs his paintings graphically and then he paints them on canvas but they’re very flat

33:31

in that in that sort of uh acrylic kind of way they don’t have a lot of depth

33:36

immediately until you until you’re in front of the painting but this is uh one that he did

33:42

um in collaboration with matt uh where he took some of matt’s colors and then combined him and just did his

33:48

kind of own geometric riff on what what the ideas they have been working on what

33:54

can i guess the name of it and per sand no g-clef no

33:59

it’s called kleberg 08. i might not have guessed how well

34:05

probably not how old a guy is paul i think paul’s about 53 but is there art in

34:11

just the brush stroke right like the way that it’s like so uniform like there you can’t see

34:18

where like how big is this one uh this one is 60 by 90. oh yeah so it’s big

34:23

yeah so it’s five feet long but you can’t see like the end of like that’s done a certain way and you can’t see it

34:29

in person either matt called paul the master of the sponge brush and i think that’s true

34:35

uh but there’s a huge amount of touch and and to get to applying the paint

34:41

properly on onto canvas like that because this one’s on on canvas it’s paint on canvas how long will the show be up for peeler

34:47

through may 14th moving along this is frank tolbert this is in our current show at the buyer’s

34:53

location uh this is an extension of a project that frank started in 2014 called the texas bird project so

35:01

frank is from houston he’s he lives in houston um and he started he’s painted a number of

35:08

different things over the years but for about the last eight years he’s been doing texas birds this this one uh

35:14

show is almost essentially dedicated to everybody’s favorite bird the grackle

35:20

which i really find quite charming and again this one is a really beautiful

35:27

painting in person um but grackles you know frank is kind of like he likes to paint anhingas the

35:34

big water turkey kind of birds that fly over town you know yeah that sort of thing a lot of people

35:39

and i love birds so but you know blue jays and cardinals and and eagles and all that are great but

35:45

frank likes to kind of pick the birds that you know you might drive by and not really care about but grackles are kind of funny and

35:52

you know they’re smart and brave and the males are really pretty they have that kind of blue black iridescence and

35:58

brinton what do you think sunset or sunrise uh set just from grackle knowledge of my own but like what i

36:05

liked is in that typically those grackles are out when the most beautiful sunsets yeah yeah

36:12

it’s like a changing of the season and something’s just i guess it’s more in the fall you know and i think of them on

36:17

hulen like over there by that like me casino and across from heights it’s like crazy grass yeah but it’s almost what

36:24

triggered me was like the sunsets were like that like it was just the beautiful sunset like that these colors are

36:30

fantastic yeah and they gather in the evenings you know and all powwow together and make a lot of we wouldn’t know the three of us just

36:37

20 years ago we’re talking about art man okay this is uh benito huerta it’s

36:43

called the crown of creation and it’s also a really large painting it’s 84 by 84. we had this one in a show about

36:49

three years ago yeah about three years tell us about benito real quick benito is the uh

36:55

curator and director of the gallery at uta and he’s also a painting instructor there

37:03

he teaches a professional practices course there he’s got a huge history we could do a whole thing on bonito this

37:08

one is um kind of derivative of frida kahlo used to paint herself as being hunted as a

37:16

deer it also has a reference to uh james ensor who painted himself as a skeleton

37:24

in some of his paintings and benito’s fascinated with the atomic bomb this is also a reference to a jefferson

37:30

airplane album called crown of creation with a big explosion on on the front but this is a

37:36

very benito shape for the atomic bomb explosion it’s almost kind of like a florid in a way it has kind of a

37:43

it’s it’s pretty i mean this is this is interesting too if i was going to ask jw you need a pointer

37:50

i need a laser pointer um what type of hair that would be you know j dub what what do you think that’s kind

37:57

of representative of the corner corners there facial hair maybe

38:04

this is also a self-portrait to a certain extent because those are bonito’s teeth oh no kidding mm-hmm yeah

38:10

nice so it’s very beneficial to straighten his mind yeah very benito’s got like seven or eight different

38:15

references we could talk about it for a long time yeah it’s really a cool guy yes very yeah and it’s super super cool

38:21

in person he’s one of the what’s what’s the story with him in the in the eamon carter uh at the time he was uh he hung two big

38:28

works in the entrance of the airman carter i don’t know which iteration of the aim of carter was but it’s been a little while but he was the only living

38:34

artist to show in the eamon carter that’s okay he’s amazing did he grow up around here uh he’s from

38:39

um corpus christi okay and then uh lived in houston then he moved out to san

38:44

francisco in the late 60s and did concert promotion and designed posters and rock posters so he hung out with the

38:50

stones and he was at altamont you know that sort of thing oh yeah yeah his wife in fact janet chaffee is the art teacher

38:57

at trinity valley high school oh no kidding yeah oh man no those teeth are representative too of grateful dead

39:03

steal your face like yeah yeah a lot like in that era and benito in his studio’s got this big

39:10

bookshelf full of griffin and yeah he would know all of that stuff

39:16

this is a popular one around fort worth yes billy hassell um this one’s called night garden it’s a

39:22

he did a couple of different versions of this image this one is the big uh a big painting that he did i believe it’s 60

39:28

by 72. billy is very involved with the texas parks and wildlife department he does a

39:34

lot of conservation work for them and does a lot of work for them he’s featured in their catalogs to raise money for conservation

39:41

he’s also very interested in flora and fauna texas especially so all

39:48

of this even though it’s stylized is physiologically correct

39:54

and if you have a painting with more he did a big commission of the davis mountains with all these different

40:00

lizards and flowers and uh animals and everything that he could think of to put in the painting that was

40:07

out there and they’re all anatomically correct do you think that like maybe he was painting

40:12

this in the like the thing that sticks out to me this doesn’t happen at night man like the bees aren’t out the parts aren’t out

40:18

you know and so it’s like maybe he was trying to paint a day picture and he couldn’t get the background right he’s like screw it i’ll just paint it black

40:23

and then call it garden at night or something no i think um or i think it just comes i think that’s

40:29

just an artistic choice yeah that he thought it would look he thought it would make and i’m just speculating the

40:35

bird the blue jay really popped yeah against the black it does for sure yeah and uh it’s kind of surreal you know um

40:41

he has he’s evolved into uh a very particular style yeah um that’s

40:47

real but also stylized uh and i think there’s this component of

40:53

whimsy and surrealism involved in billy’s work too yeah

40:59

this is jt grant who’s a fort worth painter this one is uh 78

41:05

inches by 132 inches how much uh i think it’s up 42 right now

41:11

can you buy that for me it’s really fantastic this was part of a show that jt did that was mostly skyscapes um

41:18

it’s beautiful they’re beautiful yeah but there’s also the the horizon is skewed um

41:26

it’s supposed to give you ever so slightly a sense of being somewhat unbalanced yeah and uh even

41:32

though there’s this big open skyscape jt uses this texas guys a lot for

41:38

his inspiration because there’s this permanence about it but also it’s it remains dynamic it’s constantly changing

41:45

painted from a photo uh he takes photos as reference but no it’s an original image the reason i ask

41:51

is if you think about take this is the way your camera would show it this is like what a

41:57

what one of us if we were like oh man let’s take a picture of the sunset or the this sky yeah we would have that

42:03

tilt it it’s like it’s so representative of a photo you know right

42:08

you can find his works all over town i mean they’re they’re in all the big it’s closed and the way he captures that

42:14

though is crazy good and again i you just have to see it in person i

42:19

don’t know how else to say that but i’ll come see it yeah yeah you should to win uh this one’s actually at his studio

42:25

right now but it’s around we could go see it for sure could you take a different currency maybe uh can we can

42:30

you buy with bitcoin there at the studio or jt click high only deals in cash

42:36

okay this guy might take your bitcoin though this guy he’s very oh yeah forward thinking i believe i know who this is

42:42

this is our buddy john john smith okay explain the process because it’s otherwise you’re gonna

42:49

you know so john holt takes a digital image and then he has uses his mac to

42:57

take the color sequence of that image and um so he he extracts the colors digitally

43:04

out of out of the image and it just basically creates this sequence of them this linear sequence how do you do that with

43:10

piece of software uh sorry yeah i don’t know exactly but yeah he’s able that’s it’s pretty quick yeah and then um

43:16

he works with that sequence and manipulates it till he gets gets it the way that he wants it and

43:23

this one isn’t he does the linear ones with parallel lines those are called his sequence paintings this one is part part

43:28

of the oculus series ongoing oculus series and he had that oculus word out way before yeah

43:36

the metatherans right way before and this is painted um hand painted with

43:41

an airbrush acrylic on aluminum it’s being about 230

43:47

colors eventually is he spinning that he has a mechanism that spins the platform and he’s just holding the brush then he

43:53

paints it all by hand yeah but the thing comes out square so there’s something that’s going on i mean well he so you

44:00

get a cut piece of aluminum that’s a square yeah and then you you set it up on top of

44:05

this spindle that spins the whole square oh but it’s not at a high rate of speed no no it’s

44:11

real slow oh and he does like no no no no it doesn’t spin it out it just spins it so that he doesn’t have to

44:18

move his hand around the platform it means he has to hold a hand

44:24

with two hands yeah he paints them by hand yeah yeah yeah and all those i don’t know if he uses two but they’re

44:29

beautiful you know like i mean the like the whole thing there is that color is just like oh yeah what can those things

44:36

exist in the same place you know like yeah if you’ve ever traveled internationally to all your surfing uh

44:41

adventures i just saw one in mech the customs u.s customs when you come out when you come out of dfw customs there’s

44:47

a large uh what do you call it a vertical so it was like multiple circles i thought maybe or maybe that’s in the

44:53

terminal d yeah he’s got a few over there i know there’s a really large sequence so it’s just vertical that’s vertical yeah there used to be one of

44:59

shady oaks too in the stairwell i don’t know if they still have that or not no the colors are just like what and again

45:05

in person they’ll they they’ll make you kind of you know wobble a little bit because

45:12

there’s so much vibration involved you can get kind of vertigo almost a little bit looking at them the first time the first time i

45:19

looked at my eyes around each circle individually from beginning like in the center to the

45:24

outside that’ll that’ll put you out right there and that feels like cole who ate at uh a shrimp place here afterwards

45:30

right yeah how old are the guys john holt uh i think he’s he’s about 10 years older than me 52 or so 53 yeah yeah he’s

45:38

got he’s he’s pretty awesome around here around town so well peel that concludes the bank techs or bank takes the captex

45:45

bank uh slideshow thank you for uh yeah thank you i was trying to get some applause but we can put something after

45:51

thank you what is that what does the future hold for william campbell other than the new gallery to come

45:56

well we’re gonna continue to i think explore what we can do with the

46:02

gallery um the within the last year yeah about 15 months you know we’ve

46:08

opened up the new space and we’ll let that kind of settle in and um you know keep keep trying to put

46:13

together great shows um is that because it’s like there’s a lot of artists like let’s get more is that kind of the

46:19

reason or no we needed a bigger space really we only have like seven foot ten

46:25

inch ceilings at buyers so this jt grant painting we cut six inches off the top of it just to get it in

46:32

what’s that like for an artist well he gave us what we really did was cut the stretchers down

46:37

and then we we we walked it into the gallery and i re-stretched it in the front gallery at buyers and put it up on

46:44

the wall we just folded the top six or eight inches behind it so it’s still there so the one over on white center is

46:49

kind of more warehouse space yeah it’s like ceiling 12 to 14 foot ceilings natural light skylights um tile floors

46:57

oh cool it’s kind of it’s just a different kind of feel is the fort worth art scene strong would you say yes i

47:03

think so we just concluded spring gallery night um the fort but the fourth scene is still alive and well yeah the

47:08

forward scene is strong um everybody wanted to get back out there this was uh i was

47:14

surprised at how many people came out for a spring gallery tonight it was packed all over town yeah and does that mean a lot of transactions or just more

47:21

people like me like it’s just like spring gallery night is a party yeah yeah yeah but they’ll come back the

47:27

people that really want to you know you can’t see the art when it’s shoulder to shoulder and everybody knows that yeah

47:32

but uh the people that are really interested will come back that’s been happening this week already but are some people just come in to like discover new

47:38

like just to kind of hear the buzz about the new artist yeah and just kind of kind of figure out like how it was done

47:44

like i think that the like manufacturing process is probably the most fascinating aspect of it you

47:51

know i love to do the studio visits and that sort of thing and it’s a lot of fun to um

47:56

get to flip the work over and handle it yeah actually until [Music]

48:01

it’s not fun but until you’re driving yeah this is 2 a.m yeah yeah or you drop it or

48:08

something nightmares do come true as far as that’s concerned but yeah for the most part it’s fun it’s really cool to see how it’s put together a lot of

48:14

artists are very particular about what the backs look like you know well being an artist uh i got to believe you love

48:19

doing this job you speak to these things so well it’s it’s really fascinating to hear some of that some of the details that you shared so thank you for coming

48:26

on peeler before we go before you go we have one question we ask all our guests aside from the lovely trish and the

48:32

children that you you call your own what is the best day of your whole life the best day of my whole life

48:39

well i wouldn’t like to uh to cut today short it’s not over yet so fair that’s a great great answer we’ve

48:46

been getting thank you peeler hal william campbell gallery we appreciate the time man lovely to catch up and hear

48:51

what’s going on uh thanks for joining us thank you captain bank uh we appreciate you guys um give them a shot you guys

48:58

are worth your time thank you jw yep thank you your hair looks great thank you at the end

49:05

thank you guys

49:10

[Music]

49:19

okay