A Portrait of the Artist

Lake Wylie has long inspired artists who’ve been drawn to its natural beauty, tranquil settings and quiet atmosphere.

But appreciating art as a Lake Wylie resident has always been a challenge. With no art museum and only a sprinkling of galleries, this region is lacking in places to see local work.

Now artists are becoming more organized as they discover more and more local painters, sculptors, potters and other fine craftsmen living nearby.

Lake Wylie painter Shanti Marie used to drive to Charlotte every Saturday morning for live model sessions that helped her keep her drawing skills in tune. Then she found out nearly half of the 14 participants lived in the Lake Wylie area.

“We thought, ‘Why are we all driving to Charlotte when we only live a mile or so down the road from each other? Let’s just start our own group,” she says.

Marie co-founded the Tega Cay Art League with fellow artist Nance Presson about a year ago. Twelve local artists were invited to meet weekly for three hours of open studio time.

“We work on our own projects, but we’re together in one room,” says Marie. “Artists are loners and we often like working alone, but this provides some interaction and a way to share our skills and knowledge.”

The Tega Cay Art League shows member artwork at the Tega Cay Community Center. Group leaders also are organizing a juried show and sale.

A group of painters in the Tega Cay Art League later branched out and formed the Fort Mill Art Guild, which recently leased a 2,000-square-foot space at 213 Main St. in downtown Fort Mill.

The Guild plans to use the space, called The Art Mill, as a meeting site and community arts center with classes, exhibits, lectures, demonstrations and a gallery of regional artists.

River Hills Country Club also provides exhibit space for local artists in its series of rotating exhibits. Organized by resident Deitrah Smith, the exhibits feature neighborhood painters and sculptors. Smith also coordinates the Visions of Art show held every other year at River Hills Country Club. It draws about 45 artists from Lake Wylie, Gastonia, York, Clover, Fort Mill, Tega Cay and Charlotte.

“Those of us who live here know there are a lot of artists around Lake Wylie,” she says. “But if you’re new to the area, you have to know where to find their work. The local art scene is becoming more organized as new people move to the area. People are usually surprised at the quality of artists here. Everyone is always excited to see the talent we have in our community.”

Here’s a look at some of the artists working in and around Lake Wylie:

From watercolors to Web

Every day, folks from around the world log on to the web to see the latest work of Lake Wylie watercolorist Shanti Marie.

Retired from a career in newspaper circulation, Marie, 54, exhibits her work via Web sites such as www.dailypainters.com and her own site, www.shantimarie.com. Patrons from around the world can access her entire body of work at any time. There’s no gallery commission fee, no framing costs and no time limit on the exhibit. Shipping costs are covered by the customer.

“I always thought art would have to be my passion, not my career,” says Marie, a California native who studied fine art in college before switching to business. “It wasn’t until I went online that I really became a full-time artist.”

During her newspaper career, Marie pursued art as a hobby. She explored a wide variety of media – batik, blown glass, stained glass and painting – until she found an affinity for watercolors more than two decades ago.

“I found it very exciting because it was unpredictable,” she says. “It’s a complicated medium.”

Like most artists, Marie worked alone until she blended her love of art with a longtime interest in technology. She joined a handful of online groups for painting enthusiasts and now belongs to about 20.

“The Internet opens up a whole world of other artists doing the same thing just somewhere else on the planet,” she says. “We share our knowledge about techniques and supplies, where to find the best deals and how to build a Web site.”

A few years ago, developers of www.dailypainters.com invited Marie to join the sales site where thousands of viewers log on to see a new painting created every day or every few days. The juried site has grown from showcasing 20 artists to 145. Purchases are made via PayPal and artists ship their work directly to the customer.

“Most of the daily paintings are called artist trading cards and they’re the size of a standard baseball card,” says Marie. “It’s a whole niche market. People like to collect them. They’re inexpensive, easy to ship, and you can put them in albums or in frames on an easel. It’s an easy way to have a beautiful art collection.”

As an artist, Marie says the deadline of finishing a painting every few days makes her more creative.

“You have to paint, so you become less afraid of trying new things,” she explains. “The painting-a-day pace also matched my personality. I talk fast, I move fast, I do everything very quickly.”

The $15 cards also introduce Marie’s work to more serious collectors who commission her to create larger paintings. She’s best known for watercolors of koi, which have evolved from light and sweet to intense and heavy over the eight years she has painted the fish. To study the fish, she built a koi pond behind her home in Lake Wylie Woods.

Marie also has a Monet-inspired impressionist series, a whimsical collection of dog silhouettes and an abstract series focused on ancient rituals. Watercolors are her preferred medium, but she often paints on wood and on an acrylic polymer surface rather than paper.

Marie has other online ventures too. She participates in a-painting-a-week blogs, gives video watercolor lessons via the Web and runs her own Web site.

Exhibiting her work on the Internet also gives Marie instant feedback on what collectors are buying around the world. Spotting online trends – 6-inch-by-6-inch square paintings, for instance – helps her stay ahead of the industry curve.

“The good thing about the Internet is that you’re in total control,” she says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. It doesn’t require a big outlay of money and there’s no commission paid to a gallery. The only negative thing is that some people think if you’re online and not in a traditional gallery that you must not be that good.”

But buyers from Louisiana to Iceland have bought her pieces online. People who show koi, which can be worth thousands of dollars, also have commissioned her to paint their prize fish.

“What I love best about exhibiting my work on the Internet is that I can answer people’s questions at 4 in the morning, when no one is bothering me and there are no interruptions,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to work 24 hours a day, anytime. I can run errands during the day and when everyone else is asleep, I can get online and be in this whole other world. It’s all on my time schedule.”

Whimsical and funky

Slipping on a bright knit cap and an old college sweatshirt, Jennifer Mecca goes to work just steps away from the kitchen of her historic home in downtown York.

The chilly back porch studio with worn wooden floors, an inspiration wall and a coat of fine dust on anything that sits still isn’t fancy, but it’s where this talented artist makes magic. With a potter’s wheel, water-soaked sponges and her hands, Mecca transforms blocks of porcelain into elegant vases, bowls and pots with unique nature-inspired details.

Several elements give Mecca’s work a distinct style: vibrant glazes in aqua, amber and green; raised medallions and flower chains she makes with clay molds; and designs that are etched into the piece and wiped with stain before firing.

“I definitely don’t do traditional pots,” she laughs. “My style is kind of whimsical and funky.”

Mecca grew up in upstate New York and moved to Greenwood, S.C., in middle school. When struggles with dyslexia affected her self-confidence, Mecca pursued creative talents instead of traditional academic ones. She earned a degree in interior design from Virginia Commonwealth University and later managed an art gallery with working studios in Raleigh.

One day, a potter invited her to try throwing a piece on the wheel.

“I got addicted to it,” she says. “I liked the idea of people making a living off making stuff.”

Mecca returned to school at East Carolina University to earn an undergraduate degree in fine art and a master’s in ceramics. She also studied at the Penland School of Craft in the North Carolina mountains and abroad in Russia, Estonia and Finland.

“In North Carolina, there seem to be two facets of working potters,” she says. “In the Seagrove area, potters really have pride in traditional clay styles and glazes, and more potters learn through apprenticeships. In the mountains around Penland and Asheville, you see more artists with an academic background, who are more focused on the artistic side of the work. I think it’s great to have both styles.”

Mecca keeps up with the latest trends by reading pottery publications, attending conferences and participating in national shows such as the well-known American Craft Council in Charlotte. She shows her work locally at Lark & Key in NoDa, Wooden Stone in Davidson and at two shows a year organized by Circle of 8, a group of eight regional potters to which she belongs.

Her work also differs from many North Carolina potters because she uses fine English porcelain instead of heavier Carolina clay. The white material means her glazes come out in bright hues instead of the earth tone greens and browns typically seen regionally.

Mecca also puts a lot of detail into the vessels with a feminine flair.

“I throw and alter pieces, which means I cut and reshape the pot after it’s been made on the wheel,” she explains. “I do a lot of surface treatment, like cutting rims and reforming handles and knobs into decorative pieces. I also do what’s called sprigging, which is pressing clay into molds to create small raised flowers and medallions. To create the etched designs, I use an Exacto knife to cut into the side of the pot, then rub stain into the indentions. There’s a lot of work that goes into each piece before it’s fired.”

Although her work is very decorative, Mecca intends for the pieces to be used rather than put on a shelf.

“I grew up in an Italian family, where food was always important and the table was always set with china,” she says. “I wanted to do fancy, functional pieces.”

Mecca’s pieces range from $25 to $400 and include vases, teapots, bowls, mugs, plates and trays. One of the most unique and intricate designs she does is called a flower block, a round pot topped with three rosebud-shaped spouts and four flower cutouts that is used for flower arranging.

Like many working artists, Mecca struggles to make a living with the high cost of materials and fewer buyers in a battered economy.

But juggling work and life with husband, Joey, son, Quaid, and kindergartner twins Aydan and McKenna, is the most challenging aspect of her job.

“I work when they’re in school, at night and on weekends,” says Mecca. “I burn the candle at both ends, and like many working mothers, struggle to find a balance. But I like that I can be home to work and that it’s not a 9-to-5 job. I don’t have to answer to anybody but myself.”

Wild on Lake Wylie

From ducks in flight to herons walking on the banks of Lake Wylie, John Reimers pairs his love of art and the outdoors to capture the beauty and grace of area waterfowl.

Reimers, 60, grew up in Mississippi and began drawing and painting as a kid. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art from Mississippi College, but made a living in the oil, gas and timber business.

Reimers stayed connected to art by running a gallery and dealing wildlife art. He also painted waterfowl in his spare time and won the Mississippi Duck Stamp Art Competition twice.

“I got interested in wildlife art from being an outdoorsman and a duck hunter,” he says. “You find many avid duck hunters and outdoorsmen who paint waterfowl. To paint them correctly, you have to be out there with them, to see the ducks in their own habitat, their mannerisms, how they fly and how they land on water.”

Reimers moved to Lake Wylie 11 years ago and lives with his wife, Trisha, off of Pole Branch Road.

“We’re both from Mississippi, but we had always heard the Carolinas were a great place to live,” he says. “Lake Wylie was less crowded and we liked the way the area was laid out.”

Over the years, Reimers explored many art genres and mediums. Pop art and color abstraction with hard edges and large colored canvases were popular when he was in college. Later, he tried abstract expressionism and realism and studied art history in Oxford, England.

“Making attempts at different forms of art helps you find what you’re most interested in,” he says.

These days, Reimers enjoys welded sculpting, which involves using found objects and putting them together to fabricate a three-dimensional piece of art. His large-scale work can go inside or outside and typically is made with unusual parts.

“My favorite piece is an oversized great blue heron that I made with railroad spikes, old fire extinguishers, metal bushings, pipe, turn buckles and rat tail files,” he says of a piece that won Best in Show at the 2006 Fall Harvest Show in Gastonia. “It captured the graceful movement of a blue heron, and it was made with different textures and unique pieces.”

Reimers scours a Rock Hill scrap yard to find components for his work. Sometimes he has an idea in mind and looks for parts to fit, and other times, pieces he discovers inspire a new sculpture. Once he finds the parts, Reimers welds them together in a shop behind a friend’s home. He creates some pieces in a few hours and others over several weeks.

“I just look for interesting shapes and objects,” he says. “It’s hit or miss. Sometimes I go and find things to bring back to the studio and other times I have an idea in mind when I go. Finding the components is part of the fun of making a piece.”

In addition to the prize-winning blue heron, Reimers also has created fish swimming through a reef from steel parts found at the scrap yard. It’s currently part of a one-man show at River Hills Country Club.

“This type of work is challenging because you need to understand the mechanics of welding as well as the creativity of using the materials,” he says. “You have to be able to envision the piece, find the parts and be able to put it together. I enjoy coming up with an idea and seeing it through to the finish. You never know what you’re going to find. It’s a freer, more spontaneous form of art.”

A balancing act

Many artists work their entire careers to place a large-scale piece in a public place where thousands of people see it everyday. Jordan Younglove, 18, accomplished the feat as a high school senior.

Younglove, the son of Christine and Donald Younglove of Fort Mill, created a 4-foot-tall cube that’s displayed in front of the main entrance at Fort Mill High School. Each of the cube’s six sides represents an academic, athletic or artistic discipline, which Younglove drew using input from the student body. The polished steel cube balances on one of its corners.

“It was my senior year and I wanted to do something to leave my mark at the school,” he says. “I looked around campus and didn’t see anything supportive of the arts in any way. Other schools had statues of mascots or spirit rocks, but we put our heads together and came up with the idea of the cube.”

Advanced Placement art teacher Judi Vokes recruited well-known Lancaster metal sculptor Bob Doster to help with the cube project. Doster visited the school to look at sketches, then worked with Jordan in his studio to tweak the designs.

“I drew the sketches in 3-inch-by-3-inch designs on paper, then we scanned those into his computer and refined the designs with a software program,” Younglove explains. “Then we sent that file to a plasma cutter machine, which has a laser that cut everything out to scale for the 4-foot sides of the cube. We used two sheets of metal, each one that bent around three sides of the cube so we didn’t have to weld each side together.”

Doster welded the large sheets over the cube’s frame and the finished cube to a cement base. Jordan polished the inside and outside of the cube with a belt grinder, a process that took several visits to Doster’s studio.

“He was a strong influence on me in terms of getting the perspective of a professional artist,” says Younglove. “He’s out there working for a living, and he shared what he knew from marketing yourself to creating pieces that are structurally sound.”

Installed the last week of Younglove’s senior year, the sculpture drew lots of positive comments from fellow students and faculty. Seniors were particularly happy to leave behind a lasting piece of art to commemorate the final time Fort Mill would have a senior class at one high school. Seniors are now split between Fort Mill and Nations Ford high schools.

“I was especially proud; it felt like I really accomplished something,” says Younglove. “It kind of feels like I’m part of the school, like I’ve left a memory there for the entire senior class.”

The experience also encouraged Younglove to consider art as a profession. He’s currently a freshman at the University of South Carolina, majoring in art studio with a concentration in graphic design. So far, he has taken color theory, drawing and visual arts computing.

“There’s a lot more competition on the college level, the work is more difficult and you have to learn to produce quicker,” he says. “In college, it seems like everyone has a strong suit. But seeing the different ways they go about creating artwork is a great inspiration.”

Younglove’s artistic talents go beyond three-dimensional sculpting, too. He grew up drawing everything from dragons to cartoon characters, and in high school, skipped basic drawing to advance to the next level with Vokes.

As a senior, he won Fort Mill High School’s Christmas card contest and advanced to earn first place in the national and international levels of competition. His design portrayed principal M. Dee Christopher as Santa Claus and yellow jackets – the school mascot – as his reindeer.

Younglove drew the design, scanned it into a computer and used a software program to add color. The school’s graphics department printed the cards, which were sent out into the community.

“I worked at Carowinds for two summers drawing caricatures, so I used that experience to draw a portrait of the principal,” says Younglove. “I tried to make it comical. The teachers found it funny, but I’m not sure how Mr. Christopher took it.”

Judi Vokes says she’s had many gifted students in her 32-year career and that Younglove is among the best.

“Once in a while you have a student like Jordan who’s particularly motivated,” she says. “He’s multi-talented and a gifted musician in addition to his work with painting and sculpture. He really stepped out of doing just things for himself and became committed to leaving something behind for his entire class.”

Younglove says his favorite moment of creating the cube sculpture was standing it up on its corner for the first time in Doster’s studio. A photo taken at the time captured his proud smile.

“It’s one thing to see it in your head or even on a computer screen, but once you see it all come together, it makes you ecstatic,” he says. “I learned so much. It made me feel like I was doing something with my talent, that I wasn’t just a high school student on an assignment. It gave me the confidence to try other big projects.”

Story by Leigh Pressley

Watercolor by Shanti Marie

Photo by Richard Rudisill