
DATE: Thursday, May 22, 1997                TAG: 9705210180

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  247 lines

LEAGUE SERVES AREA SUFFOLK ART LEAGUE IS CELEBRATING ITS 20TH ANNIVERSARY WITH A VERY AMBITIOUS ART SHOW AND SALE.

What was it Linda Bunch called the amazing modus operandi in her job as lone staffer for the Suffolk Art League, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year?

``Divine intervention.''

It's the serendipitous way things happen that she's referring to.

Take the current exhibit, ``Asian Arts,'' which opened on April 15.

Bunch and Lisa Mizelle - director of The Suffolk Museum, where the art league is headquartered - decided some months ago to organize a group exhibit of Asian art, simply because the museum had never showcased such objects and as a forum for a local group of sumi-e artists.

Then Bunch began putting out her feelers. In January, she happened to chat with a woman enrolled in an art class at the museum.

The woman, Toni Davidson of Suffolk, told Bunch she had just returned after years spent in the Far East. ``And she had this magnificent collection, and was more than happy to lend it.''

Among her 20 or so loans were ``these intricately carved wooden Chinese birdcages that are just incredible,'' Bunch said, excitedly.

``You find a lot of people like that. People are very generous - at least, people who come to museums.''

Bunch and Mizelle are frequent collaborators on exhibits. Likewise, their organizations work hand in hand.

Since the museum - housed in a former city library and renovated for museum use - opened in 1986, the art league has been based there, and staged many of its exhibits and events there.

In turn, the museum - a division of the city's department of parks, recreation and facilities management - has provided a rent-free home for the support group.

Without the art league, ``we would certainly have to sink a whole lot more money into the museum to make it successful,'' Mizelle said.

``We probably wouldn't be able to do as much programming, and the art league wouldn't be there to assist with installations. And they're a wonderful resource for us in connecting with regional artists to come in and do programs.''

Since its inception in December 1976, the league has seen a slow and steady growth. The exhibits have gotten more ambitious; now the museum relies less on The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to provide the league, a Virginia Museum affiliate, with low-cost shows through its Traveling Exhibit and Media Services (TEAMS) program.

More exhibits, such as ``Asian Arts,'' are organized by staff and members - a sign of increasing confidence and sophistication.

High points have occurred over the years - from a 1983 show of paintings by famed Peninsula painter Barclay Sheaks and his Suffolk students to a jam-packed lecture in October by James McBride, author of ``The Color of Water,'' a book based on the life of a Suffolk woman.

From the start, the league had a mission to provide a broad range of programs, classes, workshops and exhibits for Suffolkians.

``Education in the arts - that's our primary goal,'' said Bunch. ``That, and providing venues for area artists to show their work.''

The league has offered classes in everything from collage to clay, mosaics to monoprints. Exhibits have ranged from a show in March of work by the Suffolk Photography Club to a 1995 exhibit by internationally known Native American sculptor Retha Walden Gambaro.

It's a matter of supporting the locals, while exposing them to a broad range.

``We try to expand the definition of art, as broadly as we can define it. Especially since the Fine Arts Center closed, we are pretty much the arts center now,'' Bunch said.

After six years of classes and performances for youths in theater, music, dance and more, the for-profit Fine Arts Center in downtown Suffolk shut down in January due to a lack of volunteers, audiences and parking.

Meanwhile, a new/old group has risen from the ashes: The Peanut Players, which ceased performing in the early 1980s, flipped on the stage lights again in the fall. On Nov. 9 and 10, the farce ``Play On!'' was mounted at Forest Glen Middle School.

Former Suffolk mayor Andy Damiani is board president of that troupe, and is a longtime cultural supporter and art league member; Bunch also is on the Players' board.

Damiani called the league ``a very determined group. I think the art league has sort of arrived. Linda's done a lot, really on her own time, as an enthusiast.''

Bunch is heartened that each of Suffolk's schools, elementary through high school, has an art teacher.

The down side is, art budgets tend to be slim. So the league helps out by supplying, free of charge, one daylong art workshop for each middle and high school every year.

The league hires the artists, ``and we try to choose an art form they would not normally have access to,'' Bunch said.

Last year, a mosaics workshop was among the programs. Earlier this month, Waynesboro photographer Fred McGann taught students gathered at Lakeland High how to create environmental installations by marking on blank 35mm slides, then projecting those images onto walls.

Bunch has brought her own clay workshop to the schools each year - on her own, for a very token fee.

``Being a product of the public schools system, I'm trying to give a little back.''

Also toward art education, the league has committed to giving an art book each year to the Morgan Memorial Library in Suffolk. The first offering is ``Faberge in America,'' the sumptuous catalog from the recent blockbuster, traveling exhibition.

In early February, dozens of Suffolk high school artists were bussed on a school day to the museum, where work by 64 young painters, sculptors and photographers had just gone on display.

The teens and their teachers munched on sandwiches and chatted about the art.

``The Suffolk Art League does a very good job with this show,'' said Cleta Norcross, an art teacher at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy. `` . . . It motivates the students, and it gives them a reality check,'' by having their art be encountered by a wider public.

While the ``Student Gallery'' regional high school art contest is a motivator, too, the competition is so rough that ``some years we don't get anyone in from our school.''

So the monthlong, annual Suffolk student art show is a more feasible goal. ``Yet it's still a good competition,'' Norcross said. ``They choose the work, and not everybody gets in.''

Jacqui Gorsie, a 16-year-old junior at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy, was slumped in a corner, exhausted after staying up late to complete her artwork, she said.

Gorsie is serious about an art career, perhaps as a fashion designer. ``I've heard a lot about the art league,'' she said. ``This is a small area, so this show gives student artists a chance to show off their work and say, `Hey, notice me!'. It's also good to put on your college resumes,'' she said.

As part of its mission to serve all segments of Suffolk society, the art league annually schedules a Black History Month program, a joint effort with the museum.

This year, on a Friday evening in late February, five singers known as the Legacy of Weyanoke presented the history of African-American music to a packed audience, seated in folding chairs in the museum's galleries.

The mostly a capella group began by singing the indigenous music of Africa and the Caribbean, and worked their way through time to field songs, spirituals and further.

``I'm interested in my culture,'' said Farriscq Hampton of Newport News, who said he was attending his first Suffolk Art League-sponsored event. ``It's a part of me, the spirit in me.''

Such a program ``is very advantageous to the community,'' stressed Ivery B. Knight of Suffolk, who enjoyed the program with her granddaughter Raisa Sierra Boone, 6, on her lap. Also with her was Knight's daughter Dollicia Boone, also of Suffolk, and her other two children.

Elnoracq Grant of Suffolk said it was her third consecutive Black History Month event she had attended. ``They generally have good things here at the museum, but I especially look forward to Black History Month.''

In early April, Bunch was acquiring the touch of anxiety that strikes her as faithfully as spring pollen.

The Suffolk city budget for 1997-'98 would soon be on the table. And while the league is not directly appropriated by the city, the group gets much-needed funds through the Suffolk Fine Arts Commission; the commission, in turns, gets its money from the city. The league also feels the impact from how much is set aside in the city budget for the museum.

``This time of year, I do get kind of fruity about it. There are only so many municipal dollars, and when you have people using privies, it's harder to justify it.''

She reeled off her most convincing spiel:

``The city has invested a lot in this program, and in this building. It seems ludicrous to discontinue it.

``And it's important for society. Industry wants creative thinkers, they want people who can solve problems. And the arts are the best way to develop that part of your brain.

``Also, if we want to continue having a civilized society, we have to have something besides the work and the mundane.''

The art league supplies an artful alternative on a modest budget that is nonetheless ten times what it was in its first season.

For 1977-'78, the group spent $4,601.17 by fiscal year's end, and had $728.70 left in the bank. The 1996-'97 budget is $45,000.

Here's something most arts groups cannot boast: ``We've been solvent from the first year,'' Bunch said.

How? ``I think it's just tremendous community support, and membership support, and good luck with granting agencies. And we try to stay within our means.

``We are not extravagant, unless we can afford to be. Like last fall.''

In mid-October, the league hosted a talk by author James McBride. Residents clamored for tickets to hear from a man who wrote an inspiring book about the heroism of his Suffolk-reared white mother as she raised her 12 black children.

Three weeks before the event, with a waiting list of 60, the league realized they needed a much larger venue than the city's Holiday Inn. So they began planning to stage the dinner and talk at the local Shrine Club. Local groups rallied to the league's aid, from the Suffolk Literary Club to the Junto Book Club.

For such effort, proceeds from that event were less than $1,000.

``Fortunately, most of our events are part of what we do for the community, and are not fund-raisers,'' Bunch said.

Dues from the league's 275 memberships help boost the coffers, along with the center's big annual benefit - the Suffolk Antique Show and Sale, held at the Suffolk National Guard Armory.

At the February event this year, 24 dealers from several states set up stalls selling everything from dressers to dolls. The proceeds from the show, begun in the mid-1980s, continue to grow. This year, the league garnered $10,000 through program ads, patronage, admission and by thriving sales of delicious, homemade brunswick stew, pies and cakes at the event.

Earlier this month, Bunch pored over league scrapbooks with clippings from the league's early years.

Bunch was studying art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond when the league was formed. Her parents were charter members, however, and a few years after she returned to Chuckatuck, she was entering league-sponsored art shows.

Often, she'd show alongside her dad - a former state delegate, an attorney and a devoted wood sculptor.

The art impulse runs in her family. Her mother, the late Betty Glasscock, was a pianist who chaired the Suffolk Fine Arts Commission.

The league has its roots in a bicentennial art exhibit.

Suffolk painter John R. Taylor, who helped organize that 1976 outdoor show, has been the league's exhibits chairman for a decade. The '76 show ``had a tremendous response,'' with 280 artists and at least 50 purchase prizes, Taylor said. ``We'd never had a show in Suffolk like that before.''

The league was an outgrowth of that event. Nowadays, he said, ``I tell you, there's not a club that is more active, and has more stuff going, than the Suffolk Art League in conjunction with the Suffolk Museum. There is something going every day,'' from tours for schoolchildren to art classes for adults.

Early on, the league met in members' homes and staged exhibits at a local bank. Later, historic Riddick's Folly on Main Street became headquarters. When Bunch started in 1987, she became the league's first paid employee; because hers is a part-time position, her title is administrative assistant, though she functions as director.

A year earlier, in late 1986, the league found a permanent home in the former Morgan Memorial Library, a modest one-story brick structure on quiet, residential Bosley Avenue.

Says Bunch: ``We want our patrons to be exposed to as many different kinds of art as we can. We're not asking them to like it - merely to appreciate it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color cover photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II

Linda Bunch, a potter, is president of the Suffolk Art League.

Staff photos by MICHAEL KESTNER

ABOVE LEFT: Earlier this year, the Suffolk Art League sponsored

singers known as the Legacy of Weyanoke.

ABOVE: Patricia Schell and Emily Spencer examine some items at the

antique show.

The annual Suffolk Art League-sponsored Suffolk Antique Show and

Sale in the National Guard Armory includes these procelain

figurines.

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

WHAT: ``Asian Arts''