Tory Casey’s newest show, Community & Culture, opens on Friday, November 12, from 6 - 9 p.m. at the Eidson Gallery at the Foothills Arts Center.

Local beer, wine, and small bites will be served. 

Beginning Friday, November 12, until Saturday, December 18, the gallery will be open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 5 - 7 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

The holiday-themed Merry Makers Market will also be on display.

The following interview took place in Tory Casey’s studio on September 29, 2021, between artist Tory Casey and Sydney Sieviec, Assistant Director of the Foothills Arts Center. It has been edited for brevity.

When I step inside Tory Casey’s studio at the Foothills Arts Center, I’m greeted with an experience that fills the senses. The latest feature from NPR or the smooth sound of Black Pumas emanates from her radio. Vibrant acrylic canvases crowd the dark pine-clad walls as sunlight glitters through the slatted plantation shutters. The room smells faintly of acrylic paint and varnish. 

Everything about the studio is warm, not only due to its location on the outer corner of the building where the afternoon sun rests languidly as it makes its way over the horizon. No - the room is warm because of the artist who occupies the space, filling it with her quiet presence. 

 Tory pauses from her latest focus, paintbrush in hand, and asks how I’ve been. She listens - genuinely, in a way that makes me feel confident and heard and a little unnerved at the same time. People don’t often listen quite so attentively. And Tory is the type of intuitive person who understands exactly what I’m saying - or what I’m not. She is observant, a key trait for an artist. She invites me to sit, and we begin the interview. 

With a father active in the Air Force, Tory spent her formative years traveling around the globe. 

“I was born and raised in the military. My dad was in the Air Force, so every two or three years we picked up and moved. I was very lucky that I got to spend my life traveling. We lived in a lot of foreign places - it was exceptional. And because of that, I was exposed to an incredible amount of creativity and art and culture.” When asked whether she found the frequent relocation to be isolating, Tory laughed and responded, “I love isolation - so I loved it because I always felt like I was a fly on the wall. In that way, it opened up so many doors for me. I was observing and I really got to take a lot in, and I was inspired. We lived in so many interesting places, including in the States. I saw geography, and huge cultural [moments]. We lived in Alabama during George Wallace. We really saw a lot of things. I’m grateful for that experience.” 

“My parents were both creatives in their way, and they encouraged me. So I went through high school - and I wasn’t particularly interested in academics, but I loved my art classes and my art teacher saw that and encouraged me too. After high school, I went to a Kendall School of Design, a school that taught interior design and furniture design and illustration, and I had a real desire to be an illustrator. I think that’s where my narrative stuff comes from. I’m a storyteller, in the end.” 

But soon enough, Tory struck out on her own. “I just hit the ground running and started teaching myself, and from that point I became what I guess is a self-taught artist, though of course I knew a lot of artists and I took classes here and there in lots of different mediums, but it seems like the paints always came back to me, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years or so, maybe more.”

Eventually, Tory and her partner Joe Thrift settled in the foothills of North Carolina, where they built a log cabin. “I just kept painting, and we were close enough to Elkin that I would come into town. Rosy Beverley was the Director of the Arts Council and I talked to her, and she really encouraged me and she gave me my first show at the Foothills Arts Council. So I just kinda settled into this ritual of always finding time to paint and figuring out how to have shows.”

(Sydney) “Do you do a lot of reading? Where do you get the ideas for your narrative work?” 

(Tory) “I carry a notebook with me all the time and I spend a fair bit of time in the car. I will jot down notes. If you look behind you (pointing to a cork wall covered in a tidy assortment of papers) you can see that, or a little quick sketch of something that I have an idea about, and sometimes that turns into a painting and sometimes it doesn’t, but most of the time that’s how it happens. I get a few words and then an image pops into my head exactly as the painting turns out to be, and then I put that on canvas.”

(Sydney) “That’s amazing, to conceptualize it and put it on canvas.”

(Tory) “And sometimes it’s like I -- I don’t even have - uh, um, I might try to change something or alter something, and it just makes it a struggle.” 

(Sydney) “So interesting. It’s almost like you’re a medium.”

(Tory) “That’s very much like what it is, and when I’m painting it’s like I’ll sit down and lay out a few colors and all of a sudden a few hours have passed - I don’t know why, it’s an automatic response, but I really don’t try to control very much.”

Tory explains her subject matter as we take in her artwork. “Because Joe’s an old-time fiddler and because so much of my life has been his life, I’ve chosen, as one of my subjects, the lyrics and the experience of being in the old-time music communities, and I paint a lot of paintings from lyrics of old-time tunes. Usually they’re pretty dreary murder ballads and - and very often it’s women who get murdered, so for a while I had to struggle with that.” Chuckling, Tory asks, “Am I promoting misogyny here?”

“Living in Elkin has really provided me with lots of, um, -- so, here’s Elkin (pointing to Rise and Shine, Elkin!!), and I live in one of those houses, and every morning starting at four-o’clock the train flies through town, “Rise and shine!” So those things impact me. But also, I’m very concerned about politics, space junk, and churches that aren’t taxed, and some things that get close to the edge.”

(Sydney) “Your paintings that have political commentary - when you’ve [explored] that, have you experienced backlash or has that subject been well-received, generally?” 

(Tory) “You know, I was particularly worried about that Trump painting, because I made it intending to put it in a show that was made for me (Out of the Blue, a one-woman show on display in 2020 at the Yadkin Cultural Arts Center in Yadkinville, North Carolina). I spoke to Dan (Butner, current Director of the Foothills Arts Center). I said, you know, some people are telling me I shouldn’t put it in, because I had community members saying ‘don’t,’ and he said, ‘well, you need to do what you feel is the right thing to do,’ and of course I thought the right thing to do was to put the painting in there, and I did not receive but one bad response. I’m sure people ignored it and walked by it.”

(Sydney) “So, the birds eye view - how did you develop that perspective? Is that because of the [interest in] illustration?”

(Tory) “I did not develop it, it just came. And actually, that’s true of pretty much everything I do, I don’t really think any of it got ‘developed,’ I think it just showed up. I never intended to paint from a bird’s eye view, it’s just how I always… I dream a lot, about flying. It keeps - it keeps me distanced. I’m not in it, even though I am in it.”

When asked about the presence of crows in her paintings, Tory explained, “I paint a lot of crows and I think they represent a lot of things. For one thing, I think they represent community. Crows are very community-oriented and they’re also very curious and they’re very watchful. If I have a crow in a painting, it usually indicates some observation, something somebody either sees or - so like, the crows in the back windows there (glancing at Cold Studio)? I modeled at the School of the Arts for a while and that’s what that painting’s about - boy, it got cold in those studios. Very, very cold. It’s also curious as a nude model because of course you’re dealing with eighteen-year-olds, in most cases, so that was always interesting, but I went to art school myself, so I knew what that was like and how important it is. So important, and it has really made a difference in what I do, because I can draw a figure!”

 (Sydney) “You use a lot of line, heavy line, throughout your work, so not only is there this emphasis on primary colors and a lot of green as well, but I’m amazed with how much line work you have in your pieces. Is that, again, something you were drawn to?” 

(Tory) “It’s something that just happened for me, you know. I really didn’t intend for it to happen, but I have always started with a pencil drawing, and then I’ve outlined the pencil drawing in black paint, and I do fill the canvas with color, but I always go back and redefine that black line, so it remains there. It makes things, I think, ‘pop.’ We went to the Georgia O’Keeffe show (at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina). Really interesting show, and I was looking at the painting of the tree that she saw from her kitchen window, and the way her colors just bump up, and you still see some of the white canvas, you know? So different from what I do. I just found that so interesting. And then looking through the show itself, I noticed that there were lots of artists in that show who used a big black outline in their work. So yeah, I don’t understand where that came from, but it works for me.” 

(Sydney) “Are there any parts of the painting process that you find to be challenging?” 

(Tory) “I have had a very hard time through the pandemic. Those wonderful notes just haven’t been coming to me. I have not felt the spirit to get work. It has been a real struggle, and so making the commitment to having this show has been very good for me because it has made me realize that the work is not going to get done if I don’t get in there and give myself to it. And I hope also to include in the show some much older pieces from, you know, the turn of the century, just to show there’s a real consistency in what I do. 

(Sydney) “How did you choose the title for your show and what experience are you hoping people will have when they view it?”

(Tory) “I choose the title for the show because it just seemed appropriate. I paint about community, and I paint about culture. At the point where I asked to have a show, I didn’t have a lot of things…yet, so I didn’t know exactly where the show was going. I felt like that [Community & Culture] covered it. And I hope when people look at my paintings, that they’re absorbed. I hope there’s enough going on in my paintings - and there usually is - to keep people entertained for a while, and then I hope that once they’re past the entertainment phase, that they begin to look a little deeper and pay attention to the content or understand the response to the color or have some personal interaction.”