Able: This was Ginger MacConnell’s first service dog, Able, who helped Ginger get out of a wheelchair after five long years.
“Chef Robert! Chef Robert! I’m bringing a few U.S. Military Veterans to the Palm Café for muffins and coffee! Can you pleeeeeze make some muffins and save them from flying off the counter before we get there?” I pleaded.
“On it,” he said. And on “game day” he showed up with winning muffins to sweeten the conversations shared with Ginger MacConnell, Bob Anderson, Elizabeth Cadena and Diane Abernathy.
Bob Anderson makes a Norwegian Love Spoon for all the female members of his family. He is a woodturning artist at DFAC and a U.S. Army Veteran who also fashioned a cherry wood rattle for his newest granddaughter.
Ginger, U.S. Army, is a fearless, unstoppable artist, and has served as a figure model at DFAC for 19 years.
Elizabeth teaches acrylic pouring workshops and is also a United States Army Veteran.
Diane, U.S. Air Force, makes modern, contemporary jewelry and complex clay shapes. She shows others how it’s done teaching classes in both at DFAC, and her hand building clay work adorns the current catalog cover.
Another important facet of this story, we’ll meet Julie Scales, DFAC Board President and art enthusiast, who honors the memory of her late husband, Colonel David Scales with the David Scales Veterans and Family Fund, which enables veterans to take classes at DFAC.
We came together to discuss the impact art and DFAC has had on the lives of these veterans. Everyone was asked the same opening question: Which came first, the artist or the soldier? Ginger candidly offered that art has been saving her since she’s a little girl. Elizabeth would sit in front of Saturday morning cartoons as a little one and draw the characters she saw on TV. Diane has also been an artist since her youth. But not Bob. He found art much later in life. After the military. And it came to heal him.
“I make a lot of art,” Ginger says and she’s not kidding. “For me, art has been there forever. All the women in my family knew how to sew. They were seamstresses. My mother made dresses for me.” Her paternal grandmother was a seamstress in New York, working in theatre. Her maternal grandmother made doll clothes for dolls donated to orphans.
“I’ve always pretty much had a needle in my hand from a very young age.” She describes growing up in an alcoholic household and the only thing she remembers outside of making art is a radio by her bedside at seven years old.
A magical connection for her came as a youngster when her stepmother and father sent her a crewel kit containing different fibers. When she combined everything to reveal the intended motif and sent it back to them as a gift, they framed it. “They took a picture of it next to their dog and I still have the picture. When they sent that back to me, I felt how proud they were of my work.”
Ginger hasn’t quite recaptured that feeling since but she strives for and achieves meaningful moments in the many mediums she participates in.
Bob spent 13 months in the DMZ in Korea. “I volunteered to escape the draft, right out of school,” he reveals. “It was during the Vietnam War.”
“We were building roads through the mountains. I was a powderman so I blew up parts of the mountain and cut the road. When you weren’t doing that, you were moving the explosion debris.”
The grueling physical work was further complicated by weather conditions. “In the winter it gets very, very cold. I got frostbite in both hands and both feet. During the monsoon we were on a riverbed. Villages were just swept away. We had to build dams while you can’t see through the monsoons. We had dump trucks floating down the river.”
Bob describes entering the military environment at a young age. “I was introduced to alcohol and alcohol became a way to escape. It was part of the whole culture.”
“When I got out of the service being in the military was not very popular. There were a lot of protests going on wherever you went. If you were in uniform you were being heckled.”
Ginger jumps in to point out that Americans were hearing a lot of propaganda at that time.
After the service, Bob married his high school sweetheart. They have been married 50 years this year. “In the beginning it was tumultuous,” he admits. “I was escaping still with the alcohol and thoughts of what I just got out of. That was not an easy time. My hands and feet were aching all the time.”
He says he managed to keep himself in check. “I was a functioning alcoholic. I was a fixture in the community. Lived there (Massachusetts) for 40 years. A lot of people had no idea.”
At a point, one of his sons approached him and said, “I got a problem. I need help.”
His son was struggling with substance abuse. “I was shocked. I had no idea. And so I said, you know what? We can do this. So we did. I got a lathe to get my head out of all the other stuff. That became the replacement to get out of my own head. I’ve been sober 20-something years. It is still the replacement.”
Bob’s fishing lures, which he began crafting with his two sons, emerge from the mahogany salad bowl intended for his sister who serves great family lunches at her lake house.
“This was another way for my son to get healthy,” he says showing us the alluring lures. “I continued with it for the last 20 years. I still make the lures. I paint them. I do it all. I tie all those feathers myself. They all fish beautifully.”
Bob and Ginger both create art every day. “Every day,” they say in unison.
Is it hypnotic to do?
“It takes all the stress away,” Ginger reflects. “I don’t have to think about anything but what I’m working on.”
“No, it’s not to me,” Bob asserts. “Turning on a lathe is dangerous so you gotta focus. You can’t meditate.”
Ginger hangs her work all over her house. Bob has a large family and makes pieces for them like the Norwegian Love Spoons. “Historically, Nordic gentlemen would carve these for the women in their family as a sign of love. It started with these little sugar bowls for the girls in my family.”
Ginger and I sigh. Then the birdhouse makes an appearance. “This is one of the first pieces I made at the Dunedin Fine Art Center seven years ago,” Bob says of the precious house. Art Worth is his instructor.
I’ve been taking classes here nonstop for seven years and I would just like to say that the reason I can do that is because of DFAC’s veteran’s program with the David and Julie Scales foundation. My gratitude for David Scales and Julie and DFAC is just immense.”
To express his appreciation, Bob gifted a beautiful bowl to Julie Scales and presented it to her at a gathering with much of his family in attendance. PHOTO CREDIT: KEN HANNON
Ginger was floored by the Tentmakers of Cairo exhibit last summer at DFAC for which she secured a VA scholarship to participate in the corresponding workshop. In a swift show of gratitude, Ginger donated her completed quilt to DFAC.
Bob is studying and appreciating Ginger’s hand stitching work while we are all talking.
The Tentmakers class was the first Ginger ever took at DFAC. Her quilt took 17 days to finish. “I was so thankful for my knowledge of the technique,” she says. “That’s why I donated my project. That’s what I’m all about. Seeking the knowledge.”
But the plot thickens…
Ginger has been a nude figure model here for 19 years and she can strike a pose for 45 minutes straight. “They love that about me.”
She’s modest but this is how she channels her inner siren.
“I’ve always been a bigger, curvaceous, more voluptuous woman and by figure modeling you find people view you differently than you view yourself.”
Ginger has drawn figures and been drawn.
“Being on both sides of the canvas is like the best of both worlds.”
All she ever wanted though was to be a working art teacher. Once she secured art degrees, with the help of the Bay Pines VA’s Vocational Rehab program, Pinellas County implemented a hiring freeze. Serendipitously, she wound up teaching quilting at JoAnn’s Fabric and stayed for five years.
Bob and Ginger share gratitude in common. She is incredibly grateful for the Bay Pines VA and perhaps her greatest badge of honor is 1st Place Winner of this year’s and last year’s Bay Pines VA Cultural Arts Festival.
Both veterans hold community in high regard. “DFAC gives me a sense of community and I feel I have to give back so I monitor the open studio,” Bob says.
“You can sit in your house and do this stuff but unless you have a chance to share it with other likeminded people, it really doesn’t mean anything,” Ginger adds. “You want to be able to have a sense of community with people who are interested in what you are interested in. And then you get better at what you’re doing because you learn something from this one and that one and you feed off each other’s creativity.”
Ginger is admiring more of Bob’s woodturning pieces as our muffin date at The Palm Café draws to a close. “I would take a class,” she pondered, “but if I learn one more kind of art my head might explode.”
Throughout our chat it’s clear Bob and Ginger share an affinity for acronyms. On the topic of sourcing art materials, Bob refers to “FOG wood.”
“What’s that?” we ask.
“Found on ground.”
Annnnnnnd scene.
*
ELIZABETH CADENA, U.S. Army
Next up and back at the Palm Café for pistachio cake muffins we have the dazzling Elizabeth Cadenaaaaaa! Cue The Price is Right music. She bounced into our meeting in a rainbow Chanel t-shirt she made herself, carrying a stack of her acrylic pour paintings and wearing a grin from ear to ear.
Elizabeth was a combat medical specialist in the United States Army. She is the youngest of ten children and her whole family moved to the United States from Colombia when she was a child. Her father was teaching electronic repair in Cuba when he was scouted by Sears Roebuck. “He was asked to come to the U.S. to teach—without a college degree, without a high school education,” Elizabeth shares. They lived in Chicago.
Her siblings were much older so Elizabeth felt like an only child. “My parents used to sit me in front of cartoons with a piece of paper and I was supposed to draw the cartoons exact. That was my entertainment.”
Pencil, crayons, charcoal, wood burning supplies—whatever Elizabeth could get her hands on, she used to make art.
“This is therapeutic,” she says with a long exhale pointing to one of her acrylic pour paintings. “Especially for military veterans who have PTSD,” she adds. “This form of art has really helped me with my anxiety. I have terrible anxiety. Really loud noises or people yelling…I start to cry and I get nervous so this helps me calm my nerves.”
Elizabeth has done paint pouring with special needs adults and has worked with Alzheimer’s patients and those with arthritis.
“That’s what Is so satisfying about this art—anyone can do it! And have a good time, and flow. Every single time is special,” she rejoices of her teaching gigs.
At home, she loves to make art in her backyard. “There’s a million styles of pouring,” she says and likes to practice. “My signature is my acrylic paint pouring geode.”
Her students confess they can’t draw stick figures but they emerge from Elizabeth’s class with something glowing to show for it. “It gratifies people,” she beams.
Students are only asked to bring a good attitude to class. At the end of the day, everyone leaves with smiles and the art they made stored in a pizza box.
Elizabeth describes the chain reaction of imagining color combinations for the paint blends. She speaks romantically of layering paints and ribbon pours. I’m leaning in on both elbows. Yes, at the table.
Wood, vinyl records, canvas, tote bags, tiles and coasters are only some of the surfaces she creates on. Sunday afternoons find Elizabeth teaching Acrylic Pouring and Resin Beach Art workshops at local bars.
Blue is her favorite color. She owns a Cricut, makes t-shirts and, “sells them like crazy!” Elizabeth gifted me a glittery Juneteenth t-shirt to celebrate the freeing of the last slave in the U.S. on June 19, 1865. “It’s a National holiday and YOU get to celebrate it too!”
Elizabeth acts like a newlywed speaking of her wife of six years. Like Bob and Ginger, she also makes art every day. “I’m always preparing for a class. I work six days a week (at Spectrum) and teaching art.
“It’s a joy teaching others and watching them react to what they create.”
How does she start off class? “You’re gonna art today,” she tells everyone. “Today is the day you come out of your shell. Today is the day you will create something beautiful.”
*
DIANE ABERNATHY, U.S. Air Force
“My grandfather was cool enough that when I asked for an electric drill on my 18th birthday, he got me one,” Diane Abernathy recalls.
While building her own workbench at home recently, someone at Home Depot assumed Diane’s husband or handyman was making whatever she was bringing the wood home for.
“You’re looking at the handyman,” she said pointedly. “He was so confused when I said that.”
Mic drop. She’s flexing at the table.
Diane built a ceramic studio with electric in the ceiling.
“I’m not messing around. I like carving. I’m on a kick right now. I’m doing origami bowls.”
But let’s rewind.
“My mom says they had to take my crayons away from me at school because I wasn’t paying attention.”
“What were you drawing?”
“Who knows?!” Diane threw her hands up in the air.
“I think the thing that’s good about me making art is that I stop thinking.”
Today she is heavily engaged in teaching both jewelry and beginning hand building clay classes at DFAC.
Diane can’t spend time at the wheel anymore. “That has been an evolution. I destroyed my back in the military and in 2010 I had back surgery.” She sustained several injuries in the military. “I stopped working on the wheel in 2008. The pain was just excruciating. That was the end of the that. I left doing ceramics and started working in jewelry.”
She took jewelry classes and when she moved here six years ago, she started taking hand building clay classes. “I understood everything I needed to about clay but needed to spend time doing it. The things on the catalog cover are hand builds and they are specific for beginners. It was put there to attract beginners.”
Diane taught when she was in the military. “I often kicked the metal trashcan,” she sneered.
“I would be terrified of you,” I admitted.
“Yes,” she hissed hands clenched, “I had my evil ways.”
Really though, she derives pleasure from teaching.
“I like to see people happy when they have made something.” Adrian Smith from the Gallery Shop took Diane’s jewelry class. “She was over the moon with what she made.”
“My deal has always been with any student…find where they are at and then help them. Find them there and help them to be successful.”
During her military career where she was an alcohol and drug abuse counselor at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, art was on the back burner but it was always part of her plan.
“I’m a major plan person. I applied to art school at Columbus College of Art & Design and got accepted immediately. The day I was there. I expected to have to go home and wait for a letter in the mail. But they said you’re in.”
It was a good day for Diane.
Only one time has Diane’s art ever correlated to her military experience. It was in a workshop and even she was surprised to produce something on the theme of military sexual trauma.
“A woman from Israel (also a soldier) stood there in front of my work and the tears were just rolling down her face,” Diane recalls. She had no intention of addressing that subject matter. It poured forth from her. “I don’t know what happened. I guess it’s something I needed to get out. It was a turning point for me. I just needed to get it out. Move on.”
Because Diane is so passionate about teaching, I asked if there was a teacher who’s impact stays with her?
In college, she had a tough advisor, Kaname Takada. “He’s tough on you technically on the wheel. If you want warm fuzzies he’s not the guy. None of my work was functional. It was all sculptural. He allowed me to find my own way. He would allow me to fall on my face and then he would say this happened because of this and I would go back and try again. We would talk about what I needed to do differently.
My work was very technically complicated. I was really pushing the envelope with what I was doing. I was really pushing the limits of everything but that’s normal for me. He allowed me the space. The most direction he would say to me is ‘it needs another part’.”
“What part,” she wondered. “That’s all he would say. And then I’m left with that.”
Case in point: Recently, Diane was fashioning bracelets that were not selling for some reason. “I added a pearl and suddenly they were flying out of the gift shop,” she said. “It needed another part.”
She creates her jewelry classes for people who have never made jewelry. Her contemporary designs feature exciting materials such as turquoise and red coral.
“They are making some pretty cool stuff,” she says of jewelry class. “Making the loop is the hardest part. They’re gonna struggle. I struggle! I hate the loop. But there’s no getting past it. I help them.”
Diane cleverly devotes each class to a particular shape: circles, ovals, rectangles. The thinking is that students who took the circles class might like to follow up with rectangles and so on.
“I like teaching but I’m really into gardening. I’m like a crazy gardener. Right now, I’m in a war against the squirrels and the army worms.”
The army worms are eating her Roma tomatoes. She’s building cages around her mangoes. “I’m always in a war against nature at my house. I am always digging up my yard. An ongoing project.”
An “voracious reader” of gardening and ceramics books and magazines, Diane is threatening to bore me into oblivion with pottery talk.
Annnnnnd scene.
*
Julie Scales, David Scales Veterans and Family Fund & DFAC Board President
Pssssst. If you are a veteran or know a veteran who enjoys or might benefit from participating in the arts, there’s a fund for that!
The David Scales Veterans and Family Fund was created by Julie Scales to honor her late husband. The application can be found here: https://www.dfac.org/veterans/
“Dave was just a good guy,” Julie says. “I’m happy we met and that we had a life together.” The pair traveled a fair amount. “He was a sailor and had a sailboat. We were members of the Dunedin Boat Club.”
Dave was career military and enlisted in the army at age 17. “That was when the Korean war was going on,” Julie says. “He retired 32 years later as a full Colonel so he had a very successful military career.”
David and Julie found each other long after he retired and they shared an affection for art in common. “He always loved coming to the Art Center,” she says.
She created the Award because she wants people to know her husband was a good guy and because he would have supported it. Her thoughts on veterans in the arts: “If they just enjoy doing it there’s a lot of value in that.”
Some recipients have written letters. “I save the letters. I’ve really enjoyed hearing about people who have taken classes and meeting some of them.”
Julie was very touched to meet Bob Anderson and his family, when he presented her with a wooden bowl to express his appreciation for the opportunities afforded him by the Fund.
“It made me feel really good that it meant that much to him.”
“Anyone who goes into the military is giving up so much to do it. They are giving up a normal life.” David Scales and Bob Anderson share Korea in common. “I can’t help but think that Dave would understand what it (the fund) means for Bob.”
Story and Photography by Leslie Joy Ickowitz