March 22, 2009 - A common phrase oft overheard in an art gallery or museum is, "It looks like my kid could do that."

Although that might be the first words uttered when visitors come to the very first piece in Robert Qualters' latest solo show at Borelli-Edwards Galleries in Lawrenceville, its quite likely Qualters won't mind. That's because the mixed-media painting titled "Very Early" is just that, a work of art that combines re-creations of a dozen of the artist's earliest drawings, which include a figure jumping, a boat with cannon firing cannonballs, three turtles and the "House that Jack Built" from fairytale lore.

All 12 of the original drawings, each scrawled on pieces of note-pad paper from a long-forgotten insurance company, are displayed below the painting. They are remarkable for two reasons. One, the well-rendered and equally well-humored -- some might even say "cutesy" -- drawings were created by Qualters when he was only 4 years old, proof of a prodigious gift. And two, they have been lovingly kept for many, many years.

Last weekend, Qualters turned 75. And as expected, a couple hundred friends stopped by the gallery to celebrate that fact. The artist has celebrated them and the city they live in for more than half a century with his vibrant paintings, prints and posters -- even his many public murals, which can be found throughout the city and surrounding boroughs.

Many are familiar with Qualters' oil and acrylic paintings of Pittsburgh's steel mills of the past, his lithographs of the bustling neighborhoods that surrounded them, and his posters that feature Kennywood rides now long gone.

The exhibit, which features more than two-dozen paintings, and almost as many prints, is a retrospective of sorts. Although much of the work has been created in recent years, the stories they tell go back nearly the entirety of the artist's life.

Qualters lives in Squirrel Hill. But he maintains a studio in Homestead, the area where he has had two others since 1990. Homestead suits him well. It's a perfect place for a man who grew up in the Monongahela Valley, first in McKeesport and then Clairton, where he graduated from Clairton High School in 1951. After high school, he attended Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) to study painting and design, taking two years out for service in the Army.

In 1956, he left the Pittsburgh area for the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, where he studied under influential West Coast abstractionist Richard Diebenkorn (1922-93). It was there that Qualters became part of the movement that came to be known as "Bay Area Figurative Painting." This was the most influential three-year period of his career, and largely influenced the development of his artistic style.

Returning to Pittsburgh in 1959, Qualters landed his first teaching job at Woodland Junior High School in Munhall before leaving to teach at the State University of New York at Oswego. But after pursuing a masters in fine arts at Syracuse University, he returned to Pittsburgh in 1968 to teach at the University of Pittsburgh. And he has been here ever since.

From his studios in Homestead and West Homestead, Qualters witnessed first-hand the changes felt by the Mon Valley during the last decades of the 20th century, which were frequently reflected in his work.

Like many artists, he has always mined the treasure trove that is past experience. His intention, he says, in this exhibit was to be more specific, using imagery from particular events and feelings seen through the lens of memory. Clouded, sometimes distorted or rose-colored, that process is one of the prime sources of art.

Much of the work here, strung together in a roughly chronological fashion, alludes to life events that, even at the time, he was aware of as being important. The piece "Boy Explorer 3 1/2 , Falls Through Bridge " illustrates a particular memory that is unforgettable, even though he was only 3 1/2 years old. "I got only a few bruises from the 20-foot drop, but the moment before my grip on the rough cross ties loosened, is with me still," he says of the fall.

Not all are as traumatic, though they might seem so when reading the titles. "Help! Night Lights" for example, depicts the reflected car lights on the walls and ceiling of his childhood bedroom. "I felt them -- although I couldn't have verbalized this -- to be signs of spaciousness, freedom, future hopes."

"After School," a large, enveloping canvas, depicts the artist all of 8 or 9 years old walking home from St. Joseph's Elementary School in Clairton during a snowstorm. Qualters says, "The darkening afternoon, the heavy snow, and the fires of the Clairton Coke Works just over the hill somehow combined to make the experience my own. "

The spacious view of the meeting of the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny rivers and McKeesport as in "Summer Job" are depicted from the vantage point of a hillside near a housing project where Qualters worked the summer before going to Carnegie Tech. "Even then, I felt it to be a metaphor for the freedom and possibilities of a time about to begin," he says.

That optimism and receptiveness are still present in "Penn Station -- Jan 1st 1954." "I had just finished Army basic training and had been sent back to Pittsburgh (on New Year's Eve) before assignment to Europe," Quarters recalls. "My father waited to pick me up under the station's great rotunda. New Year's Day. A New Life."

Other works, also drawn from particular events and places, are more generalized expression of feelings. "On the Bus" and "Danae" are meant to address the cycle of physical love and creation. The bus is parked on the side of the road on Route 51, where Qualters says he watched the railroad cars dumping molten slag down the hill. "Sudden bright light filled the sky; the heat could be felt from half a mile away," he recalls.

These are all personal stories, and yet each of the works feature Pittsburgh and its people, as well as its buildings, factories and monuments of yesterday (many of which are still with us today) in a jubilant, almost reverent light. And though they may be one man's memories, in a way they are our own. They reflect us, our city, our time here and love of this place we all call home.

Read more: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_616895.html

Publication: Pittsburgh Tribune Review

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