Chief Askew's Diary: July 9, 1930

It's very hot! They arrest a drunk. Meet my favorite artist.

Chief Askew observed that it was “from 100 to 105 in the Sun and from 92 to 98 in the shade” today. Other than a man arrested for public drunkeness and fined $5 in Mayor’s Court, there was nothing much going on “in our line.” In fact, there was so little going on in the news outside of Newnan today I’ve decided to depart from my regular format and tell you about a delightful visit I had last week with my favorite artist, Robert Villamagna, the “West Virginia Tin Man.” This is Robert, who lives in Wheeling, West Virginia, at the opening of one of his exhibitions.

This post is free, so feel free to share it and tell your friends about Bobby Big Town!

I first saw Robert’s work at the at Strohl Art Center at Chautauqua Institution in western New York last summer. I was immediately smitten by his creative use of recycled signs, containers and odd pieces of metal and wood to create his pictures and three-D sculptures. Some, like this tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., make political commentary.

Others speak to the decimation of the coal mining and steel industries in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, like the one called “Old King Coal,” below. Robert told me he worked in a steel mill for 13 years before going to college and realizing his dream of becoming an artist. He taught art at the University of West Virginia.

This one gets its message from something his mother used to say about the smoke polluting the skies around the mills.

My first purchase from him was part of a series inspired by newspaper headlines. It’s hanging in my kitchen and makes me smile every time I look at it, in part because I was a newspaper writer for 17 years.

Sometimes he will be inspired by something as mundane as a pigeon and make a whole series on these birds.

Last year he did an F-Bomb series. This one got snapped up before I got a chance to buy it, to my great regret.

But I did buy this one, one of a series using romance comic book covers. It is also hanging in my kitchen, where the wall phone hung back in the day.

When I visited his “tiny cramped studio” behind the home he shares with wife Chris last week, Robert explained that he sometimes draws inspiration from a snatch of conversation. This one is based on something a friend’s daughter said in anger.

A few are overtly political. This one sold quickly.

Robert’s studio is crammed to the rafters with tubs of tin, signs, and all manner of embelishments, tools, painting supplies — you name it. It looks pretty orderly but he admits sometimes he has a hard time finding something he knows is in there — but where?

You can “visit” Robert virtually at his website or Facebook page. Tell him Kathryn sent you.