Page 17 - The Noise September 2016

COVER ARTIST
MARK HEMLEBEN: THE EVER-DANCING LIGHT
BY CF SEIVERD
Mark Hemleben didn’t start life out as an artist. He’d attempted other occupations — joining the Marines for a tour of duty, publishing the weekly, the Pulse of Lafayette while in college; even dressing windows for Nordstrom’s and building catwalks for international runway shows.
He even took the prodding from his parents, who were both academics, and graduated with a degree in history and a teach- ing certificate. But after the bell rang on a frustrating first year in the public school system, he recalled a simple joy he had in his youth. “My brother and I used to go down to New Orleans and we would busk on the streets in the French Quarter. So my brother would play guitar and I would paint. And I started making more money than my brother, just selling little paintings and drawings on the street. That’s how it started, that’s how the plein air thing started ... it was beautiful, it was great.”
So he packed up his stuff and headed out West for a regular gig painting murals, adding his signature style to faux gardens on the patios and foyers of nationally-branded restaurants. Then, in the early nineties, he began working smaller paintings to critical acclaim. “In Southern California, it was the heart of plein air painting. That was where people were getting out and do- ing it on the street like I had been doing it in New Orleans, and they were selling these little street paintings, and it became a realpopularthing.” HeamassedamodestfollowingofCalifornianotables,includingtheactorWilliamShatner.“Billwasalways so much fun,” Mr. Hemleben recalls. “He’d bring me rubber Spock ears every time he’d buy a piece!”
On a whim, he visited Jerome, Arizona for a weekend, and by his second trip, he met a kindred spirit in master painter, Robin Anderson, who’d set his workspace at the Old Jerome High School back in 1984. After a proper vetting of the junior painter, Mr. Anderson negotiated a studio and a place to stay for the young Mr. Hemleben within the duration of a single phone call, and while the new arrival had never slept in a teepee before, he was not about to question his serendipitous entry into a ham- let once renowned for copper but modishly known for stunning views and romantic architecture. “I moved here in 97, and Jerome was a nice little tourist town, quiet, nice to paint in, real pretty. And Arizona, so many great things to paint here. I came here because I wanted to paint it. It was just gorgeous.”
In between odd jobs at RediHelp to make ends meet, he’d venture with his palette and easel in tow onto the cobbled streets of a city once occupied by 20,000 roughshod men and women, all of whom worked in varying degrees for the massive mining and timber operations that consumed the Verde Valley a century ago; their spirits now just fractals of light and color among the 403 residing in town these days. Mr. Hemleben’s exacting paintings of the town’s silent alleyways, dooryards, and staircases became a hallmark for both the town’s revival and his career.
“Jerome kind of reminds me of New Orleans,” says Mr. Hemleben. “It’s kind of this weird village, it’s not really American. New Orleans isn’t really American either, it seems international. They had all different people who came to New Orleans; like the French, then the Spanish owned it, then the French, then the Americans. So, they’re not like ‘woo-hoo America!’ And it was built by immigrants, and so was Jerome. Jerome had many more people from outside this country than inside this country working here. So Jerome has got this funny European look ...”
Yet Mr. Hemleben still gets out to paint Tlaquepaque, the canyons of Sedona and the Grand on occasion, high desert perches around the Verde Valley, and other points of geographic and architectural interest around the state. In his archives, his small vignettes of London, Berlin, and Paris are equally as stunning as his Arizona scenes.
He is also known for a reoccurring cameo role in the annual GhostWalk theatrical presentation by the Jerome Historical Society, of which he is a longtime member. The history of the town continues to intrigue him, as he says it’s hard to be sur- rounded by so much beauty presently, when there are records attesting to its soot-laden skies and barren vegetation during the height of mining here, and gory details of the brutal misdeeds of its inhabitants, who came for fortune promised by industry andweremetwithagrimpathtosurvival. TheadaptedtruestoriesareactedoutthesecondweekendinOctoberbythetown’s dramatically-inclined current inhabitants, with a simultaneous walking tour of Jerome’s most interesting architectural remains.
As a painter, he attempts to catch, whenever possible, the ever-dancing light in the streets of the old mining town he calls home. True to form, his vivid color schemes and fervent brushstrokes evoke a trans-dimensional quality, and a viewer is often caught off-guard with how up-close a portrait of his feels from a few feet away. His paintings all hum with a hushed ethereality, beckoning a mind to wander the vantages of time, and fluid space.
Said one long-time collector, who frequents the studio on occasion, “There are paintings in here I could be entertained with for hours. I bought this small iris painting for my nephew’s wedding ... Up close it was something, but from afar it just came to life. I see some of his old stuff, it’s just fantastic ... and I see some of his new stuff that is still just as fantastic. There are certain paintings that are just magic.”
Not to sit on his laurels, Mr. Hemleben is consistently producing both small vignettes of Southwestern life and light, and pro- digious pieces that fill a wall space (two of which can be seen in person at Jerome Town Hall and at the Douglas Mansion Jerome State Historic Park). He can be found most days in his studio at the Old Jerome High School on the “lower hogback” of US High- way 89A. His work can be viewed at Passion Cellars, the Mile High Grill, and at many fine locations throughout the hamlet.
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