T. Scot Halpin no longer walks this Earth, but his spirit lives on in the form of a magnificent body of artwork and music he left with this world. Scot and I were always collaborative partners, and so it is no surprise to me to be still feeling the collaborative spark. T. Scot is the name Scot assumed when we started selling his work at top juried art fairs across the country. This was in the early 1990's, and Scot was also doing a lot a magazine illustration. He liked the idea of having two identities: Scot Halpin for his editorial illustrator self and T. Scot for his fine art graphics self. Philosopher's Heart came about after Scot passed. We had used the language "With a philosopher's heart…" on our blurb, pretty much from the beginning. I was looking for something that captured Scot's unique--philosophically emotional--graphic sensibility. One day I was looking at the back of a piece of artwork, which had this blurb on it, and the words just jumped out and Philosopher's Heart was born. Both are nationally registered trademarks.
Scot didn't much like school. In his junior year of high school, he went to the principal and told him that he didn't plan on going to college, and so wanted to be allowed to take all art classes. I guess the principal took a good look at Scot, didn't see a potential college student there and signed off on the idea. So for two years, Scot worked under the direct tutelege of his teacher, friend and mentor, one Skip Hartzel; who today probably has no idea how great an influence on Scot he was. Scot moved out to California in the early seventies.
He bummed around for a while, but eventually settled in Monterey, where he spent a year working on a series of large-scale acrylic paintings. Despite his principal's estimation, Scot enrolled in San Francisco City College in 1975. He made fast friends with all his new instructors, who adopted him as their pet. They gave him the run of the department and tons of free art supplies, which suited him greatly. They'd all get together on the weekends, drink wine and play jazz music.
A couple years later, Scot decided to pursue a degree in art education, and so he enrolled in San Francisco State University. The art education degree rubric allowed Scot to take art classes in multiple media. He graduated from SF State in 1980, with a B.A in Art Education and a California teaching credential. We took off and did some travelling for a few years, but in 1983, he entered the Masters of Interdisciplinary Art program, once again at SF State University. Francis Ford Coppolla's brother, Nicholas, had just been named Dean of the School of Creative Arts. Under his direction, SF State got put on the map as a creative laboratory. Scot got his Master's of Interdisciplinary Arts in 1986. I guess that principal was wrong, but having the freedom to do things the way he wanted, when he wanted, was the only way it would have worked out anyhow.
In the late 1980's, we got the idea to try selling some of Scot's artwork on the streets of San Francisco, were we lived. There was (and probably still is) a street fair in San Francisco every weekend, during the summer. We started there, but soon we were traveling down to L.A. and up to Portland and Seattle to do shows. Our little baby had just been born. James did his first art fair when he was six weeks old. We were next to a guy who made drums. By the end of the weekend, one got very weary of hearing bad drumming. However, James didn't complain a bit.
In the summer of 1994, we traveled from California to Iowa, where we spent the summer living on Scot's mom and dad's story book farm. From there, we did our first Midwest art fairs. These shows were very different from the ones on the West Coast. These shows turned out to be this really exciting art market place, and Scot and I saw the potential of possibly making some real money selling his art.
In May of 1995, we moved--sight unseen--to Bloomington, Indiana. On a map, we marked all the cities that had shows we wanted to do. We drew a circle around those dots, and then looked for the geographic mid-point, which turned out to be Indianapolis. We choose Bloomington instead; another storybook of a mid West college town, fifty miles to the south. When I think back, it's hard to imagine having the where with all to move somewhere you've never been, but I've never been sorry. We settled right in. Raised our kid. Worked like dogs for six months of the year, doing around fifteen art shows over the course of the late spring, all summer, and through early fall.
We then got to take six months every year to pursue whatever was of interest to us. Scot would come up with thirty to forty new images for the shows, plus his personal artwork and music. We got to know cities all over the country. We'd drive into town, set up our little booth, and then go to town. People loved Scot's work and bought it by the armload. Being part of the art fair world was fun-a real subculture. We met some wonderful people, who are now some of our best friends. There was always some one new to meet, another person who had carved out their own interesting way of living.
In total, between the West Coast street fairs and the Mid-west juried shows, we made our living exclusively from selling Scot's work for fifteen years. Toward the end, we had huge followings in all the cities we traveled to. We became friends with our customers. Everything we did was personal, and people responded in kind. In 2003, Scot learned he had a benign, but inoperable brain tumor and the demands of the art gypsy lifestyle became too much.
One story that stands out in Scot's life,happened way back in 1973, when he was a nineteen year old kid. This was back when Scot was living in Monterey. He planned to meet a friend in San Francisco to go to a Who concert at the Cow Palace. This was the opening night of The Who's quadraphenia tour. Keith Moon passed out and Scot ended up finishing the set with The Who. This event happened so long ago, one might wonder why this story is included here. Rolling Stone Magazine awarded him the "Pick-Up Player of the Year." What's interesting to me about this is that thirty-five years later, people still care about this story.
Scot used to like to make what he called, "art-in-a-minute." On the last series of paintings he did, he was simultaneously working on eight 30" square wood panels. He worked on these eight paintings for--maybe half an hour, and then he came upstairs and started complaining about how the paintings weren't working. My approach to painting is the opposite of Scot's. He used to call me "a dib-dabber!" I explained to him that he might just have to go back down and work a little more on those eight paintings. The final series is amazing, and seems especially so, maybe because it was his last-kind of like the Van Gogh's last painting with the crows flying over the wheat field.
Scot had an amazing line. He could (and would) draw with anything-pens, pencils, markers, sticks, charcoal briquettes; you name it. Scot's work almost always began with the line. In his younger days, that would usually mean pen and ink or conte crayon-classic training media. He got hooked on the mystique of intaglio printmaking early on--a graphic medium for making fine art multiples. What could be more in keeping with the philosophy of art-in-a-minute?
One of Scot's favorite mediums was the pen and ink drawing, over which he would lay a series of acrylic washes. He would buy thick pads of Bristol board and work through them one by one. The washes for these drawings would also be done in series. He'd lie out three or four of these drawings and use the same washes on each piece, making the drawings a de facto series.
In the mid 1990's, Scot got bit by the digital bug. His mom gave him her old Apple computer. He took it, basically as a favor to her, not because he particularly wanted it. It was a total surprise to him how much and how quickly he came to love the tidy world of infinite possibilities wrapped up in that little box. Scot could create line work directly into the computer via a digital drawing pad, but ultimately, he preferred importing graphic elements, be it drawing or etching, and beginning the digitization process there.
For the last four and a half years, Scot made ballpoint pen drawings on typing paper-by the ream. These drawings tapped the deepest and most personal reservoir of his highly populated creative pool. The ballpoint pen could keep up with his line. He would have a friend scan these drawings that could do bulk scanning, and then, into the newly made digital file he would go. Talk about art-in-a-minute! Each series began to have variations on its variations. Scot favorite techniques were all simple and direct-and were all finely honed over years of daily practice.
To cite all Scot's influences would probably fall into the category of too much information. He was a huge creative sponge. He was always on the lookout for influencing forces. In spite of that, I would have to say, my pick of Scot's top three fine art influences would have to be:
1) Pablo Picasso-for his direct and automatic graphics and personal symbology
2) Paul Klee-for his intimate scale and alchemical philosophy and finally
3) Marc Chagall-for his romance and fluid storytelling.
Scot left us with an amazing art library. He loved books in general, but he had an out and out passion for art books. His idea of a good time would be to go over to the graduate art library, here at Indiana University, to look at all the recent international art periodicals and publications. Scot also had a huge love for editorial illustration. He did it professionally for ten years. Editorial illustrators as a second category of big time influences would probably read something like this:
1) Saul Steinberg-for his sensibility of line,
2) William Steig-for his sweet psychological snap shots of life and
3) Ralph Steadman-for his brilliant, insightful messiness.
I could have named David Hockney-for his dedicated inventiveness and technical research, Herb Block-for the unique history class of his work, Leonard Baskin-for the microscopic focus of his study, or any dozen others. The books would pile up beside his bed at night. Scot loved characters that acted on the page. His certainly did.
The resulting influence on Scot's style is very sweet and pure indeed, often reminding people of the artwork from children's classics like, The Little Prince, Madeline, or Where the Wild Things Are--also favorites of Scot's.
Scot was an artist who sought out community. No one was more helpful to others on the creative path, no one was more interested in hearing about other people's creative efforts, and no one had more creative solutions to offer--than Scot. And so it turns out that Scot, an artist who sought out influences and inspiration at every turn, ended influencing and inspiring people all along his way.