Steve Parks in His Own Words

We are sad to hear about Steve Parks’ passing. We extend our condolences to all the members of his family, Joni and the kids, Jim Wagner and the Healys.  Bill Swann who has been taking care of the gallery found this in an editorial written for ArtLines. Here’s Steve then in his own words, which  capture the man and his spirit, his compassion and endurance.

Volume 4 Number 8 September 1983

ARTLINES

BETWEEN THE LINES

There is a poem, Where is My Kingdom, that Larry Bell repeats as a mantra when the going gets tough. The last lines read,

“Have you the substance? Are you free?
How much can you suffer? How far can you see?’

Bell read the poem at the dedication ceremony last month in Denver of the Solar Fountain, a project which he and Eric Orr worked on for seven years. Occasionally, as we’re putting another issue of ARTlines to bed, it occurs to me that there’s a common idea running through a number of the features, an idea that creates, if not a theme, a feeling that characterizes that month’s work. The idea this month is summed up in the poem, that a successful artist’s (or king’s) career is founded on vision and perseverance. And, of the two, it is perhaps perseverance that is the most critical, the attribute most likely to make the difference between significant art and the also-rans.

The inspiration for the Solar Fountain probably came out of a relatively short period of collaborative thought and discussion, a period that perhaps could be measured in days. The work of designing the vision, experimenting, selling the concept, lobbying to ensure its completion, took years.

Perseverance has certainly been the key to Wilson Hurley’s success. Not only did it take him years of checking off various careers that didn’t suit him before he committed himself to painting, his first love, but, since making that commitment 20 years ago, he has had to “paint through” an unlucky series of life-threatening and painful ailments. He painted work for a museum show last year with a broken arm—his painting arm. “I couldn’t hold my hand up for 15 minutes at a time,” he told our interviewer. “You know, that’s the best therapy in the world! And you know what else? I did some good paintings. But the only way to be a good painter is to paint. You can’t ever quit.”

Similarly, Alyce Frank, who didn’t seriously begin pursuing art until a decade ago at the age of 43, is a landscape painter whose field work is hampered by a polio crippled leg. Hampered? I’m not sure Frank or Hurley think of their maladies as hinderances. They are problems to be overcome, realities not unlike those faced by everyone. Perhaps it is perseverance and resiliency that marks the character of every successful life.

Then there’s Henry Moore whose brilliant work during the last 40 years has been charged by his gruesome experiences in the London Underground during the Blitz. Jay Phillips will find out about perseverance, if he hasn’t already, as he takes his rising reputation to the Big Apple and bids farewell to his hometown with a show at the Eason Gallery. And for a twist there’s Shel Hershorn who ten years ago quit photography because it no longer served him in his pursuit of the art of living. Hershorn’s experience reminds us that life is more important that art.

Life is filled with infirmity, of course, and perseverance through infirmity is the name of the game. In one of those wonderful, odd paradoxes, it is what sets one free, in life, as in art.

Stephen M. Parks
Editor