A&Entertainmf-nt
Page 12 Tuesday, September 28,1999
Commitment
to the craft
Gallimore gave up art as a teen
but has resumed cherished work
By Josh Krauter
Senior staff writer
Patty Gallimore stopped creating
art when she was 18, and it took real
estate to get her back into it.
Gallimore, a painter, installation
artist and president-elect of the
Nebraska Women’s Caucus for Art,
made her first painting when she was
16. The painting, which depicts a
young blonde girl, rests on the floor of
her studio next to a cavalcade of
wooden toys, religious artifacts and
notebooks. The small crosses and
wooden people spill off the shelves
and onto the floor, but it doesn’t look
cluttered, just comfortable.
The studio, located in the Mission
Arts Building, has character. The
building used to be a brothel and later
a city mission before its current artis
tic incarnation.
Gallimore said she chose her stu
dio room because it was the brothel’s
parlor and the mission’s worship area,
and she liked its history.
But a studio of her own was not
what Gallimore or her parents had in
mind when she graduated from high
school.
Gallimore originally gave up
painting when she was 18. Her par
ents didn’t think art was a practical
way to make a living, and she agreed.
She still does. She says art isn’t the
way to make bags of money. She only
dabbled in art intermittently for the
next 15 years.
“I’ve always stayed interested in
art, but it was just a luxury,” she said.
“I wasn’t a committed artist.”
She worked in the Capitol for a
while, but her then-boyfriend con
vinced her to try real estate. She could
make a lot of money at once, he said.
And she did. But Gallimore hated it.
“I was completely miserable and
depressed selling real estate,” she
said.
Gallimore said her introverted
fcfc
Artists are compelled
to make art. If they
don't, they're
unhappy."
Patty Gallimore
artist
personality made it hard to converse
with complete strangers interested in
buying the homes. She didn’t like the
hours, which were mostly based on
the customers’ whims. And it was a
long way from art.
“I learned through negation,” she
said. “I was not wired to sell real
estate. It was anathema to me.”
The turning point arrived when
she reread her father’s favorite book,
“Black Elk Speaks,” by John
Neihardt. Black Elk’s desire to share
his vision influenced Gallimore to
share hers. She quit her real estate job,
got licensed as a massage therapist
and picked up her paintbrush again.
“Artists are compelled to make
art,” she said. “If they don’t, they’re
unhappy.”
Although she was happy to leave
real estate, she said the job was ulti
mately a positive experience.
“I’m glad I did that. It made me
reevaluate everything and do some
thing that I love.”
She enrolled at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln and got her bache
lor’s degree in art in 1990 and her
master’s degree in painting in 1993.
While in graduate school, three
tragic events set a thematic course for
her paintings and installations. Her
boyfriend died in a car accident, her
father died of a heart attack and her
mother succumbed to cancer.
Please see ARTIST on 14
Heather Glenboski/DN
PATTI GALLIMORE, an artist who works at the Mission Arts Building, 124 S. Ninth St., prefers to paint with oil
enamel rather than the traditional oil or acrylic paint. She is shown with her self-portrait series, titled “The
Sound of My Soul Singing to Myself.”
The Pigs are bringing
Bacon to the Zoo Bar
Shelley Mika
Staff writer
“Una Mas Cerveza,” “No Mas
Tequila” and 200 “one nighters.”
No, this isn’t a confession of
my life story. It does, however,
sum up Billy Bacon’s reputation.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Billy
Bacon and the Forbidden Pigs
aren’t a bunch of sleazy drunks
touring to pick up the ladies.
Instead, the band from San Diego
tours coast to coast to play a fine
,, tuned mix of music.
Since 1984, Bacon has played
more than 200 shows each year,
and he’s still going strong. This
week, the band will be performing
at the Zoo Bar, 136 N. 14th St.
Don’t expect a typical blues
band. Bacon, who plays the stand
Concert Preview
The Facts
Who: Billy Bacon and the
Forbidden Pigs
Where: Zoo Bar, 136 N. 14th St.
When: 9 p.m.
$5 Wed. and Thurs, $6 Fri. and Sat.
The Skinny: The Pigs play their special blend
of “Tex-mex-Blues-a-Billy.”
up bass, along with drummer
Charles “Chipshot” Roberts and
guitarist Jerry “Hotrod” DeMink
have their own sound.
Coined “Tex-Mex-Blues-a
Billy,” the style of Billy Bacon and
the Forbidden Pigs is a blend of
jump/swing, rockabilly, Tex-Mex,
country, pop and blues.
Please see ZOO on 13
An American Indian focus
■ Englishman and former
Lincolnite Goble rewrites
history in children’s
stories.
By Jason Hardy
Senior staff writer
It was once believed by many
American Indians that photographs
and cameras could capture their spir
its.
At the time, cameras and the men
behind them represented an encroach
ing threat to the essence of the
American Indian culture.
However, since 1969, a man
named Paul Goble has made capturing
a culture’s spirit considerably less
frightening. In fact, he’s made it a way
of preserving a culture’s past and
teaching a country’s future.
Goble, who was bom in England
and lived there until 1977, has spent
more than 30 years writing and illus
trating children’s books about
American Indians. For five of those 30
years, he lived in Lincoln, the other 25
he spent in South Dakota.
It was when Goble was a small
child in Britain that he first developed
his fascination for a culture in a far
away land. His mother read him stories
by Grey Owl and Ernest Thompson
Seton, two American Indian authors -
and so began a lifelong devotion.
“I’m a great believer that we must
all be influenced by something to get
off the ground and do something our
selves,” Goble said from his home in
Rapid City, S.D. “We all become
sparked by something.”
Of course the obvious difference
between Goble and other authors who
focus on American Indian culture is
that Goble wasn’t exposed to actual
American Indians while growing up.
In fact, up until he was 26, Goble’s
only exposure was through books.
Still, his fascination grew beyond
a boyhood romance and into adult
seriousness as he became more
engrossed in the culture. All the while.
he knew that in order to write and paint
about American Indians he would
have to understand them as a people.
“I’ve always said that if I didn’t do
that, I wouldn’t be writing,” Goble
said. “There’s nothing worse than
someone writing about a culture and
not knowing what that culture is
about.”
Goble’s acceptance by the
American Indian cultures in South
Dakota has become a testimony to his
sincerity. In 1959, he was adopted into
the Yakima tribe and given the name
“Great Rising Eagle.” That same year,
his friend Chief Edgar Red Cloud, of
the Oglala Sioux tribe, named him
“Little Thunder (Wakinyan Chikala).”
Of course, Goble has never writ
ten specifically to be accepted. He
writes books for children because he
sees most historical coverage of
American Indians as either biased or
nonexistent.
“The schools just do a miserable
Please see GOBEL on 13
