:30 Introduction
MS. GLINES: I just wanted to comment and thank Sally for the wonderful introduction and many, many phone hours were spent because when Sally started the Lewis & Clark Project, I started -- and Billyo, The Painting -- The Painting Missouri Project.
So the phone lines were ringing from Jeff City to St. Louis commiserating and talking about our projects for a long time.
Thank you, Sally.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes. Thank -- thank you very much.
Can you-all hear me?
(No response.)
:57 Background
MR. O’DONNELL: Okay. I’m going to start this project by telling you a little bit of my background. I -- when I got out of college, I got my -- I had my degree in sculpture and from there I went on and I couldn’t find any work so I became an illustrator for a period of time for the Merits Corporation.
And that was a great job and I thought I was going to work there the rest of my life. I just -- it was just a wonderful job. The Nissan Corporation was flying me places all the around the -- the country and I was doing paintings on location to commemorate business events. It was just a great job.
But I always did my landscapes. And I would do them for myself for years and years and years. And I would always take them into St. Louis to the galleries and the galleries had no interest at all. They would ask me, where I’m from and I’d say, here and they’d say, what do you do? And I would say, I’m a landscape painter and they would just say, no thanks.
‘Cause at the time everything was very modern. And -- which is fine. I’ve got no qualms with that. But what wound up happening was, I wound up going to this -- this workshop, this event and, out in Colorado and there was a number of California artists there. And they -- they invited me -- they suggested I enter an event in California, the San Juan Capistrano Mission Paint Out.
So I went out to California and what you do is you go to this San Juan Capistrano Mission. They invite 100 select artists from California and five guest artists across the country. And I went there and I painted. And everybody paints and they hang their work at the Mission and you sell your work.
And what wound up happening was, I was approached by the premier gallery in southern California, Joan Irvine Smith who back in the -- in the ‘80s her collection was valued over six hundred million dollars. And she actually has -- has an art museum named after her today.
But all of a sudden my life changed. I couldn’t sell anything at all back in St. Louis. I couldn’t get in any galleries and all of a sudden I got into this very prestigious gallery. I came back to Missouri and I had to make up my mind whether to stay in Missouri or go back home.
Now, I’ve got eight siblings. My wife has -- has nine. And we’ve got deep roots here in Missouri. That’s where I’m -- I’m from so I decide to stay and -- and what I did is I went through the St. Louis Artists Guild and I created an event called the Forest Park Paint Out.
And it was modeled after the San Juan Capistrano Mission event and they painted in Forest Park. About 80 artists showed up. It was a huge success. And -- and then I -- and I -- we did that for a couple of years and I started thinking bigger ‘cause I really wanted to change that perception of landscape painting here in the Midwest.
And what I did was I -- I came up with this idea the artist walk and the Katy Trail that Sally talked a little bit about. And what we did was this was a month long event and it was four, four-day weekends. We partnered with different art groups along the trail and what I did was -- I had this other proposal that we were going to do this website, where we would download images each day.
And that’s when Karen Glines contacted me. And Karen Glines wanted to know who was going to do all this writing on this project. And I said -- and at the time she was working for the arts and culture writer for the AOL. And I said, I am, and I’m a horrible writer. I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m writing. And she -- she suggested she’d like to do it. And I explained to her, we didn’t have any money. We have no money at all. We just got nothing, you know.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: And we camped out -- I mean, there was probably a group of about six of us. We camped out along this trail. Hundreds of artists came out. Karen got to interview all these artists. This website was picked up across the country by several high schools that would look at it each day in the art department.
And a lot of artists got on TV. They got media. They got wonderful -- I mean, wonderful things happened to them. And we did it -- and that first year I did the National Endowment for the Arts got a hold of us -- got a hold of me and asked me how this thing was put together, I explained. The following year they implemented it in every state of the Union.
So the next year we were able to pick up ten thousand dollars. And with that we did it -- we did it that one more year. And Karen -- Karen Glines and I started talking about -- Karen came to me and she said, “Billyo, have you ever thought about doing a book on Missouri?” And I said, “You know, I never thought about that.”
And we -- I said, what should it be? Should it be on the river? Should it be on the century farms? What could it be? And with that I’m going to hand it over to Karen and let Karen talk a little bit about it.
MS. GLINES: Thank you.
I had gone to a writer’s conference at Ball State University in July of ’01. And this was after Billyo and I spoke about the book. And had heard about a project in Indiana that was something about showcasing its beautiful regions and I could not concentrate on the rest of the conference because I just wanted to come back and talk to Billyo about doing it for our state, which I think is every bit as beautiful as other states.
I’m a city girl. I -- unless -- you know, I did not get off of Interstate 70 that often to see the beauty that we have in our state. And I can only say to all of you, first of all, thank you to Emily Luker for our being here today.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
MS. GLINES: But, also, a thank you to all of you interested in this project because I know I am just honored and humbled by the fact that all of the residents of Missouri and people are accepting and enjoying the beauty that we have been able to put in this book and in the project.
And so with this, I think, we’re going to move on so that you can see some of the pictures that we have in our project and presentation tonight.
MR. O’DONNELL: Those are big pictures.
MS. GLINES: We’re usually not quite this close so bear with us. But Billyo wants to mention something about the painting.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
6:35 County, Combine
On this painting, right here, can -- on this painting what I did was, the combine started way over here. But what I did was I kept that combine in the same position of the painting so each time it did a swath and turn around and come back and get in that position I’d move my easel about 30 feet and I would set up and I’d start to paint it as fast as I could. And then when it did that swath and it went back. So somebody came by and they shot a picture. You can actually see the combine is going the opposite way. So I hadn’t moved the easel yet. So I thought that was kind of fun.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: But that gives you idea of -- of how -- how fast you need to be and that spontaneous you need to take care of these -- you know, grab these moments that you have.
I set my easel up over here, so people could see; if you want to come by and take a look. But, you know, I can shoot a photograph and come back 50 years from now and paint from a photograph, but there’s nothing like capturing that moment in time.
7:27 Warren County
MS. GLINES: So for the sake of everyone here and, I think, what you-all are seeing is this is where Billyo is from Warren County.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
MS. GLINES: And because -- you know, the painting is -- is such an emphasis with the strokes and you’re able to see that more with the lights going down.
So Billyo, you want to mention about your homestead.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
This is in Warren County where I was from. And this barn reminded me a lot of where I was raised. And we had cows and I used to have to always milk a cow after school. I don’t like telling people that. I didn’t even like doing it back in high school. But I did it and now I’ve got fond memories of it. And this is Mr. Hullabush’s place. He had -- he had eight boys -- he’s got eight boys. And he stood there the whole time while I did this painting and talked to me. And all he did was talk about his wife who had passed away about ten years prior to that.
And it was really neat to hear this guy just go on and on about his wife. And it wasn’t until after I had finished the painting and I packed up and I was leaving that I was writing down the date in my calendar that I realized it was Valentine’s Day and I was just really touched by that.
8:39 City of St. Louis, Cathedral Basilica
MS. GLINES: This is the City of St. Louis where I was born and raised. And this is the Cathedral Basilica on Lindell. I don’t know how many of you have had an opportunity to go there. It has the largest collection of mosaics in the world. It’s a beautiful building. And Billyo received permission to go atop the Cathedral to paint St. Louis.
And what so many of my friends have commented on is that he didn’t just paint the Arch. If you notice, you’ll see the Arch in the distance but he did the cityscape from the east side. And when he went up on the building he saw some things that I think you might want to hear about.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
There was -- this -- to me, this was very special getting up on top of this building. This building is just an absolute gem. For those of you that have not been to St. Louis, this building is very, very special. It -- all the side chapels in this Basilica were designed by Tiffany, I believe.
I got special permission to go up top. I got to kind of climb through this -- this little spiral staircase and up on to these -- these different layers. And I got to see how reading -- I read the book Brunelleschi’s Dome. So I was fascinated with the dome and how that was all made.
But the -- the great thing was I actually got to go by the big Rosetta window and I could see these huge chunks of glass, this giant window, where it had just -- where they actually hand hewed chunks of glass out and put these little facets in there and it was just absolutely beautiful. It was -- it was neat to be able to come up and see those things.
But for me, I could have painted this painting from any other location in St. Louis. There’s a lot of high buildings. But to be on top of this one was just a real gem. The end of those tiles up on the roof, those were newer tiles, but on some of the really old ones they had lion faces on them, which was -- was really neat. But they were just little architectural details on this building that were just everywhere.
10:38 St. Louis Mercantile Library Exhibit
MS. GLINES: The next one. We wanted to share with you our journey as we take it and it’s -- we’ve been doing this now since about last April. So the very first exhibit was at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, which is now at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. It used to be downtown St. Louis.
And just to give you an idea a little bit about how the pictures look. That’s Billyo up at the top looking at his images.
11:02 Jasper County Courthouse
And the next slide we wanted to talk to you a little bit about not -- not every county is a description of courthouses, but many there -- there is an inclusion. And this is a very ornate one in Carthage, Missouri, Jasper County.
11:18 Dent County Courthouse
The next one, you can see a little bit simpler courthouses in Dent County. And it was a very hot day and, of course, they were trying to keep their yards looking nice like we all do on the day I took that picture. And, of course, you-all know this. And Billyo, did you want to comment on your painting?
MR. O’DONNELL: Well, let me point it at the map here so everybody knows.
(Laughter.)
11:40 Cole County
MR. O’DONNELL: The -- I actually had a friend with me when I did this painting, Roger Heuck from Ohio. And he is -- he’s -- he’s the head of the Plein Air Organization up in Ohio. And he got to come down and actually paint with me. And he was visiting his sister down here, but he -- he came out and along the river it’s always windy. The wind is -- always seems to blowing one direction or another. So the wind is always blowing. And he loved the way that I would set my brush up and let the wind kind of push my arm to kind of move strokes across it or move it up in angles, so …
He said he always learned something from me every time I -- every time he paints with me so that was quite a compliment.
12:23 Dent County, White River Trace Branch of the “Trail of Tears”
MS. GLINES: And this one is going back to the courthouse that I mentioned that was simpler in Dent County. This is one of my favorite parts of Missouri.
It’s the White River Trace, which is a branch of the Trail of Tears. If you search White River Trace on the computer you will get a map. It’s not a glitzy park like the Trail of Tears State Park. It’s not by any means commercialized, but this is extremely (inaudible), part of the Conservation Department and if you go there and just sit and relax you can feel the essence of the Cherokee surrounding you. It is one of my most favorite places to go. Billyo, you’ve been there as well, haven’t you?
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes. I have. Yeah. I -- I’ve --
MS. GLINES: And here’s Dent County.
MR. O’DONNELL: Dent County’s right here.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: Can you see that?
13:11 Phelps County
MS. GLINES: And Phelps County is, of course, right next to Dent --
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
MS. GLINES: -- on the map. And this is a favorite place of Billyo and his wife and children would go when they were young.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
We used to go down here when we were -- when -- when and Peggy, my wife, is right there in the audience, but we used to do these little journeys out, these journeys from St. Louis and take the kids places. And I would always set my easel up and paint. The kids loved this little place right here. They loved feeding the -- the trout. You could get little hands full of feed for like twenty-five cents and feed the trout and they -- they just loved that and to watch them all move in the water, it?s just magic.
MS. GLINES: And the next one is just to simply show you that when I was doing my research, of course, I spent a lot of times in libraries and at home, but one of the -- my most favorite moments is when I was getting tired of doing that to go on the road and to find the café that at eight o’clock would have the most cars in it.
14:07 Perry County
This happened to be in Perry County. And I -- you would usually ask permission if I could sit and talk to the people. And these gentlemen were sharing with me about how concerned they were when Interstate 55 was going to going through Perry County. The effect it would have on their farms, on their land. And we -- we really did have quite a nice discussion. And I believe Billyo, of course, met many people across the state.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yeah. It’s always easier for a pretty girl to sit at a table with these guys than it was for me. It never seemed to quite work out whenever I sat down on one of these tables.
14:42 Lawrence County, Pierce City
MS. GLINES: And the next one is Lawrence County, Pierce City. And this is -- when the university -- we’re very honored today to have the editor that helped me at the University of Missouri Press, Julie Schroeder is sitting in the front.
And I remember the University of Missouri Press said often times or all the time do not write or research about anything that’s not going to be there in the next five, ten, two years. Well, of course, as we all know nature plays havoc on all of us. And a week after Billyo painted Pierce City the tornado of ’03 swept the city literally almost away. And he can share with you his feelings on this.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
See in this photo, I actually -- the top part of this building was destroyed. That building was gone. This pavilion was gone. These trees were actually gone. The buildings behind me were gone. And the really touching thing about this was I -- I was painting right here on the street and the -- the reporter came and interviewed me and she actually lived in this town.
So people were -- people would see her. They would stop and they’d come over and see what was going on and talk to me. And it was -- so I got to meet the person that lived up on the top of that floor. I got to meet the people that were behind there.
And it was -- it was just a really sad day when I came back through about a year later and saw that the town was just -- still in sad repair. It’ll take it a long time to get -- to get better.
I had a friend that came down with me from Indiana and he traveled around with me and he was really impressed with the architecture in Missouri when these -- when the trains through it and how some of these towns had this Romanesque architecture in the Victorian era.
He was just absolutely impressed. He thought everything kind of out this way was all, like, log cabins and -- and just clapboard.
(Laughter.)
16:34 Lewis County, Canton
MS. GLINES: And interestingly enough the counties are in the book alphabetical. And Lewis County follows Lawrence County in the book and the -- a tornado, Billyo will share that story of the -- the backdrop of this painting.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
That same storm came from Lawrence all the way up here to Lewis. And I had been to this town many times and tried to paint up on this bluff. And Culver Stockton College had planted many, many large trees from years and years and -- I mean, they are large today, but they were -- they all blocked the view from the bluff.
So what I did was after this tornado came through I gave the town a year to heal. And after it healed I came back and painted and it just opened up this spectacular view to this Mississippi River town.
And the college liked the view so much after these trees were gone they decided not to plant any trees there. So -- and then the college actually had this beautiful dome on it that everybody had always thought it came from Europe. And it turned out when it blew off people were able to look at it and they realized it came off of a silo.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: So I thought that was kind of neat.
17:53 Dunklin County
MS. GLINES: And this is Dunklin County down in the boot heel. Billyo would come back and share stories with me about the cotton fields and I would get interested, go down, wanted to actually see the cotton growing myself, feel the cotton, take it back home, show the family. And I would often times ask him, you know, why did he choose this particular subject and …
MR. O’DONNELL: I had been all over down in the boot heel area. Probably for each painting in this book I have done three and either they got scraped off or they just didn’t make the mark or I -- I burned them and got rid of them.
But this painting -- you know, these -- these pictures are so big it’s kind of hard for me to do this, but I always called these a sprinkler, but they call them pivots. And I like the way the arch of this -- of this pivot up in that sprinkler up there arched like that and then it echoes in the road. If you look at the road it has the same echo from the years of use it just takes on that same feel.
When that -- when that cotton is picked it looks like it’s snowed down in that area. And either you -- you don’t really realize how -- how south -- how southern Missouri is until you go down and see cotton growing. That just -- to me that’s just amazing.
When I did this painting there was a dead skunk not far behind me that kept kind of waffling through the area. And then there were several times the farmers would go by in their pick up trucks and just cover me with dust, road dust. It’s real -- it’s a real fine dust down there, but they would fly down these roads going about 70 miles per hour and by the time they saw me it would be too late and I would just like disappear. The whole scene would disappear for a little bit. So there’s some good Missouri dirt in this painting.
(Laughter.)
19:34 Scott County
MS. GLINES: And here’s another one, south, Scott County. You want to point to that one Billyo.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes. Right there.
MS. GLINES: You’ll see there’s a great story attached to this one.
MR. O’DONNELL: Surely many -- have many of you ever been down to the Sikeston area to buy produce?
(No response.)
MR. O’DONNELL: What a great place to buy produce. I mean, it’s just absolutely amazing. This gentleman, Pete O’Neil, just really took a liking to me. And he was tickled to death that someone would take the time to paint his watermelon stand.
So what he -- so he told me -- you know, and I -- and I would visit with these people and the whole concept of this idea was actually to paint on location and meet people across the state.
And Pete would tell me stories about when his family came over from Kentucky, how they would bring these heirloom seeds over. And the soil was so rich in Missouri that when they -- when they planted the -- when they first planted these watermelons the vines would be so thick and the melons would be so thick that they would actually be able to walk across a field without stepping on the ground.
So it was just -- it was just really amazing to hear those stories. The other funny little story I tell about Pete; he was really kind to me and -- and beautiful area down there. Whenever I went down Pete O’Neil would give me -- would always give me several melons. I would always buy one, but he would always give me, like, four or five of them. He’s just a wonderful guy.
Good. Here.
21:01 Osage County
MS. GLINES: Okay. And the next one is Osage County. This is Bonnots Mill. At the top is the confluence of the Osage and the Missouri River. And if you go up that hill and make a 180 you can see your beautiful Jefferson City.
This is one of the very first paintings Billyo told me about. He enjoyed it so much. The -- he said he went to the top of the hill, painted the town. And I couldn’t wait to go and see it myself. And when I was there, there’s a quaint town on -- you know, about eight buildings perhaps. And I ate -- had eaten in the café.
Darling little girl came by, took my order and she started sharing some of her stories with me. And it was just before Thanksgiving and those of you who enjoy writing when it’s in here you’ve got to get it out. I came home, wrote a short story about this little girl and how she was so happy in her town of Bonnots Mill and how I had spent years driving my sons around making sure they had fun. And the St. Louis Post Dispatch put it in their paper on Thanksgiving Day and so I felt like I was really inspired by Bonnots Mill and the beauty in -- in that town.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yeah. Oh, this is Karen riding a horse.
(Laughter.)
22:16 Schuyler County
MS. GLINES: This is. This is to show you that I didn’t always just research. I did go up to Schuyler County, got to know the owner of the Schuyler County Times. As matter of fact, it was Christmas time and she had some space in her newspaper and she said, Karen, you know, I just -- I don’t know what I’m going to do about this space. And I said, well, would you like me to write something and she said, well, that’d be great. So I came up with an idea and I was able to write in the Schuyler County Times. And I stayed overnight in the -- the back area is what they call their hunting lodge and I was -- and Billyo is going to now say that I was only on the horse for about five minutes --
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: -- which is probably true.
MR. O’DONNELL: That -- that horse looks a little scared to me.
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: But -- but, again, as we’re having an opportunity to meet so many of you tonight I can’t emphasize enough how we’ve met people across our state and how excited we are about that.
And this is what Billyo painted. There are sheep everywhere in Schuyler County. And you’ll notice now, as you can see with the paint, one of the things that impressed me when I first met Billyo and got to see his artwork, is the thickness of his paint and you can see the strokes on this painting so clearly.
And while we were doing a book signing in Schuyler County the next picture will show how the lady on the left and the gentleman and the young girl. Those are the people that own the sheep farm that he painted. So it was really -- the story just keeps unraveling as we travel across the state.
23:46 Dade County, Greenfield Opera House
And this is one of, I think, not only Billyo’s favorite story, but all of ours when we hear it over again. The Greenfield Opera House; if we can go back for a minute to the -- to the other one, the picture. If not, if -- it’s okay if we can’t head back.
I want you to just look at the top. How you can see the writing and this -- after hearing about it, I wanted to go and take the picture so that you could see it vividly. This is still in use. And it’s -- it’s a very -- well, I was there on a weekend, quite an empty town actually. But this building is extremely historical. And Billyo found -- found that out the day he visited.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
When I visit a county I look at the historical places. I looked at all the architecture. I look at the -- what the people did to maybe influence an area up in those -- in -- wherever I was at and I also looked at the natural features of the land.
But this opera house really caught my attention. This opera house is really spectacular. And you can see the little -- the little -- the -- the little red faces up on the -- thank you. Thank you, Dan. Those little red faces, those are little feeder faces.
And this building is huge. When I -- and I’ve been all over this county and I looked at a lot of things and this opera house I kept coming back to. And I pulled up and parked right in front of this and there was a gentleman sitting and I kind of painted somebody in right there. But there was a gentleman sitting there who just kind of gave me a rough time.
I pulled up and I was standing there looking at the opera house and he just -- he’s just a real Missourian. He goes, what are you looking at?
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: And I’m like, well, I’m looking at this opera house. He’s like, what’s it to you? You know, and I just ignored the guy. But I told the guy I was really impressed with the building. Turns out he owned the building.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: And he says -- he says, want to see it? And I said, sure. So he takes me inside this building. He took me all over inside this building. And the first part that he takes me up, he takes me in the back part. And I could -- he showed me where all the Vaudeville acts had came through and they would sign their names on the back wall back there. And I remember a date of ’89, I believe it was, on one of the -- one of the signatures there.
And he got real emotional about that, when he talked about it because there’s no more Vaudeville Acts. And -- but then he also took me in the big room where the stage was. And he told me how many of the high school graduations, when people would graduate, they would come across the stage, get their diploma and when they walked to the other side they would actually write their name on the wall and their date.
And they’d actually done some new work to the -- to the building and they covered up some of those old high school signatures on the wall from years and years ago. And he got very emotional about that. But then he started talking about the Orphan Train.
In about 1919, if I have my date correct, and how kids were given away on the stage there. And many of them were absorbed into the county in that area and it was -- and that was really emotional for him and then not only that, but I decide to paint this and I go down and I set up caddy corner from it and the drug store is right behind me.
And while I’m standing there painting, he’s introducing me to all these families that are members of the Orphan Train. And they’re telling me all these sad stories about how the one sister didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to her brother and he was taken away and she stayed there.
How -- how another family member wanted nothing to do with her family back in New York, she didn’t want to contact them at all. She made her kids swear that they would not contact them while she was alive.
And -- but just all these -- all these very touching stories. And real people behind the stories. So while I’m standing there painting these kids came up and they were watching me paint and I told these kids -- because a lot of times archi- -- if you paint just architecture it looks a little cold. And I asked the kids, I said, why don’t you go stand by that light pole? And they literally ran across the street because there’s no traffic in this town.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: And they -- and they stood there by the pole and I painted them in and they just kind of disappeared and -- but it -- they -- and I didn’t do this on purpose, but they actually look like a bunch of orphans standing on the corner that someone had told me earlier. And so it kind of got to me a little bit later.
MS. GLINES: Then he got emotional.
MR. O’DONNELL: No. We’re not going to talk about that.
(Laughter.)
28:11 Greene County, Wilson Creek Battlefield
MS. GLINES: And this is just to let you know that although we didn’t travel together we visited different places. And this is Greene County, Wilson Creek Battlefield. Billyo will show you where it is.
28:22 Newton County, George Washington Carver Homestead
The next one is Newton County, George Washington Carver Statue and the homestead, a beautiful place to visit. When the book was released last year we were on the NBC affiliate in St. Louis and that’s when gas was really getting up there. And they kept saying what a great place to visit our own state. There are so many things that we don’t know that we have, you know, and how the book is able to show us some of these items and events that we have here.
28:49 Linn County, Marceline
This is in Linn County, Marceline, the Dreaming Tree. This is the area that Walt Disney would visit as he -- as a grown man. And Billyo will share the story of the little boy, Walt Disney.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
The -- this is the place where Disney was -- spent his boyhood years. But this is the tree that he claimed was very, very special to him. That he got the whole idea of the characters and the insects becoming characters. And this tree was real special to Walt Disney. Anybody that works for Walt Disney knows about this tree.
Whenever Walt Disney traveled across the country he would spend time under this tree. He would meditate two or three hours under this tree. This tree was a special place for him.
I got permission to camp out there. And being an artist, every artist at one time or another when they’re young, they want to -- they want to be an artist for Disney -- you know, they dream of being a Disney animator. I camped out there with a friend of mine and it -- and it seemed like as though in the morning when I woke up every song bird from miles around had flown in and was in -- they were in the trees there. And I’m not kidding -- it just seemed like a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah day when I got up.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: And I just woke up and I started painting. And so you can actually see the morning light hitting this tree. The light has changed because when I’m working, I’m focused and I don’t have time to shoot a photo, but I stepped back and shot a photo of this later on.
In the distance is the barn that’s very, very famous. Everybody -- a lot of people who know Disney know this story, but this was the important place that he said he learned one of his important lessons. His -- he put together this little circus. And I think he had, like, a duck with a dress on it, a goat and a chicken. I don’t know. It was three animals. And there might have even been a cat.
And his mother heard all this. And he charged all these kids ten cents a piece. And the mother heard all this commotion and she went out there to see what was going on and she found out what happened and she told --
MR. O’DONNELL: -- all the money back to the kids. And she said whenever you do something make sure you give people their monies worth so …
MS. GLINES: And also the -- one of the streets in town is the street that’s used as Main Street in all of the -- the Disney World, Disney Land in the United States. It’s modeled after their street.
31:10 Shannon County
And this is Shannon County. This is another one of my most very favorite places to go in our state. The confluence of the Jacks Fork and the Current River it is right, you’ll see the wild horses. This is part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.
Very important to remember that it was President Johnson back in ’64 signed a bill to -- this is our largest national state park in Missouri. And then soon -- well, 30 years later President Clinton signed the bill in ’96 so that the wild horses that were released during the Depression when people could not afford to feed them that they could roam freely on this land.
Some of them had been hurt and damaged and people wanted them to be secure. After I had researched and found out about the wild horses I -- being from Missouri, I had -- you know, you have to “Show Me” I wanted to see them. So I went out looking for the horses, couldn’t find them and saw somebody in a truck at a stop sign, hopped out of the car and asked if he had seen the wild horses that day. And he gave those, kind of, small town directions, go by the tree and a left by the stump and I followed the directions and sure enough, there they were. And this is the picture I took that day.
And there is an 800 number that you can call in the morning and they will tell you where they believe that the horses are roaming that day. They’re about two or three bands that are left in Missouri. And they’re beautiful animals to see.
And this is Billyo’s painting of Shannon County.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
It looks like this wonderful quiet morning and it was. I had camped out the night before down the stream, came up, did this painting. It’s in February. A deer swam across the river that morning. And it was just -- just a really beautiful tranquil moment.
The -- the big part of the story, I told a friend of mine that I was going down here to paint and he’s part of this men’s club so they -- all the men’s club, they do this camp out every January and they always look for a location. So they all came down and they set up a tent that was about half the size of this room. They had a wood stove in it. They had cots in it. They had a gambling table.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: I mean it was like something out of the Old West, you know. And they were in there gambling and drinking and they actually brought one of those great big cow watering troughs. And plopped it down in the sand, but before they did they dug a big hole and they put a burner underneath, a propane tank burner and they lit it and they pumped water out of the river into this watering trough and had a hot tub going all night.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: So it -- it looked -- so the next morning it was -- I needed that tranquilness after that, so …
MS. GLINES: That’s another reason why we never travel together.
(Laughter.)
34:01 Laclede County, Bennett Spring State Park
MS. GLINES: This is Laclede County, Bennett Spring, fly fishing. I really was trying to learn fly fishing before Painting Missouri started.
And just this past weekend I had a chance to go back to Bennett Spring and pick up the rod and try to cast a little bit and see if I felt -- felt the same sensation I did eight years ago.
And on the next slide you’ll see Billyo’s painting of Bennett Spring State Park, beautiful, beautiful spot to be in.
I don’t know if any of you saw it, but Springfield did -- about three weeks ago they did a cover story on Painting Missouri from Bennett Spring. And it’s -- it’s actually on our website, right now, and you can click it. And it’s a three minute spot and it’s become my favorite so far because it’s done very artistically. And the videographer and the producer showed Billyo’s painting and then he quickly focused over to the people painting. I think you’ll enjoy it if you have a chance to see that.
35:05 Nodaway County, Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration
And this is Nodaway County, way up in northern Missouri on the border of Iowa. When I was doing some traveling a long time ago when the project first started, I saw this beautiful building in the distance and found out that it’s the Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration. I really wasn’t very frightened to get to know people. I entered the door and talked to some of the sisters there.
Soon got to know what they were about. And you’ll see the next slide shows the beautiful land in northern Missouri. We -- Billyo and I talk about this a bit. That the -- there the skies just seem to be extra beautiful in this part of our -- our state. And there’s his painting.
MR. O’DONNELL: The -- the hills up in that area are absolutely beautiful. They have a rhythm and flow to them that are -- that’s very, very special for Missouri. I really like that area up in there. As you can see I kept my distance from the nuns.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: I -- I had -- I’ve got memories from preschool religion.
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: But the -- but the story gets -- gets even better because I went ahead and did a presentation there in January and all the sisters kept talking about Billyo. And I said, well, yeah, I kind of wanted to check it out first. So I said, ”Billyo I think they really want to meet you.” So he came. And by the time he left they were arguing about that it was so and so sister’s favorite artist. And then another sister said, no, he’s my favorite artist. So I was, kind of, having to be a referee. And I don’t think he really fears the sisters anymore.
MR. O’DONNELL: No. No, I don’t. Actually we went up, we had a wonderful time. We got to listen to them chant and we ate with them and -- and this landscape has really changed. They put in 300 foot tower windmills. So this landscape is no longer like that. There’s several of them up there.
And they’re -- and when I pulled up it was -- it was a very, very misty day that you could only see a few hundred feet in front of you and to -- as the mist rose to see the size of those or the scale of those, it was really amazing. It’s the windiest area in the state of Missouri, I believe.
MS. GLINES: And that’s another thing, Billyo, thank you for pointing that out, because even though the University of Missouri Press asked us not to write about anything that was going to change. So many things have changed just since the book has come out or since Billyo has painted the paintings and this is one example and you’ll see some others and then, of course, the tornado. But we’ll share some of those other instances as we go on.
37:36 Ralls County Courthouse
This is the only -- and let’s see, maybe CeCe could you hold up one of the books. This is the only courthouse Billyo painted. It’s on the back of the book. And it’s in Ralls County. They had talked about demolishing the courthouse and one gentleman by the name of Ron Leake worked very hard, gathered together the community to save the courthouse.
And when Billyo went to Ralls County to determine what to paint he, Ron, took Billyo around that day to see what was -- what was going to be the subject matter.
MR. O’DONNELL: I learned real quick not to tell people what I was doing because when I told him what I was doing, Ron, did this to me, he took me to his grandmother’s and grandfather’s farm on one side. Then took me to his grandparent’s farm on the other side, took me to the church, took me to everywhere -- everything that had anything to do with his family. I didn’t get anything done that day. So I’ve learned to kind of button my lips when I was doing this.
MS. GLINES: We did a signing last summer in the courthouse and that was really fun. And on the same journey, the next slide, you’ll see this church, the St. Peter’s Brush Creek Church. This couple in front maintain the land, this is the church where the first African American priest who had to be ordained in Rome. He was the son of slaves. This is where he was baptized. They now have two services a year in this humble little church.
And when I spoke to the -- the lady and the gentleman, they shared with me that when he’s doing the landscaping and the yard work that they can hear the slaves singing their spirituals. And when they were sharing that story with me, I immediately shared with them my feeling about the Trail of Tears spot with the Cherokee.
And Billyo wanted to mention something about that courthouse, the front of it.
MR. O’DONNELL: It’s been recreated in two world fairs.
MS. GLINES: It’s a very special front.
MR. O’DONNELL: That’s a very special courthouse.
MS. GLINES: Notice on the far right, you can’t see it too well on the screen, but there are crosses, humble crosses where the slaves are buried. On this side, you see the more ornate tombstones. And the next slide gives you a closer look of -- of where the slaves are buried.
So these are just beautiful things that we’re learning as we move on with the project. And when we first started giving presentations, we didn’t have these pictures. And I said, Billyo, we need to have pictures because, first of all, a lot of people don’t know what a plein air painting is and, secondly, I don’t think they would really understand the kind of weather you paint in.
40:09 Jasper County
And so you can see this. This was a very cold day. And notice how the GPS --
MR. O’DONNELL: How the -- how the snow is melted there.
This is kind of neat. I got this little GPS unit in here, but I actually kept the GPS coordinates. They’re on the backs of every painting in the exhibit. We keep saying we’re going -- I need to make sure we get this done, but I -- we need to put the GPS coordinates on the website so people can print them off because a lot of people want to know where specifically some of these paintings are done.
And this is -- this is, of course, after the painting is done. I -- this is one of those rare lighting conditions. I’ve only seen this a few times in Missouri where you’ll get this violet feel to the landscape when a certain lighting condition happens.
And these yellow -- these hay bales with the gold quality to them really brought out that -- that violet quality in the landscape. So it’s -- so this is a small painting, but you get to see a little bit of how I set up and how I do this.
: Text
MS. GLINES: And the next one is Cass County. And remember when I was mentioning before the change in history since the book has come out and this is another one of those examples.
MR. O’DONNELL: Yes.
This is -- Karen couldn’t write about anything that was not going to be around. And for me that didn’t apply. And this equine center, this beautiful -- in Cass County they are famous for their horses and mules. And this place caught my attention. I painted it and it turned out, a big truck, there was a lot of activity, people were moving things up at the other end there by the barn, when the truck was pulling away they stopped and told me I was catching this place on it’s last day of operation.
So they had subdivisions on each side of them. And some developer offered them a chunk of money that they couldn’t turn down. So they were shutting down operations after a number of years, I’m not sure exactly how many.
42:05 Mississippi County
MS. GLINES: This is Mississippi County. This is quite -- quite an event, a tourist attraction, in the spring time the Azalea Festival. This is also the county where there was the Battle of Belmont. And there was the huge chain that went across the river on to Kentucky and there’s a segment or there has been a segment of -- in their museum in Mississippi County.
And Billyo will tell you about this event I mentioned it occurs every spring.
MR. O’DONNELL: The Dogwood Azalea Festival in Charleston, Missouri, is really special. This community has been working on this festival for a long time. To get azaleas this big takes a long period of time, the -- so the community is really very, very excited about this whole festival and it’s really been getting a lot of attention lately.
They’ll take the two-way streets and paint huge pink arrows, one-way arrows down the center of the street. So they actually have a loop that drives through the town. That you drive through this loop on. And about -- when the -- and when the festival is in its peak probably about 80 buses a day come through that area down there. So I highly recommend that this -- this festival down there.
This community is just -- I went down there several times and painted. And they just -- they put a lot of work into this. There was a truck -- there was somebody moving that day and instead of being in the center of the road they were off to the shoulder a little bit. And they -- when they were driving by they were hitting these dogwood branches and I could see these blossoms coming down after the guy passed by like snow. And this idyllic little town, this community these people were out raking and cutting hedges and stuff all of a sudden start raising these things up and yelling at this guy. And this guy was completely oblivious and didn’t notice.
MS. GLINES: People make reservations for this a year in advance to be able to see the festival.
44:02 Christian County
And the next slide you’ll see Billyo’s painting of Mississippi County. And here we have some more cold. This is a very cold day. Christian County, which is south, very south and the building has quite a history to it.
MR. O’DONNELL: You don’t see many gas stations like that anymore. This reminded me a lot of the gas stations when I was a kid. This building had been moved three times in the crossroads area.
I don’t think it’s going to move again. But it was one of those bitter cold days when the wind was blowing and one of these wonderful Ozark people saw me out there painting. This gentleman who seemed a little frail and he -- actually, the wind was blowing so hard it looked liked it scooted him across the ice.
But he got over to me. He -- the first thing he said to me was, “Don’t you think it’s kind of cold to be doing this?”
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: I said,”If you’re going to paint snow you’re going to get cold.” And he broke into this just infectious Ozark laughter that was just beautiful.
MS. GLINES: And on the picture before, and you don’t have to go back to it, Dan. But there was the -- did you see the phones on the car, another thing that we’re not seeing very much of anymore on the left. And then on the actual painting several people have brought to our attention the satellite dish. You’ll see it on the painting.
Let’s see, we go to the next one. There it is. So Billyo painted the satellite dish in here.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: When you’re going to paint your place in time there’s little giveaway signals of things you put in there.
45:32 Caldwell County
MS. GLINES: Here’s a really cold day. Caldwell County; do you remember what month this was, Billyo?
MR. O’DONNELL: I think the coldest one.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: Caldwell? There it is.
The -- I don’t know if you can see, but there’s frost on my mask that I have on. I actually camped out the night before. And it was so cold, it was amazing. And my friend Ron Engelmann had this brand new four-wheel drive and we drove through, like, these 2 foot high, 3 foot high drifts of snow. We just plowed through them.
We thought we were so special. We thought we were out in an area that no one could ever get to. And we were just bragging about that to each other. No one else had driven down the road and -- and it was getting late in the evening. And sure enough after we finished talking about this we see this great big boat of a car come over the hill and it had a pizza delivery sign on it.
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: And the young lady pulls up and rolls down the window and she’s like, what are you-all doing? What’s going on? And we just -- we just broke into laughter.
MS. GLINES: So much for feeling special.
(Laughter.)
46:41 Cape Girardeau County
MS. GLINES: And here’s Cape Girardeau County. This -- we -- I did it in four different shots so that you could -- could just have a feel for that particular day. It was -- Billyo had been camping out quite a bit before he came to this county.
MR. O’DONNELL: When I did this project there was no funding. So I couldn’t afford to stay at motels. So I would actually go and camp out, sleep in my van -- you know, I’d find roadside parks and I’d bring little camp stoves along and make things.
A friend of mine traveled with me for a week from Florida. He came up and traveled with me -- around with me and camped out. And he told me -- ‘cause I’d go to these little roadside parks and make coffee and that. And he told me, now, I know what the Grapes of Wrath were like, so …
But this -- this was one of those where I had been painting for a long time and camping and I was hungry and I was cold and the light on this building was perfect. And I was looking for excuses to go home. It was one of those moments where I realized what I was doing to myself and I remember a great quote by an artist that the best time to create is when you don’t want to. And that’s -- that was -- this painting just flowed off the brush. I’ll never forget that.
47:59 New Madrid County
MS. GLINES: Okay. I know time is getting short, so we’ll move on here. Here’s New Madrid. It was a warm, warm summery day down in the boot heel again.
48:08 Ste. Genevieve County, Mammy Shaw House
And the next one is Ste. Genevieve, the Mammy Shaw House. Being that both of us are on the board of the St. Louis Artists Guild, we’ve learned and known over the years that this was summer art home for many of the artists from the St. Louis Artists Guild. And it’s a beautiful painting, snowy day. Again, notice the thick, thick paint on Billyo’s painting.
48:30 St. Charles County
And here’s St. Charles County. This is where Billyo’s studio and where he does -- he gives classes at the Foundry Art Center. And this is painted from the St. Louis side to the St. Charles side.
MR. O’DONNELL: I cheated.
MS. GLINES: And I don’t think he’d mind my sharing with you, right now, that he is going to be moving his studio back to his log cabin, since he said, he just wasn’t getting enough painting done. So those of us, like Sally, who have been there, are really kind of excited about that concept.
MR. O’DONNELL: But the studio will still stand. I’ll still have a studio.
MS. GLINES: Yes. He is at the Foundry.
MR. O’DONNELL: Um-huh.
MS. GLINES: And here we have -- when -- when the exhibit was at the Mercantile Library, news started to get out and Kansas City Public Library heard about the exhibit. The gentleman on the right is Henry Fortunato and Margaret Clark is the lady and then Billyo and I. And they came last summer to look at the exhibit into St. Louis to see about the viability of it traveling to Kansas City.
49:26 Jackson County, Kansas City
And they just kept shaking their head wondering if it could be done. And on the next slide you’ll see how -- I’ll go back to the exhibit in a minute, but I wanted you to see that Billyo did paint Jackson County, again, in the cold. And the painting is on the next slide. And Billyo you chose this because …
MR. O’DONNELL: I chose this because here in Kansas City in this -- in this -- just the center of the country we’ve got this beautiful place that looks like it’s right out of Europe.
These Spanish style buildings. These sculptures were actually bought from a big villa in France and brought over. To me, there’s just something really special about this area in Kansas City and how we just pay homage to that -- to those wonderful cultural places in Europe.
That was a cold day. Go ahead.
50:18 Kansas City Public Library Exhibit
MS. GLINES: Um-huh. And here’s -- back to the Kansas City Public Library. It ended up happening. And the paintings traveled across our state to the Kansas City Public Library. I got a phone call one day from Margaret Clark who said, “Karen, what color do you and Billyo want the walls?”
I called Billyo and I said, “Billyo, has everybody ever asked you; they want to do Williamsburg green?” He says, “Karen, no one’s ever asked me what color I wanted the walls painted.”
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: So you can see there was -- what they’re calling the green room. They revolved all of their programs this winter around Painting Missouri. There were artists and poets and musicians from Missouri. They had talks on hiking and camping in Missouri.
And what they’ve told us is they are going to try from now on to have Missouri artists in the quote, “green room.” That you can see. And then the other room at the top is called the gallery. And there we are giving a presentation and this was the night of the opening. And if you look really hard at the bottom that reporter is interviewing one of the sisters from Nodaway County. Five of them came that night for the -- for the program and they don’t really get out very much. So we were very, very surprised to see that.
51:30 Student Workshops and Demonstrations with Billyo
And while we were in Kansas City, Billyo likes to do a couple events with students each year and so these students came from Kearney, Missouri. And they did a workshop actually on the streets of Kansas City. And so you can see Billyo working and talking to them on the top left.
I was most impressed when they got off their -- their bus and they’re walking up the sidewalks with all these easels and, you know, people are kind of stopping their cars wondering what’s going on. And there they’re setting up. In the far right, one of the most exciting things about this library in Kansas City is that, I know that you can’t see it too well with this picture, but those are all -- that’s their parking garage. And they’re -- they look like books standing upright.
So I told Billyo the other day, I don’t think those -- those high school students will ever forget the morning that they got to paint with him.
This was another event that Sally Sprague arranged for Billyo to come and do a demonstration at Barstow School in Cali -- Kansas City. Thanks to Sally. And I think they also thoroughly enjoyed that experience.
52:39 Behind the Scenes
And this is just a little bit of behind the scenes to let you know that, yes, we’re giving presentations. Yes, we worked hard for seven years writing and researching and painting, but the picture on the left was recently up at -- actually, down in Taney County, Bonnybrook Farm, which is the home of Rose O’Neill.
And Billyo couldn’t be there that day, but you probably; those of you from Columbia know that that’s the mascot of Columbia High School, the Kewpie.
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: And it just doesn’t seem to end, because I’m always working really hard with the media to try to get the message out about Painting Missouri. And all of you -- I want all of you to really try really, really hard to send good karma our way because I’ve been working for -- really hard for a long time to get this story on Charles Osgood’s Sunday Morning. I don’t know how many of you love his show, but I watch it regularly.
And just a quick story, last week, I called; I now know his assistant’s phone number and when I called somebody picked up the phone and said, “Osgood.”
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: And I -- I was very respectful, I said, “Could I speak to Charles’ assistant?” And I did and I asked her if she had received my most recent packet and she said she had. And then I ended up my conservation with, “Oh, by the way, was that Charles?” And she said, “Yes, it was.” Well, you know, I just didn’t want to disrupt his day, but he’s one of my favorite journalists.
So if ever you have time and you want to write a little note to Charles about Painting Missouri.
(Laughter.)
MS. GLINES: We would really appreciate it because there’s a chance that you never know something like that could happen. And, also, behind the scenes you’ll see Billyo erecting the boxes that the paintings travel in.
And there he is in Kansas City helping the people take them to the galleries to be hung. So this is definitely a grass roots project. We don’t have a big office with lots of people helping us.
54:47 Buchanan County, Museum Hill Bed and Breakfast
Here’s Buchanan County. The Museum Hill Bed & Breakfast, another one of those spiritual moments. After we were visiting the sisters and on our way to Kansas City we were going to stay in the bed & breakfast. And Billyo got out of his car that night and he said, “Oh, Karen, you surprised me.” And I said, “Billyo, what are you talking about?” And we were staying in the second to the left building up there. And he said this is what I painted for Buchanan County.
And so then the couple that owned that bed & breakfast had us do an evening and a morning presentation, like, we’re giving to you now. And we got to know them and it was a very nice event and nice to meet them as well.
AUDIENCE: Was that just a coincidence?
MS. GLINES: Coincidence.
AUDIENCE: Wow.
MS. GLINES: Pure coincidence. Yes.
55:33 Holt County, Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge
Here’s Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge up in Holt County. And the next one is their muskrat huts that we saw during the winter. And there’s Billyo’s painting. And the next one you’ll see a very cold --
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: It got down to 5 degrees, I think, below 0 that night. My friend Ronnie that shot this picture when we were -- we were just getting everything set up. We -- we went to bed that night, his camera actually was -- his digital camera was ruined the next day.
MS. GLINES: And didn’t your tent blow away?
MR. O’DONNELL: The tent -- yeah, the tent actually it’s windy in those river valleys and the tent actually picked up and took off and I had to run after it --
(Laughter.)
MR. O’DONNELL: -- out on the ice there and catch it.
MS. GLINES: And here we are making new friends. They were painting a sunset.
56:24 Boone County
The next one is Boone County pictures so that you can all see that. You know that -- where that is. And then the next one -- in this Kathy and Kit are standing and sitting right over there and -- you know, we’ve -- we know you’re very involved with Boone County Historical Society. This is now where all of the paintings are being shown until August 23rd.
And this is a thank you to the people that were very instrumental in getting the event there.
And the next one is a thank you to all of you and to Emily as well for having us come to your beautiful auditorium. This is a great facility. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
MR. O’DONNELL: Thank you.