The Chatham Arts Council is investing in artists through our Meet This Artist series, introducing you to Chatham County artists each year in a big way. So, take a look. Meet your very inspiring neighbor.
Guest writer Corbie Hill penned this Meet This Artist feature. Corbie is a writer, musician, runner, and Star Trek superfan who lives in Pittsboro. Listen to Corbie’s music here, and find him on Instagram here.
It’s a warm day in Bynum and muralists are up and down ladders, giving a glow up to the mural Front Porch Music Series audiences know so well (the one on the left if you’re facing the stage). In the heat, in the brilliant sun, the artists are creatures of cheer and sweat.
They are Stacye Leanza and Thomas Begley, visual artists whose work includes large-scale pieces. Leanza’s mural of the Haw River enjoys a prime downtown Pittsboro location: the south side of the Blair Hotel Building facing the western entrance into the traffic circle. Begley’s work includes a mural of insects, including morphologically accurate praying mantises, at The Plant.
Until recently these two had never worked together. Leanza has been in Chatham since 1997, when she followed the advice of friends who knew of an intentional community in the area. She landed there to raise her son and has been here since. The younger Begley arrived in 2020. He has since moved to Raleigh, but with family still in Pittsboro he remains personally and artistically invested in Chatham.
Leanza and Begley took a late afternoon break for an interview in the shade of the front porch. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What are y’all working on today?
Thomas Begley: We’re working on restoration of a Clyde Jones mural at the Bynum Front Porch. Clyde was a wonderful outsider artist who lived in Bynum up until December of this past year, when he passed away. He was a real fixture of the community. He was mostly known for his critters, but he painted a couple of murals.
This is the 20th anniversary of the music series and the 25th anniversary of the Bynum Front Porch. They had put out a call asking for artists to come do a restoration job.
Clyde’s whole thing, especially for the big painting projects, was that it was always a community endeavor. We wanted to put together a community workday with people from Bynum, and we had that. Today we’re putting sort of the finishing touches on this restoration,
Stacye Leanza:
We asked, what about if instead of just artists painting it, we kind of repeat what Clyde did 20, 30 years ago? He outlined everything, and the kids in the neighborhood came and colored it in. We thought that would be more inclusive of the community. We wanted to honor Clyde.
How far back does your collaboration go?
TB:
Not very far. I did a mural at The Plant. I met Stacye at an event. Then, when Bynum put out this call, I thought it would be nice if it was more of an event. I know that Stacye has had a lot of experience doing big painting events. Her mural that’s on the traffic circle was a project like that. I reached out. We had a nice coffee at the Chatham Marketplace and then we started this.
Stacye, how does Thomas’ style fit with yours?
SL:
His work style is really compatible with mine. We hit it off right off the bat. We have the same kind of community spirit. There’s no artist ego stuff.
Thomas. Same question.
TB:
I think we complement each other well. Stacye’s really organized and logistically conscious in a way that I admire. She’s very scrappy.
We had a meeting to mix some colors. Stacye’s house is beautiful, and there’s this beautiful painting on the wall. It’s one of those big things that hold up power lines. It’s a beautiful painting of this big metal structure. It’s surrounded by this halo of electricity. These constellations are behind it.
She’s very modest about it. I was like “Is it canvas?” She’s like, “It’s from when I was building my house. That’s the offcut that they put tile on…”
SL:
Cement backer board.
TB:
The painting, I was totally transfixed by it. Something I really admire is that Stacye is using everything and finding new use for old materials.
Stacye, how far back does art go for you? When did you realize that was your calling?
SL:
I never stopped drawing since I was a kid. I guess I was nine or 10 when I really fell in love with portraits. I come from a big family. I was lucky in that I had a lot of people, especially my younger brothers and sisters, pose for me. I didn’t think of it as a calling or a career till I was in ninth grade and realized there was such a thing as children’s book illustrators.
I went to art school to study children’s book illustration. Life meandered. I started doing murals at my midlife crisis and from there wandered into illustration. I kind of wandered out of murals and into illustration and teaching art, which is also a love.
The other thing I would add as part of my art-making journey and my art-teaching journey is how healing it can be. For people who might not be very verbal or verbally articulate, having a nonverbal way of expressing themselves is really a form of empowerment.
Thomas, how far back does art go for you? How did you know?
TB:
Like Stacye, I have always loved to just draw, make stuff. I studied music in college, that was my great love. I was a vocalist, mostly choral singing. I think the thing that I was really interested in was folk harmony singing. That’s kind of what I do [musically] now.
I was getting burnt out on performing. I was getting really frustrated. I wanted something where I had a little bit more creative expression. I took this wonderful ceramics class with this amazing ceramicist. He pushed me to draw a lot. It opened up a lot for me. I started to pivot away from music and more towards visual art. After college, to kind of catch up, I took some drawing courses.
I am quite verbose, but there’s a lot that I feel and I experience that is difficult to communicate with words. Getting a chance to draw has helped me think better, feel better.
I was doing a lot of work that was sort of staying under my bed. I got to a point where I had made as much progress as I could without an audience, so I approached Lyle Estill. I had just moved to Pittsboro and I loved to go to The Plant. He had a blank wall and I said, “What if you let me paint this?” I did a big mural with his advisement. That felt like a big turning point.
As muralists, you’re working big. What’s the appeal of working big?
SL:
Having gone to a highly competitive art school, my tendency was to do tiny, tiny details and not show anybody anything. Going from that to doing murals was really therapeutic. All of a sudden I’m exposed. My inner judge is saying, “This is wrong, and the other thing’s wrong,” and somebody would come by and say, “This is gorgeous.” It’s like, OK. Maybe I’m all right. I gained a lot of confidence. Physically it was really fun, just climbing up and down and around on the scaffold.
TB:
I’m a pretty big guy, so that’s part of it.
I have lots of nieces and nephews. When they’re reading a picture book, it’s right in front of them. I remember reading books that way, and really wanting to be really inside of it, inside of a world. Something about working at such a scale, when you’re up on a ladder, it’s this very physical thing. You feel like you’re making a picture that you can be inside of.
In your recent creative works in general, what have you found yourself addressing? What have you found yourself processing?
TB:
The sort of quirks and oddities of people and people being around each other, I think is the thing that I find most wonderful and also aggravating in the whole world.
As I’ve gotten older, it’s taken a while to understand how each person is sort of a mystery to themselves. There’s something, honestly, just funny about two people who have no idea who they are bumping into one another. That’s so great.
SL:
When there’s something I have a question about, I can explore it artistically. Some answers come from the exploration. I teach this in my art classes. You have something on your mind. You make artwork about it. You might actually figure something out by looking at the picture you made.
For the past few years I’ve had a longing to be able to express my ideas about social justice via art. I haven’t figured out a way to do that. It’s starting to morph now into wanting to create some kind of joy, because I’m in a privileged position of having the luxury of experiencing joy, which sounds grim.
What about just making joyful events like this mural? People came and they had a blast. Everybody was happy. We forgot about all the misery in the world. It’s almost like I lowered the bar. I’ll settle for making joyful stuff.
TB:
I think joy is a high bar.
SL:
You think so?
TB:
I think so.
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