Exhibit at museum details county's history through paintings by artists with local ties
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on June 1, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/ALAN CAMPBELL
A selection of art of various media, including oil on canvas, watercolor and collage, will be on display in "A Stroll Down Memory Wayne" at the Wayne County Museum, which holds its opening reception Friday.
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News-Argus/ALAN CAMPBELL
Robert Rigsby painted "Antebellum Goldsboro" featuring the old train tracks on Center Street, for the exhibit at the Wayne County Museum, "A Stroll Down Memory Wayne."
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News-Argus/ALAN CAMPBELL
Mary Lou Ward painted "Toiling for Tobacco" for the exhibit at the Wayne County Museum, "A Stroll Down Memory Wayne."
The Wayne County Museum and Wayne County Public Library have partnered on an exhibit for the museum titled "A Stroll Down Memory Wayne."
The exhibit will detail Wayne County's history through paintings.
It came about when local history librarian Marty Tschetter was working with the museum to help it get more exposure in the community.
"There are a lot of Wayne County stories that have never really been told," said project coordinator Carolyn Hill with the library. "Marty had learned about some of those. He met with a consultant in 2014, who suggested we do a timeline."
Mrs. Hill helped write a grant on October 2015. It was a grassroots grant through the Arts Council of Wayne County. The project is being sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council.
The exhibit includes 24 paintings of various widths, but all 10 inches tall, that will go along the top of the walls in the main gallery at the museum.
"The panels are designed to fit in the molding at the top of the walls," Mrs. Hill said. "We had to create our own canvases for this project.
"We decided to put a really big canvas over the fireplace as sort of a centerpiece. We made that the future of Wayne County, and the others are dealing with the past."
Mrs. Hill said the project committee had hoped to get about six or seven artists to do the panels. But they ended up with 13.
"It's been really interesting," she said. "We pulled different artists together from the community. Some of them I knew. Marty knew some who used to come into the library and showed him their artwork. We got referrals from the Arts Council."
Mrs. Hill said some of the artists are well known in the community, like Zeno Spence, and some are not as well know, like Mary Lou Ward.
"We tried to limit the exhibit just to paintings so there'd be some consistency," she said. "We've gotten different kinds of paintings, like oil, and a library employee did a water color.
"The artists were asked to come to the library to do a little research on Wayne County before they did their paintings. So they could learn about these different stories and do different kinds of things. So it's not all about the same old things you hear over and over all the time."
In addition to the panels, there will also be a brochure to go along with the exhibit that explains the different artwork.
"So, it's not only a learning experience for the artists, but also an educational experience for the people who come to the museum exhibit," Mrs. Hill said. "Some people don't even know where the museum is."
The project committee divided the timeline into eight sections -- Waynesborough; pre-Civil War/antebellum years; Civil War and the Reconstruction; agriculture, business and industry; military and Wayne at war; history of the performing arts; the struggle for justice (civil rights and the road to equality); and looking forward to the future.
Before the artists did their paintings, they were asked to go to the library to learn more the time period they had chosen to turn the history into paintings.
"The artists were free to interpret the information however they wanted to," Mrs. Hill said. "Some of them were a little intimidated by the history aspect of it. But once they got into it, they took it and ran with it.
"We had a gentleman, Don Sutton, and he has done most of the military paintings. He has worked in mainly blues, oranges and yellows, very vivid colors.
With the military, some aspects of military stories are not always easy to paint and make appealing to people visually. I was astounded with what he came up with. The way he took those stories and put them on canvas was excellent. They're vivid and beautifully composed."
Mrs. Hill said another of the artists, Max Mozingo, has a totally different style.
"The nice thing about Max's work is the street art aspect of it," she said. "They're so vivid, too. And they're fun to look at, even though the subjects are serious. He did different parts of the Civil Rights movement. I hope it makes people want to learn more about these things."
"A Stroll Down Memory Wayne" will stay up at the museum for at least a year.
"I hope through the companion piece, that people will realize that there's more to Wayne County than they thought," Mrs. Hill said, "even people who have lived here all their lives. It will give people a fresh perspective about the place they live in."
There will be an opening reception Friday at 7 p.m.