A Burlington artist is holding her first-ever solo exhibition at a nearby public library this summer.
Just two years ago, Wendy Spears of Burlington sat before a blank canvas before starting in earnest to create the 11 acrylic paintings now featured in her first solo exhibition, Curbside Prayers.
“I find things on the side of the road that speak to me and paint them.”
– Artist Wendy Spears
Curbside Prayers will be on display at the Chapel Hill Public Library off Estes Drive from now until July 9, as part of a long-running “Public Spaces” series that showcases six artists per year for two months each.
“These damaged goods, once cherished and now orphaned relics, are waiting to be picked up while the owners are praying that someone else will come along and see the potential. After this interaction, I began to scope out within my neighborhood items that were placed roadside and through my artistic lens began to see the potential of future paintings that encompassed the beauty and humor of unexpected treasure troves of drive-by circumstances.”
– Wendy Spears
Spears had taken an acrylic painting class for beginners in 1993 at Alamance Community College – where she had earned a degree in graphic design five years earlier – with longtime ACC instructor Skee Johnson, who is known locally for his watercolor paintings of Alamance County landmarks.
Curbside Prayers is a meditation on the everyday things we take for granted and cast aside, Spears explained in a recent interview with The Alamance News.
“I find things on the side of the road that speak to me and paint them,” she tells the newspaper.
Last summer, Spears stumbled across a call for artists on Facebook, and even though the deadline for submissions had passed, she sent in samples of her work and got selected – from a pool of several hundred artists – to exhibit her work in the “Public Spaces” series, she says. “It felt like I got a golden ticket,” she adds.
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Reflecting on the genesis of Curbside Prayers, Spears elaborates, “Almost two years ago, I came across a floral couch dumped on the side of the road. I stopped to take a picture of this piece as it struck me as humorous that at one point someone had loved this item so much that they brought it into their home only for it to be disposed of in the front of their yard.
“These damaged goods, once cherished and now orphaned relics, are waiting to be picked up while the owners are praying that someone else will come along and see the potential. After this interaction, I began to scope out within my neighborhood items that were placed roadside and through my artistic lens began to see the potential of future paintings that encompassed the beauty and humor of unexpected treasure troves of drive-by circumstances.
“Using a photograph as a guide, I was challenged to showcase these items in a different light. People place items on the side of the road without a second thought and some even drive by completely missing the item altogether, whereas I give it a second chance by capturing the beauty of the past to the reality of the present.”
Spears graduated from ACC with an associate’s degree in commercial art and audiovisual technology in 1988. She later worked as a graphic designer for the former City-County Magazine (a predecessor to Alamance Magazine) and for 10 years as a graphic artist in the advertising department for the Durham Herald-Sun.
In the late 1990s, her husband, Tim Spears, asked her to help out at his company, Superior Trailer, which has its main location near the former Burlington Manufacturers’ Outlet Center (BMOC) in Burlington, along several locations in Virginia. “My husband needed somebody he could trust, so I’ve been with him ever since,” Spears tells the newspaper.
Painting became a creative outlet amid a relative’s battle with cancer, Spears recalls. “My mother-in-law had cancer, and my husband went to take care of her, along with her aunt, who lives with us now,” she says.
“That’s how this really started, was with me trying to deal with a family member going through this,” Spears says, referring to the impact that her mother-in-law’s battle with cancer had on their family, including the couple’s three grown children. “We all had to find our creative outlets and do something positive.”
Each of the paintings in Curbside Prayers tells the story of a castoff that Spears found in Alamance County, she explains, describing her painting style as a mix of Americana and impressionistic. “Curbside Prayers came about when I saw [a] floral couch on Edgewood Avenue,” Spears recalls. “[I said to myself], ‘here’s this couch that someone loved enough to purchase, and now it’s been tossed out.’”
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A Colorful Encounter depicts a chair she came across while driving down Plaid Street in Burlington. “Outside that thrift store [Hope Chest Thrift Store], they’ll dump furniture out; I saw that chair and had to take a picture of it.”
All Keyed Up features an antique Remington manual typewriter that belonged to a neighbor. “It was a neighbor who lives across from us, and she collects them,” Spears recalls. “She put it on the road, and the way the light was hitting it, I couldn’t believe it.
“I try to go online and find out the history of each piece because that makes it even more interesting,” Spears says of her roadside finds.
The disabled hobby horse pictured in Sidewalk Derby was cast off by a homeowner in Spears’ neighborhood in west Burlington. “I busted out laughing because, in addition to that hobby horse, there was another that was broken,” she recalls. “It researched it; it was made in the 1960s, so it’s just an old hobby horse. That was how they had it in the yard. It looked like it was racing, trying to get free.”
“So much – in life and art – we take so seriously; we’re trying to find a hidden message,” Spears tells the newspaper. “To me it could be comical; it could be sentimental. So [many things], we ride by and don’t give a second thought, but for me, it means something more. It could be a bit of nostalgia, or just really cool. With a broken chair, it could be something about the architecture that speaks to me, but I felt it was worth painting.”
Today, Spears tries to set aside at least an hour a day to paint. “With anything, I think you’re always trying to make things look better or figure things out,” she says. “Painting makes me happy, and there’s nothing more satisfying that painting something to give to somebody for a birthday [or Christmas] and having them say, ‘you just captured that perfectly.’”
Curbside Prayers will be on display at the Chapel Hill Public Library at 100 Library Drive until July 9. More information is available at: https://wendyspearsart.com/
