THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270234
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 24 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 170 lines
FROM HIGH UP under a vaulted church roof, stained glass windows still beam down sequined highlights that sprinkle reflected jewels on the cameras and floodlights below.
Never, even in surrealist dreams, would most photographers imagine a more unusual portrait studio than this.
Until five years ago, the studio was St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in the 1100 block of West Main St.
Now it is the atelier of A. Mack Sawyer, an Elizabeth City portrait photographer who is the latest disciple bewitched by the visions of a 73-year-old Currituck camera artist named Carlton O'Neal.
For 50 years, since he left the Poplar Branch home shared by a clutter of brothers and sisters, O'Neal has been creating unusual photo studios and then handing them over to talented associates who had learned how to share O'Neal's portrait magic.
``I once made a wonderful studio out of a dress shop on Plume Street in downtown Norfolk,'' O'Neal said last week during a fretful interruption from work on an old Smithfield, Va., barn that will soon become his latest photo studio.
``We took a grocery store in Warwick and put big white columns on it and made it an elegant place,'' O'Neal said.
``I got started when I was a kid and found a film developer kit in an attic and started experimenting. I used to develop in trays under the bed blankets because I didn't have a darkroom.
``After I graduated from the old Poplar Branch High School in Currituck, I went to Norfolk to work for a commercial photographer.''
The transformation of the former St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church on Main Street to a photographic studio was a labor of love for both Sawyer and O'Neal.
Sawyer, 49, is one of Elizabeth City's well-established portrait photographers. Upscale bridal pictures and family photograph requests have often gone in the past to Sawyer or O'Neal in their then-separate studios.
``A few years ago we began talking about working together,''
Sawyer said. ``Then, when Carlton traded his old studio on Ehringhaus Street for the church, we got serious.''
At the time of the swap, O'Neal's studio was in a country-style cottage quite out of place - as usual - in the middle of a busy downtown commercial area. There was a hardware store on one side and a supermarket across the street.
``After the parish moved to the new Holy Family Catholic Church out on Road Street, the man who acquired the old St. Elizabeth's Church building got interested in my Ehringhaus Street property,'' O'Neal said. ``We traded and I took over the church for a studio.''
Court records indicate the properties at the time were each worth around $250,000.
Soon, Mack Sawyer moved into the church with all of his studio equipment, and a sign appeared out in front on Main Street that said:
Sawyer, O'Neal & Associates Studio of Portraiture
``One day around the first of this year, Carlton told me to hold out my hand,'' Sawyer said.
``Then he dropped the church keys into my palm and told me he'd bought a farm up near Smithfield in Virginia and was going up there.''
Just like that.
Neither O'Neal nor Sawyer will discuss details, but both agree that there was an ``understanding'' about the $250,000 value of the church property. Sawyer insists that he will keep O'Neal's name on the studio ``forever, if I can.''
And what a studio!
While the idea of making a portrait salon out of a former church seems incongruous, it works beautifully in practice.
Before he left, O'Neal painted a huge sunny sky backdrop in the nave, where St. Elizabeth's parishioners used to attend Mass every Sunday. The pews are gone, but the ample space is now filled with studio lights and camera tripods, along with props that would make a collector's eyes glisten.
In one corner is a white baby grand piano with open sheet music on the rack. The song is ``Give Me Something to Remember You By,'' a hit from the 1930 Broadway musical ``Three's a Crowd,'' starring Libby Holman and Clifton Webb.
``Nobody seems to know where the piano came from,'' Sawyer said.
In another corner is a magnificent old 8- by 10-inch negative size portrait camera, big as a packing crate, that Carlton O'Neal once used to capture the tack-sharp character lines in the faces of his subjects.
By a door is a single Greek column, painted white on one side and weathered stone on the other. The pillar meets the needs of anyone who feels that a hint of ancient Greece in the background will surely emphasize the classic virtues of the sitter.
``He painted the pillar himself,'' Sawyer said.
Around the corner in a hallway gallery stands a bronze Perseus, sword drawn, ready to do a head shot of Medusa. Outside a church door, a water fountain is replenished by a busy nymph, gurgling into surrounding flowers.
The space where the church altar once stood has been painted into an Italian Renaissance scene, rushing away in a perspective so dizzying that it camouflages the former holy site.
Sawyer's ideas are as dazzling as his mentor's. He has spent much of the past summer dry-laying brick walkways into the natural arbors of greenery around the church.
``Wonderful background for wedding pictures,'' Sawyer says.
Sawyer, too, has attics-full of antique cameras and photographic memorabilia. The artifacts will all be on display eventually.
``Someday, we may be able to create a photographic museum here,'' he said.
He has a display case full of old Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic cameras. Former parochial school rooms in the church are now photo labs and enlarging areas.
Even in these early days of remodeling at the studio, the corridors of the church building are already a fascinating portrait gallery. The faces of Albemarle family members whose lineage goes back to pre-Revolutionary days proudly peer out of heavy gilt frames.
Sawyer's touch with a camera obviously pleased O'Neal. It's difficult to tell which of the two cameramen made the various portraits on exhibition.
Sawyer is an Elizabeth City native who graduated from the old Elizabeth City High School in 1964 and went on to Chowan College and Atlantic Christian College.
He got into photography the hard way.
``I joined the Army and was told I was going to be a photographer,'' he said. ``Then I was sent to Vietnam.''
Sawyer won the Bronze Star and other decorations for gallantry under fire as a combat photographer. And when he came home he continued winning honors as a civilian professional and teacher.
``Sometimes I still wake up at night sweating and scared because I think I heard the whispering of an incoming mortar round,'' Sawyer said.
Like O'Neal, Sawyer looks far behind the faces of his subjects. His portraits are vivid with character and challenging identity. Dozens of questioning eyes follow visitors to the gallery areas.
``Eventually, I'll look for an associate, too,'' Sawyer said. ``You don't forget the warmth of my professional association with Carlton O'Neal, and I'd like to pass along some of that, too.''
Meanwhile, the conversion of the church into a studio continues to be a labor of love - and a frightening expense - for Sawyer. He's planning to paint the building ``a kind of adobe color - something that will subdue the identification as a church.''
But in any color, anyplace, it would still be a church. And to thousands of remembering Catholics, it will always be the sacred sanctuary known as ``Saint E's'' for more than half a century.
The old Catholic structure was built in 1928 after Bishop William J. Hafey of the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh purchased the land. The first Catholic parish in the area was established by Monsignor John Peter Doherty in 1915. Doherty baptized his first parishioner on May 5, 1917, at a time when he had to celebrate Mass in various homes because no church had yet been built.
With or without the fading echoes of long-gone Latin Masses inside the church, the outside churchyard with its inviting paths and wooden benches is still evolving like the studio.
``I want to keep up and enlarge the flower beds and add to the shrubs that Carlton put in,'' Sawyer said, ``Then we'll build more bowers for outdoor photography, and it'll all be a living tribute to Carlton O'Neal.
``This building was built to reflect the best in people. I like to think a camera can do that, too.''
Another tribute to O'Neal will be held on Nov. 5 at O'Neal's new farm near Smithfield, Va.
It will be a kind of open house, or open-studio, for all of the ``associates'' that O'Neal has helped in his half-century as a photographer.
``Come on up,'' O'Neal said last week. ``We'll have a cookout and I'll show you my new studio in the barn.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
A. Mack Sawyer is a portrait photographer.
Portrait photographer A. Mack Sawyer, 49, has his studio in the
former St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in Elizabeth City.
Photographer A. Mack Sawyer coaxes Brent Tyler onto a swing for a
studio portrait.
by CNB