Field Trips, South Carolina State Museum
Educational Resources

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Blue Sky

My mother was a painter, and she was very shy. She never had a show, but she taught me a lot. I was a sophomore, yeah, at USC. I probably just did it as a class project. There's a little bit of the Barringer Building in there. Buildings burning, toppling. I was kind of experimenting around with abstract stuff, you know? I don't think it had any meaning other than the fact my father was a firefighter and I would go visit him at the fire department all the time. I think I just painted that on a whim. You know, the background in it was done with a...took a beer can, filled it up with liquid paint, punched a hole in the bottom, hanging on a string, and it would act like a pendulum and go around. And it drew all those little lines and concentric patterns. And using that as a foundation, I worked on top of that. Fire's like turmoil and so then I added color and newspapers and things. Guy Lipscomb was my next door neighbor who lived across the street from me. And he saw me one day and he said, I'd like you to come over to the State Museum and do us a mural. I said, "Where? About what?" He said, "Whatever you want." I said, "Okay, how much do I get?" I think he said, "All we can come up with is about $9,000." I said, "That ain't much." But he took it, I think he took it out of his own pocket, you know, it wasn't State money or anything. He personally put it up and it looks like a false perspective going back. And then the name of it was up there on the beam like Gervais Street extension. The idea was this like Gervais Street just came right down and crashed right through that wall, you know, and you're looking straight up Gervais. My mural was somewhere in between being a legitimate exhibit and being something else. Hugo hit in September of 1989, and I was here working on that mural at the time. I worked on it at night. I would come in late afternoon, early evening, and work all night usually. This place is really spooky at night. Have you ever been here at midnight or 3:00 in the morning? It is so spooky.