AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Gary Bowling's House of Art in Bluefield is a trippy, eccentric, go-to place for art, music and culture.
Watch a multimedia slideshow with interviews and more than 50 photos from Gary Bowling's House of Art.
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. - This historic West Virginia city has certainly seen better times. As a Preservation Magazine article noted a few years ago: "Bluefield's economic gloom is as oppressive as its heyday once was glorious." Just over a week ago, one side of the Matz Hotel, standing since 1911, simply collapsed onto Princeton Avenue.
But in at least one part of downtown, an artist born and raised here has brought back to life one of the town's old buildings, a wild reinvention that aims to make the place "the heartbeat of the community."
The front door is open on Gary Bowling's House of Art at 701 Bland St.
With partner Pete Sternloff and a small troupe of volunteers, 60-year-old Bowling has crafted an artistic, eccentric, must-be-seen-to-be-believed, go-to place for art, music and culture. "They're amazed when people walk in here," Bowling says.
Word of mouth has brought visitors from as far away as Texas. What visitors encounter is three floors and 15,000-square feet of art, from the whimsical to the intense, from the outrageous to the just plain strange.
The artistry and decoration is packed into every nook and cranny. That's not to mention the ceilings, swimming with fantastic creatures along with what looks like a tropical forest of undergrowth, animated by holiday lights.
Bowling's mission is to create a nationally worthy venue for area artists.
"I would put this place up against anything in Soho, Atlanta or San Francisco. Why not here? Living in West Virginia is not a handicap. We've got wonderful talent."
The House of Art currently represents 30-some artists, he said. "Were trying to emphasize our local talent [and] since we're a border town that does include Virginia. We're trying to keep it within a 300-mile radius.
"You know, I grew up here. This is the town that raised me and at my age this is a way of giving back. Paying it forward, if you will. This is my last hurrah, I can't take anything with me. I want to help young artists because I didn't have that growing up here."
Work by Bowling, who has supported himself with his art for decades, populates the place. Just past the front door, a nearly life-size, hand-made, cigar-chomping sculpture of the artist, festooned in Mardi Gras beads, welcomes visitors.
On the third floor, be sure to turn the handle on the Egyptian room, which includes a full-size sarcophagus Bowling crafted from an actual shipping coffin. A real-life woman named Hazel was shipped home to Bluefield in it and the coffin later tossed in a storage shed.
Watch a multimedia slideshow with interviews and more than 50 photos from Gary Bowling's House of Art.
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. - This historic West Virginia city has certainly seen better times. As a Preservation Magazine article noted a few years ago: "Bluefield's economic gloom is as oppressive as its heyday once was glorious." Just over a week ago, one side of the Matz Hotel, standing since 1911, simply collapsed onto Princeton Avenue.
But in at least one part of downtown, an artist born and raised here has brought back to life one of the town's old buildings, a wild reinvention that aims to make the place "the heartbeat of the community."
The front door is open on Gary Bowling's House of Art at 701 Bland St.
With partner Pete Sternloff and a small troupe of volunteers, 60-year-old Bowling has crafted an artistic, eccentric, must-be-seen-to-be-believed, go-to place for art, music and culture. "They're amazed when people walk in here," Bowling says.
Word of mouth has brought visitors from as far away as Texas. What visitors encounter is three floors and 15,000-square feet of art, from the whimsical to the intense, from the outrageous to the just plain strange.
The artistry and decoration is packed into every nook and cranny. That's not to mention the ceilings, swimming with fantastic creatures along with what looks like a tropical forest of undergrowth, animated by holiday lights.
Bowling's mission is to create a nationally worthy venue for area artists.
"I would put this place up against anything in Soho, Atlanta or San Francisco. Why not here? Living in West Virginia is not a handicap. We've got wonderful talent."
The House of Art currently represents 30-some artists, he said. "Were trying to emphasize our local talent [and] since we're a border town that does include Virginia. We're trying to keep it within a 300-mile radius.
"You know, I grew up here. This is the town that raised me and at my age this is a way of giving back. Paying it forward, if you will. This is my last hurrah, I can't take anything with me. I want to help young artists because I didn't have that growing up here."
Work by Bowling, who has supported himself with his art for decades, populates the place. Just past the front door, a nearly life-size, hand-made, cigar-chomping sculpture of the artist, festooned in Mardi Gras beads, welcomes visitors.
On the third floor, be sure to turn the handle on the Egyptian room, which includes a full-size sarcophagus Bowling crafted from an actual shipping coffin. A real-life woman named Hazel was shipped home to Bluefield in it and the coffin later tossed in a storage shed.
"It was fixin' to be destroyed and I said 'Can I have that? I'm not gonna' desecrate it or anything, I'm gonna' reface it,'" Bowling recalled. "Since it was a girl, I put a lady pharoah on top. I hope I did Hazel proud."
Since the 1960s, before it became fashionable to reuse, recycle and "go green," Bowling has used found objects to make art. The philosophy animates the House of Art. Many a Bluefield resident has donated items that have become part of the very structure, if not art, of the place.
"People who are tearing down buildings, taking out windows and doors, they call me up. When they donate things, we have a Wall of Pride or whatever you want to call it. It's as simple as that to better our community."
Along with Bowling, two other artists have third-floor studios: pencil artist Jody Queen and visual artist Patch Whiskey (the painterly name of Rich Miller from Princeton). Whiskey helped build and illustrate a 36-foot-long skateboard in the second floor gallery. Seven people rode the working sculpture through the Bluefield streets during a recent Christmas parade.
Future plans call for an offbeat gathering of more than a dozen third-floor artist studios, built from found objects, said Bowling. "It's going to resemble a small village."
The idea of a village is an apt one for an enterprise that he conceives of as a community focal point.
Open for a year now, and serving a café-style lunch daily, the House of Art has become the colorful backdrop to a host of events, he said. "We had a Harley-Davidson Christmas party, bridal showers, birthday parties for kids, class reunions. We're getting ready for our first wedding on the stage downstairs. We're going to build like a Chapel of Love - even Elvis will be jealous when he hears that."
The stage, made from a dozen beds pulled from an old area jail, hosts an open mic on Wednesdays. "People as young as 16 up to 85 years old are all in here together and everyone's comfortable," he said. "We have that kind of environment. I like to feel it's not just a gallery or commercial business, it's the heartbeat of a community."
One certainty about the House of Art is that if you blink, it may look different the next time you open your eyes, said the man of the House.
"It changes constantly. Constantly. It just depends on what trash I'm finding or what's being brought in. I'm building and working on stuff daily and changing it monthly. You go out of here and you think you've seen it - you ain't seen nothing yet."
Gary Bowling's House of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with lunch served 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call 304-327-9300.
E-mail Douglas Imbrogno at doug...@cnpapers.com or call 304-348-3017.
Watch a multimedia slideshow with interviews and more than 50 photos from Gary Bowling's House of Art.
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