There’s no art or culture without tools, Paul Lewing said. You can sing and clap, but for anything more complicated, you’ll need some gadgets and implements.
“You have to have tools to do that,” he said.
The University of Montana alumnus, now based in Seattle, spent two days earlier this week putting a reminder of those sentiments onto the exterior wall of the new Montana Museum of Art and Culture.
Since 1986, Lewing has worked as a custom tile artist, a hybrid of his interest in painting and ceramics. His mural, called “The Artist’s Tool Belt,” features two rows of tiles, each decorated with arrays of tools in varied designs.
The murals will greet visitors to the west entrance of the building, slated to open on Homecoming weekend in September, finally offering a dedicated showcase for the museum’s permanent collection of more than 10,000 objects.
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Rafael Chacon, the MMAC’s director, said the mural’s concept and location “really does introduce the visitor to what that building will contain and the richness of that collection.”
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Lewing studied art at UM, receiving a BFA in 1969 and an MFA in 1972.
The full circle with the mural came about later. In 2018, Lewing received a Distinguished Alumni Award. As an artist, he couldn’t make a donation of money, but he said he was interested in making art.
“What I do have is tile work, so I told them if they could find a place on the campus for a good-sized tile mural, that I would donate it to the U,” he said.
Rafael Chacon, the MMAC’s director, contacted him about doing a piece for the museum, and gave him free rein for his ideas.
“I’ve been making tile murals since 1986, and I’ve done probably a couple thousand of them, and this is the only time in that entire time where I’ve had someone say, ‘you can do anything you want,’” he said.
He found the freedom “really exciting and really terrifying,” he said.
The tool concept arose after talks with Chacon about the contents of the collection, including rumors of a brush that’s thousands of years old. (It hasn’t been located.)
They do have brushes owned by Henry Meloy, the celebrated Montana-born modernist painter, that Lewing drew on. He also included a masonry trowel owned by ceramicist Rudy Autio, whom Lewing took classes from.
The tools, which he designed in a repeated quilt pattern, include a Neolithic stone hammer, tools from Native American tribes — like a Chinook basketry awl and a Tlingit brush. Or a jewelry clamp from Victorian England, or Japanese brushes.
“They’re from all over the world, all different cultures,” he said.
To Chacon, the imagery will transmit an important reminder.
“Craftsmanship is an important value in the art world, sometimes dismissed because we take it for granted, but it’s important. A work of art that relates the importance of craftsmanship and its tools is perfect for us,” he said.
It won’t be the only permanent work installed at the new MMAC. Future commissions for other parts of the building are planned.
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Lewing’s family moved to Missoula from Ohio in 1965. He originally enrolled at UM with intentions of becoming a landscape painter in oil, a medium he’d started out in when he was 8.
After arriving, he became interested in ceramics — among other reasons, he wanted to make a living as an artist, and thought he could as a potter.
“I stumbled into something extraordinary here, because I had never heard of clay as an art medium before I got here,” he said.
Of his time at UM, he said Autio “attracted a really amazing group of grad students around himself. And he answered all your questions and gave you everything you need.”
He took drawing and printmaking courses from Don Bunse. His ceramics, jewelry and design courses were taught by Maxine Blackmer, who he said was the best teacher on the faculty.
“I don’t think she got near the credit she deserved, probably because she was the only woman on the faculty,” he said.
He attributes most of his use of design concepts like repetition, positive and negative space, line quality and color theory to her course.
After graduation, he moved to Seattle and spent years living and working as a potter. The painting came back to his surfaces, which he covered with landscape imagery in glaze.
Eventually, he wanted to work larger but he could only make the pots so big. After a move in 1986, he decided to work exclusively in tile, since he could make his “canvas” as big as he liked.
He works in the China painting technique, which is not as popular as it once was.
“It's the most painterly kind of ceramic decorative medium you can do. And I never had any training, I just made it up. So I do things that are wildly different from traditional China painters,” he said.
He wrote a book on the technique, “China Paint and Overglaze,” at the invitation of the American Ceramic Society.
Returning to Missoula has been meaningful for him on a few levels.
“I think this is the best thing I’ve ever made, and it was such a treat to have someone say you can do anything you want,” he said. “It’s a dream come true for an artist.”
Working on campus, too, has carried meaning for everything he got out of his time. He studied with mentors, took a short course on how to pack a mule and spent three summers working in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
He met his wife, Ruth Ashley Lewing, here, since he’d come here to study ceramics.
“I got basically a complete life out of the University of Montana,” he said.
