Last week’s column was pretty much a downer emotionally, so here’s an attempt at something lighter. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the old Centralia City Hall, before it was remodeled and what it lacked in accessibility and a logical and convenient layout. There was no direct pathway from the sidewalk to the public meeting room where all of the commission meetings were held. Anyone who wanted to see what “those old crooks” were up to had to wend their way around several desks and then through the only available pathway before reaching the room.
That path led right through the office of the mayor — my office for four years!
I’m not making this up. There was no possible privacy, and I soon discovered that pens or pencils lying on my desk became tempting souvenirs of city government at work. The only thing I could think of to make it look more like an office — instead of a thoroughfare — was to hang a large, attention-grabbing painting on the wall opposite my desk and that’s the real subject of this little story.
Back in the late 1960s, when I was still attending Centralia College in addition to my 44 hour work week at KELA, the college put on what was called a MAD Festival each spring — the letters representing “music, art and drama.” And in the few years the event was held, Kenneth (or “Kenny”) Kimball was head of the music department, Bob Bauer led the art division and Phillip Wickstrom was in charge of all drama events. Performances in each category filled the days and evenings for one unforgettable week.
One event was an auction and I still use, daily, a ceramic covered butter dish I purchased at one of them. At another auction I was the highest bidder on a painting by Mr. Bauer himself and that painting is, really, the main subject of this column. It was large — as I remember it was about 3 feet wide and 4 feet tall — and, while it was somewhat abstract, it featured what were identifiable as three somewhat overweight ladies in bathing suits. The colors were not muted in any way and the figures were not precise — but to me it had charm.
I hung that picture on the wall opposite my desk and for the four years I occupied that “office” I chuckled at the response it almost always received. It was called garish, it was called bad art, it was labeled obscene. It was judged as everything except the quality I saw in it — charming. And it stayed there until my four years were up. But there’s one more item to this story.
Years later, there was a sort of re-dedication of another piece of work Mr. Bauer had created earlier. It was in the form of a large mural, composed of nails of different sizes, hundreds of them — perhaps thousands — on a wall of a campus building. That building is now called the Transitional Services Building and the mural still graces that wall — maybe you’ve seen it? After the ceremonial activities were over, I was chatting with Bob’s son, Roger, and, after I mentioned that I once had that picture painted by his father, he confided that it had been his favorite painting of his dad’s.
So, to all of you Centralia citizens who passed through my office on your way to a meeting and claimed that the picture on my wall should have been burned, I can only say “that’s a fat lot of nothing you know about art, mister. Or ma’am.” And as they say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder!” I’m sorry that a gross lack of observation on my part caused me to lose possession of that painting, but that’s another long story.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
