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Virginia A. Myers
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Solon |
interviewed 8-2-1999 | printmaking, drawing, painting |
artwork
interview clips
Foil
Imaging...A New Art Form
a
new art book and functional teaching text establishing an
aesthetic and technical foundation for a new art form.
More than 250 2D and 3D art pieces are illustrated in color.
hardcover; by Virginia A. Myers and 48 foil artists
Call
800.626.0411 to receive a free brochure
about this new limited edition book
| Virginia A. Myers was born in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1927, and grew up with her parents and younger sister mostly in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father taught at various colleges and schools. She studied at George Washington University and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and received her B.A. in drawing and painting in 1949. She earned | her M.F.A. in painting in 1950 from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. She is single and has no children. She is a professor of art at the University of Iowa, and does mainly printmaking, drawing, and painting. Her current focus is on the foil stamping process and the Iowa Foil Printer invention. |
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| A
Time of Malfeasance #3 copyright © 1974 Virginia A. Myers All Rights Reserved |
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| A
Time of Malfeasance #5 copyright © 1974 Virginia A. Myers All Rights Reserved |
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| Moonrise
in Winter copyright © 1997 Virginia A. Myers All Rights Reserved |
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| Spring
Storm copyright © 1999 Virginia A. Myers All Rights Reserved |
| Growing
up
(44 sec.) |
Early
choice
(60 sec.) |
Process
(37 sec.) |
Developing
(60 sec.) |
Aesthetic
news
(56 sec.) |
Grateful
(43 sec.) |
 (301KB) |
(409KB) |
(256KB) |
(411KB) |
(386KB) |
(296KB) |
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My dear mother, who had no art background but who realized the value of the cultural assets of a great town like Cleveland, took us—Sis and me—to Saturday morning art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It was a great experience. And the classes were always over at twelve noon. And then Mom would meet us and take us to the restaurant. In the afternoon starting at two, there’d be a special program in the auditorium for kids. But there would always be about an hour between the time we would finish eating and that program, which we could wander the museum. Two o’clock would come, there we were at the auditorium. It was a whole Saturday occupation for my mother. So, that was a very important experience.
In seventh grade, when I was forced to take a sewing class, I hated it! Make that stupid apron with two stripes on it, you know, and a tie in the back. And what were the boys taking? Woodshop—that’s where I wanted to be. Early on, I wanted to be an artist. And I thought, “Well, you could get married.” But I observed how hard my mother worked—the piles of ironing when everything had to be ironed, you know, and full time keeping the house, and how hard Dad worked to keep us in a good financial status. And I thought, “I can’t do it.” If I’m going to get married, of course, I want to have children—that’s what marriage is about. And it isn’t that I didn’t like children. Heavens above, I spent fifteen summers in summer camp counseling and loved every minute of it. So it was an early choice. And to say that there hadn’t been opportunities meanwhile along the way to get married, oh, yes! But, it wasn’t part of what I thought was the plan.
The process is exciting. When you cut a burin line, or a series of them, and it’s just right, and you ink and wipe the plate, and you lift that damp print off of the plate, and it’s just it—there’s something wonderful that happens to you. Or with foil stamping, when you are overlaying foil and working through the layers—because foil stamping is a layered process—and you are seeing colors and textures emerge that you didn’t dream of that are carrying your initial aesthetic drive into new orbits, that’s heaven! And it’s intoxicating, it really is! And it keeps you doing it.
I’ve found out that when you’re alone, the great ideas can come out. That’s why I don’t allow radios in my classroom. I want you to hear yourself think. You have plenty of noise in the world; you don’t need these distractions. I’m not always too popular—I’d rather have them hate me now, than five or six years and they get out, then they go, “Why didn’t she teach me this?”
Begin to develop your priorities, and to seek out who you are, and not be afraid to think, “Oh, I don’t have to be ‘normal.’” You have to know something before you can feel it, and then you have to know some ways of manifesting it. You have to be flexible, too. But you also have to be tough, and you just can’t go along always with the crowd. You really can’t. You’ll suffer for it, but it isn’t all suffering catfish either. The orbits in which a creative person operates are much wider than the average person.
You have to be in touch with the fact that you can produce something and you don’t always know whether it’s going to be good or bad. You don’t stop to think of that, just make it! Do it! The real test, if you’re a creative person, is that you do it not just when you’re feeling good. Anybody can be creative when they’re feeling good. But, do you do it when you’re not feeling so good? And some of the days when you’re not feeling well—I can speak from my own experience—some of the best things come out. You don’t know! You don’t know, until you go down and present yourself to your work table or your tools or whatever it is—your paintbrushes—say, “Well, here I am. I wonder what the grand aesthetic news from the interior is today!” And sometimes it’s not very good, and sometimes it’s wonderful, and sometimes it’s in between. But the most important thing, after all, is that you were there today. And you tried.
I’m just grateful to be here. I just feel extremely lucky. I think about it every day. I walk out there and look around. The other night, I was sitting out on the deck, and the stars had come out, you know, and I could see the planes going way up there—couldn’t even hear them. There was the Big Dipper and the night sounds were in the woods, and I thought, Wow—this is something wonderful! I have no excuse not to do my work well. It’s all right. So far, so good, if I can just keep things going. And if I can see the foil stamping business so that it really becomes a viable art form, well, to put it very succinctly, dying will not be so hard.
