River vision

While artist Gary Lucy sits in his studio on the banks of the Missouri River in Washington, Mo. over the next two years, his mind will be on another town and another river -- Cape Girardeau and the Mississippi.

During that time the Caruthersville, Mo., native and Southeast Missouri State University alumnus will be working on his next big project -- a mural to be prominently displayed in the university's new River Campus.

Lucy is renowned for his historical paintings about rivers, especially the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi. He's been doing those paintings for 22 years, and they've been displayed throughout the United States.

Given that history and that Lucy is a Southeast alumnus, Southeast president Dr. Ken Dobbins said he was a natural choice to paint the mural.

"It's going to be really dynamite," Dobbins said. "He's an artist, but he's also a historian. All of his paintings are historically accurate. He really does a lot of background work."

Artist Gary Lucy will paint this mural for Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus. When finished, the work will be 27 feet long and almost 10 feet tall.

The mural, which is being paid for by private donations to Southeast's University Foundation, will be an important visual feature when the River Campus is completed. When finished, the work will be 27 feet long and almost 10 feet tall.

"It's going to be a prominent piece for the River Campus," said Dobbins. "When people walk in, it will be the first thing they see."

The mural will be painted on canvas stretchers in Lucy's studio, then shipped to Cape Girardeau and put up in the finished River Campus. It will depict Cape Girardeau's history as it's tied in with the river.

"It talks about the history of the river and the river being a crossroads of Cape Girardeau in particular," said Dobbins. "It's a great theme for the River Campus."

The centerpiece will be a depiction of the historic steamboat race between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee that churned past Cape Girardeau on their way from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870. Lucy said he picked this image after coming up with three pages of notes on the history of Cape Girardeau and the river that spurred its growth.

That event represents "the pinnacle of technology and importance of the river," Lucy said.

He devoted the rest of the mural to those who navigated the river -- not legends like Lewis and Clark or Marquette and Joliet, but "common people."

To the left of the great steamboat race will be images of the ancient Mississippian culture. Pictured to the right will be a tugboat pilot and children fishing on the river's banks in the shadow of the new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge.

Along the bottom of the mural will be a depiction of the evolution of river vessels, from keelboats to ironclads to modern barges. Across the top, four vignettes will represent the visual arts, dance, theater and music -- the arts that will be studied at the River Campus' School of Visual and Performing Arts. When viewed in its entirety, the mural will be in the shape of a steamboat.

The mural was Lucy's creative vision, but it almost didn't become a reality.

"Originally I had talked to Dr. Dobbins and had indicated that murals are nothing more than sort of an exercise in self-abuse," Lucy said. "This one's going to take about two years to do, and it's just a very time-consuming operation. Our paths crossed again. ... One thing led to another and finally we came to an agreement to do it."

Lucy said he was finally convinced to do it by the fact that Southeast is his alma mater and by the scope of the vision associated with the River Campus project.

"Once I sat down and got to see how magnificent the building was going to be, I thought it would be an honor to be a part of the River Campus," he said. "This type of project hasn't really been done in a long time. When you go around the state and you look at the money that has been put into the arts, it has been minimal. For Cape to come up with this type of project, it really says a lot for the university and Cape Girardeau.

"It will be a jewel for Missouri and hopefully for the whole Midwest."

A color study of the mural was recently unveiled at a meeting of the President's Council at the university. It met with rave reviews, Dobbins said.

Lucy expects to start painting the mural in the next few weeks. Right now, he's busy putting up the canvas stretchers it will go on.

He plans to update the progress of the project regularly on his Web site, www.garylucy.com.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182