Home-grown art: Jeffersonville native, 83, reflects on his life as a working artist; work on display at U of L

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SO YOU KNOW

• WHAT: “Jim Snodgrass: A Creative Life”
• WHERE: University of Louisville Belknap Campus, Hite Galleries in Schneider Hall
• INFORMATION: http://calendar.louisville.edu/main.php?view=event&eventid=1340030060452-0007

Related Photos

Artist Jim Snodgrass, 83, stands outside of his studio and home near Corydon on Friday morning. He is a Jeffersonville native and currently has an exhibition of paintings in the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville that runs through Aug. 11. Staff photo by Christopher Fryer

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July 26, 2012

Home-grown art: Jeffersonville native, 83, reflects on his life as a working artist; work on display at U of L

By MELISSA MOODY newsroom@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Thu Jul 26, 2012, 01:07 AM EDT

CORYDON — A sold-out matchup between the Jeffersonville High School basketball team and New Albany High School was coming up, and Jim Snodgrass’ best friend, Charlie Mather, was desperate to attend. Snodgrass already had a ticket, but wanted to help out his friend.

So Snodgrass did what he knew best — he forged a ticket using watercolor paints. This was in the 1940s, before Snodgrass studied at the prestigious Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, traveled to post-war Europe and gained renown as an avant-garde artist.

Now, at the age of 83, his work has been featured in exhibitions in New York, Indianapolis and currently at the University of Louisville’s Hite Art Gallery.

But in those days, growing up in Jeffersonville, he just painted because that’s what he had always done.

“I never thought about anything else,” he said.

When he arrived at Herron, on a scholarship his high school teacher had encouraged him to apply for, Snodgrass said he immediately felt out of place.

“In art school, in the beginning, the other guys would stand around and say things like, ‘I just love Degas,’” he said. “And I didn’t know who that was, and I thought, ‘I’m just too dumb to be here.’”

Snodgrass did make one friend who was in the same boat. Jim Reno felt like Snodgrass did — out of place and out of sync with his fellow students. Both decided to quit at the end of that first week and return home, “and tell our buddies about all the crazy people there,” he said.

But that was before Snodgrass met Bob Weaver, a former Naval officer, Ringling Bros. trapeze artist and Herron art instructor. As the students were in class painting that first week, Weaver went through a litany of what everyone was doing wrong. He approached Snodgrass and Snodgrass said he expected the same from the outspoken instructor.

“I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ and [Weaver] said, ‘You just keep doing what you don’t know you’re doing then.’”

After Snodgrass graduated from Herron in 1952, he traveled to Europe on a prestigious Mary Millikin Memorial Scholarship Prize. Visiting galleries in England and Italy, he was blown away by the depth and breadth of the art on display.

“It’s hard to even work after seeing that stuff,” he said. “I was stunned. I never cared about art history, but all of the sudden it’s a living thing.”

But there was something in him — though the art was inspiring and the art history lesson educational — that struck him as definitively different from his work. At that time, the epicenter of the art world was moving away from Paris to New York City, and away from earlier artistic movements and toward modernism and the avant-garde.

Snodgrass identifies himself as an avant-garde artist, part of a community of artists he has worked with since the early days in New York City. The label is reflected in the seemingly thrown-together array of shapes and colors in his paintings which belie consideration not to be dismissed as careless or casual. Snodgrass never aims to overthink his art, but from his early figurative work to the later contemporary abstract paintings, there is most definitely a conscious creativity.

“I don’t like the term artist, I just do what I like to do,” he said. “I’ve been able to live my professional life on my own terms. I’ve been able to make a living as an ‘artist.’”

And there is no doubt that, whatever you call it, Snodgrass has earned acclaim and interest with his artwork. It might not have always been exactly what he wanted to create, but he was able to make money creatively.

“Sometimes it’s kind of a crazy survival, I learned to shift gears quickly,” he said. “I caught on right away you’d better be prepared to do anything and anything that came along, you’d better do it.”

Snodgrass shared a studio with a friend, Guy Davis, in Indianapolis. One day he came by and the space was full of stained glass. Snodgrass immediately questioned Davis as to why the studio was crammed with windows. Davis informed him that he had taken on a job for both men to do the releading.

“I can’t remember how many thousands of bucks he said we were getting paid, it was a lot,” Snodgrass said. “So I said, ‘We’re doing it.’”

From New York City at the height of the avant-garde movement to Indianapolis where he excelled creatively and professionally as an artist, Snodgrass has come a long way back around. Though he lives in Corydon now, Jeffersonville will always be his hometown.

“I love the river, the boats,” he said.

Memories of growing up on Chestnut Street, the 1937 flood, the former Indiana Army Ammunition Plant during World War II and Jeffersonville High School basketball mingle with the avant-garde community in New York in the 1950s, post-war Europe and his favorite, trapeze-swinging art instructor.

There is no doubt that Snodgrass has lived a big life.

“Most of my buddies graduated from Jeff High, went to work at Colgate, got married, had kids, got divorced, and now most of them are dead,” he said. “At least I’ve had a little adventure.”

A little adventure indeed.

— Melissa Moody is a freelance journalist who lives in Louisville.