THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509290050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
A VETERAN PROSECUTOR is risking judgment - by putting his art before the public.
Troy R. Spencer, Norfolk's former deputy commonwealth's attorney, is having his first exhibition. The show of his assemblage sculptures opens Saturday night at 7 at Jones Art Gallery in Norfolk's Dominion Tower office building.
``I've been making art for 15 years,'' Spencer said last week, ``but I've been burning it and destroying it. Finally, my wife made me quit.
``She said, `It's time for you to come out of the closet.' ''
The show will consist of about 20 pieces, most of them created in the last six months, he said.
Spencer, 54, will be at the free, public reception. Don't expect your average art opening, with artsy folk in funky regalia.
Instead, anticipate a core group of high-powered lawyers and judges, many of them toted to the event in a trolley after a cocktail party put on by Peter G. Decker Jr. (Spencer has been an attorney in Decker's Norfolk firm since January 1994.)
``I'm a former Green Beret, and a prosecutor. In court, you can fight back, and there's give and take.
``But with art, it's all give. This is where the soul is naked on the table.
``I'm serious. I guess I've been a rough-and-tumble guy all my life. But this is such an awfully strange feeling. I'm thinking, `What in hell am I doing?'
``But here I am, doing it.''
Spencer doesn't like describing his art. In words, it just doesn't come across, he said.
``Hey, I just go around the beach and pick up sticks. It sounds awful.''
Some of the works look like enormous masks. One 5-foot-tall work looks like an Easter Island head made from discarded furniture parts, then painted white.
The piece resembles a cross between primitive masks and the modernist assemblage works by sculptor Louise Nevelson.
Yet, Spencer has never studied art, and doesn't hang out with artists.
He simply has felt a compulsion to make it. ``I don't drink, I don't smoke, don't play golf, don't watch football games.
``This is what I do.''
Spencer's compulsion to create set in after his 12-year-son died suddenly from an aneurysm in the late 1970s. Afterward, he and his wife Barbara dropped out for the next decade, and spent it cruising the Virgin Islands in a sailboat.
Many an artist has been drawn to art as a therapeutic tool, and Spencer doesn't deny that aspect in his case.
``I do this every single night,'' said Spencer. ``It can be almost frightening, to go out and see this pile of junk and feel this inner force that mandates that you turn it into something credible.
``It's so frustrating, because it doesn't work right all the time. And it's almost thankless. There's no encouragement in it. You spend all week on something, and it doesn't work. So you start again. And it may not work again.
For years, the work came hard. ``It seemed there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Then it started shifting, flowing, working.
``So I guess this is a big day for me, really.
``And I plan to do this forever. I can't imagine not doing this.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Troy R. Spencer, Norfolk's former deputy commonwealth's attorney, is
having his first exhibition.
by CNB