In the span of a year, a corner of Iowa lost two giants in art. First the painter Arthur Frick passed away at 101 and now we have lost the painter and illustrator Gary Kelley. The latter was very well known and beloved in the Cedar Falls community. The former was not known nearly enough.
Arthur was a classic tweed-coat, philosopher artist and an exceptionally gifted painter. For many years, he was the chair of the art department at American University of Beirut in Lebanon until the Lebanese Civil War forced him and his young family to flee the country. They landed in Waverly, Iowa where Arthur was hired to build the art department at Wartburg College.
After retirement, Arthur maintained a messy studio in the basement at Wartburg. He never quit working and even at the end, at 101, he continued to do vital paintings like an artist half his age. Occasionally I would pick up the painter Frje Echeverria and we would drive to Waverly to hang out with Arthur in his studio. Frje would bring some of his new paintings for us to critique. On one of these visits I fished out some of those old brown paper portfolios and they were full of hundreds of Arthurs gorgeous pen and ink drawings of Greece, Florence and Lebanon.
The last time I saw Arthur, Frje and I drove up and joined the photographer Thomas Payne and Arthur in the basement studio. Frje did a sketch of the gathering that Thomas now has in his studio. We all felt like it was a special occasion but we had no idea it would be the last time. Arthur was physically frail but his mind was sharp. It was hard to conceive that I would never see him again.
Now, Gary Kelly has passed away. I like to believe we were close, at least he made me feel that way. Yet, our friendship was closed and personal. I barely knew his family and except for our friend Scott Cawelti, I knew nothing of his social circle. We shared that fraternity of artists, specifically painters. Five, maybe six times a year, I would walk to downtown Cedar Falls and drop in on his studio unannounced. We would sit for a couple of hours talking about art, our latest projects, history or family. Sometimes we looked at a new tube color he discovered or pulled down an art book from his vast floor-to-ceiling bookshelf.
Gary was nationally recognized for his wide range of commercial illustration. Yet, his spirit as an artist transcended the bounds of his illustration jobs. I was always amazed that, even with his success, he remained hungry for ideas and inspiration. He haunted the art sections of used bookstores and the floor around his drawing table was always cluttered with stacks of books on famous and obscure artists, always full of post-it notes marking the page of something he wanted to absorb.
Those of us that knew Gary knew that he had been struggling for a few years with memory loss. I got used to simply relating the same story or detail more than once. However, after recently returning from a trip out west, I found Gary's studio door uncharacteristically locked. And it remained locked the subsequent times I tried. After leaving a note, I got a phone call from his daughter Cydney that they were in the studio and that I could walk down. Upon my arrival, it was clear that Gary was in a serious condition. I will only say that I will forever treasure my last visit to the studio. I pulled some books off the shelf and Gary and I looked at paintings by George Bellows, Richard Diebenkorn and his beloved Picasso.
Picasso. Gary loved Picasso. His taste was a bit more traditional so I would venture to say that Picasso was the threshold of modernism for him. There is a story that speaks directly to Gary's humanity. He loved to tell the story of the painting Guernica and Picasso's encounter with German officers during the WW2 occupation of Paris. Guernica famously depicts a scene from the Spanish Civil War when the fascist general Franco allowed German bombers to attack civilians at night. Perhaps no other artwork captures the senseless terror, chaos and outrage of civilian atrocities. The legend is that the German officers went to Picasso's studio, saw a photo of the painting and asked, "Did you do this?" Picasso replied, "No. You did." Gary loved this story and included it in one of his last graphic novels. This is my enduring image of Gary's character.
Gary and Arthur were not especially edgy artists. They nestled into an honest and thoughtful sentimentality. Yet, they shared a moral, ethical compass. They inhabited a realm of feeling, tolerance and love for humanity that they were lucky enough to express in their life's work. We were lucky to experience it with them. Please let us celebrate them and nurture the young artists coming up. We need them more than ever.
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