Cedar Falls artist's new work honors labor
Builder hires renowned local artist Gary Kelley for trade workers tribute
CEDAR FALLS — Wayne Magee believes human labor and the craft of a manual trade is a work of art. He has reason to feel that way. He’s spent his life at it.
Now, he’s put his feelings into a tangible work of art, with the help of a longtime friend - nationally renowned local artist Gary Kelley.
A large mural reproduction of Kelley’s rendition of several workers in skilled building trades has been erected on the outer wall of Magee’s namesake construction company headquarters, on Waterloo Road at East Avenue near Pepper’s sports pub.
Nagle Signs of Waterloo faithfully and meticulously reproduced Kelley’s original art into large panels put up on the building.
“I’m the fourth generation that’s been doing this kind of work — my father before me and my grandfather before him, and my great-grandfather,” Magee said. “So basically, I wanted to put this up as a tribute to the trades people that do what all of us do — carpenters, electricians, sheet metal guys, iron workers.
It’s a “tribute piece,” Magee says — similar to the metal sculptures installed in front of his building several years earlier in tribute to his employees and trades people in general.
“It’s a nice statement for what we do, and the men and women who make all this possible,” Magee said.
”Gary had done a couple of other pieces for us personally, so I asked him if he’d be interested in doing something we could turn into a mural that was construction related. He said it sounded like a fun piece. He likes to do things that catch his interest and he can have fun with.”
Kelley said “I’ve known Wayne for quite a while” and both have done projects for one another as contractor and artist, respectively.
”The thing about me is — and especially, at this point in my career — I have to find a way to get excited about projects. I can’t work just for money,” Kelley said. “I have to be inspired by a project. I was able to find a way to do that with Wayne. And he let me do whatever I want.
”It was fun” Kelley said. “It wasn’t just for money. I found a way to really enjoy the project. I could design it, do the construction and have a variety of figures. That’s what made me happy.”
Kelley’s work has appeared in national magazines and books in addition to publicly and privately commissioned art over a 50-year career He is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa.
Magee said, “I gave him some construction photos, so he’d have some ideas to play off from. Based on those, he put this together, and hit it spot on.”
He approached Kelley a few months ago. “He likes to do things that hold his interest,” Magee said. “He jumped right on it, and in a few weeks he said ‘I’ve got something for you to look at.’ I said ‘I think you hit it.’ “
”He gave me a few scrap pictures of construction work,” Kelley said. “I just wanted to make a design of these figures doing a variety of work. These aren’t pure copies of his photographs or anything. But they’re definitely inspired by his workers and what they do. The key to that, for me, is being able to design a really wide, horizontal piece of art, with angles and shapes and angles and shapes and colors.
”And working with somebody like Wayne, he’s going to let me do whatever I want to do that way,” Kelley said. “That’s the fun of it…It was all my ideas. And that’s the way it has to be to work,” so he’s inspired stylistically as well as with the subject matter.
“It’s not about trying to make it look like a photograph,” Kelley said. “It’s trying to design it in shapes and colors and space to make it feel like a piece of art.”
The work is similar in size to some work Kelley has done on the University of Northern Iowa campus. The digital aspect was different.
Magee said, “He (Kelley) did a pastel, and I had a high resolution scan of it made with Gary’s permission, and Nagle turned that into the mural.”
They did panels to be attached to the building, to retain the same quality and color, as opposed to having a mural artist paint it directly on the building.
“It kept it original,” Magee said.
“The thing that amazed me about it was the fact they could do it digitally,” Kelley said, in his downtown loft studio. “This digital world is not my favorite thing as an artist that works like this. I don’t have a computer up here. “But he trusted that Magee wanted a faithful reproduction. of the original.
”It worked,” Kelley said, noting there was “absolute trust” between him and Magee regarding artistic integrity.
”We’re getting a lot of positive comments,” Magee said, noting it was important to him that a woman was included in the artwork, to represent women in the trades, like his daughter — a fifth generation in the family business.
“What he didn’t know,” Magee said of Kelley, “was the iron worker in that mural — he didn’t know and I didn’t tell him — that was from a photo taken of me 45 years ago when we were adding onto Cedar Falls Utilities’ power plant. I was up 100 feet and a (Waterloo) Courier photographer took the photo. I didn’t realize he was down there, so I asked for it later and got a copy of it. That was one of the photos I gave Gary. But I didn’t tell him, because it wasn’t about me it was about trades people. Gary never knew it was me up on that column.”
That’s sort of right. Kelley indicated.
”I figured it out,” Kelley said with a grin. “For some reason, I knew that was him. I said ‘I’m going to put you in the picture.’ He didn’t say, ‘Make sure this one’s on the mural.’ But I did. And it fit.”
Artistic license — born of friendship and respect.
More about Gary Kelley and his work can be found here.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
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Fun story, Pat!