William Mullane talks about work he will display at Soap Gallery in Youngstown, his first solo exhibition in more than 45 years. (Stafff photo / Andy Gray)
Art is a dominant force in William Mullane’s life.
He’s constantly creating. Anyone who’s been in a board meeting with William Mullane — and he serves on a lot of boards — has seen him doodle on his phone or an iPad.
He’s hung hundreds of art shows, from nearly every exhibition at Trumbull Art Gallery in the last 40 years to the Norman Rockwell and 2021 Biennial exhibitions on display at the Medici Museum of Art in Howland.
Before he became an administrator, he taught art in Warren City Schools. In May, he will be recognized by the Ohio Arts Council with its Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio for his efforts as an artist, educator, administrator and civic leader.
Except for including a few pieces in various exhibitions over the years, Mullane said he really hasn’t had a one-person show since 1976 at Kent State University at Trumbull in Champion.
That changes Friday with the opening of “In Search of a Path Forward,” a solo exhibition at Soap Gallery in Youngstown.
On Monday, Mullane was doing what he’s done for countless other artists — trying to figure out the best way to use the space to best present the artist’s work. Only this time he also was the artist.
“It’s really kind of enjoyable,” Mullane said about hanging his own show. “It’s not so mysterious (wondering what the artist would like).”
To keep him from missing anything because of being too close to the work, he invited Betsy Barrickman, a friend and fellow artist, to help find those blind spots.
One of the reasons Mullane hasn’t had a solo exhibition in decades is that he went about 20 years without painting. Those images he started on his phone or iPad were his primary creative outlet between 2000 and 2020.
“Everything I did was done electronically,” Mullane said. “I’d paint in these meetings and take these images and push them out with Photoshop.”
Some of that was driven by necessity. Between work (he is supervisor of school improvement at Ashtabula County Educational Service Center and Jefferson Area Local Schools) and the many boards he serves on, there wasn’t time.
“I didn’t have space (at home to paint), and I didn’t want a studio outside of the house, because I wouldn’t go there very often,” he said.
So his art was born on screens instead of canvases. The format and where he created had its advantages.
“What happened was it became more spontaneous,” Mullane said. “I was no longer trying to do one piece with a continuous train of thought. It was whatever I wanted to do at that moment inspired by the environment I was in.”
Another lesson he learned — the worse the meeting, the better the art.
“Any time a meeting starts to anger me, the art became demonstrably better. The minute a meeting became redundant and meaningless or started to lean into a direction that was frustrating, you could tell, because oftentimes whatever I was drawing all of the sudden had a nuclear cloud behind it.”
Mullane began painting again during the pandemic. He worked from home for the first four months, eliminating that commute back and forth to Ashtabula County. Those board meetings went online as well, so he was no longer driving back and forth in Trumbull and Mahoning counties for meetings
And for those Zoom meetings, he now used the iPad to connect to the meeting and set up an easel to paint.
“For a year I didn’t drive anywhere,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many hours of saved time there was.”
He revisited canvases that he had started decades ago and abandoned. He expanded on creative ideas he had explored previously (painting himself into works that echoed the work of some of his favorite artists). And those smaller pieces he’d created on a tablet became components of larger scale works.
Some of the most recent pieces have been inspired by the death of his wife, Patricia Latham, last summer following cancer surgery.
Two tabletop sculptures include a portion of Latham’s cremains. The pieces harken back to a series of small sculptures Mullane did decades ago with avant garde composer Arthur Jarvinen, who was a friend and classmate of Mullane’s, as well as Latham’s love of medieval art. The tabletop pieces become reliquaries to hold a piece of her life.
Ladders also are a recurring theme in his recent paintings.
“The ladder is kind of Jacob’s ladder, the seven steps to heaven,” he said. “That’s appearing more and more frequently.”
An opening reception for “In Search of a Path Forward” is scheduled 5 to 9 p.m. Friday at the gallery, where the work will be on display through March 26. Mullane said he definitely plans to make time to paint as his schedule reverts to its pre-pandemic pace, and he’s looking forward to getting feedback on his work at the reception.
“If I’m just painting in my basement or sharing things online, you don’t get any real feedback,” he said. “Even here, if they’re just being nice — because you have to be nice to the artist — whatever piece they’re pretending to be nice about indicates it’s something the audience connected with. That’s not something I’m overly concerned with but it will be interesting to hear.”
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