Photo by Daniel Jackovino Retired art teacher and resident Tom Wallace has an exhibit at the Ridgewood Avenue train station, displaying works from his student days.
Retired art teacher and resident Tom Wallace has an exhibit at the Ridgewood Avenue train station, displaying works from his student days.
Tom Wallace, 85, a retired Ridgewood School District art teacher and 45-year Glen Ridge resident, will be exhibiting his artwork at the Glen Ridge Train Station until the end of August.
It is a small show, only 15 works of paintings, textiles and collages. What is surprising is that most were completed more than 60 years ago while he was a student at Montclair State Teachers College, which is now a university. He does not show his work, but Megan Giulianelli, the co-curator of the station’s gallery space, persuaded him and Wallace figured his work will need an appreciative home.
Then considering the exhibit needed a title, he decided on “65 Years of Art.” But in a recent interview at his home, he explained he became involved with art more than than 65 years ago.
“I started out at about 12 years old with a marionette theater and a few kids that helped me,” he said. “My father built us a big stage on the third floor of our home and we would give shows for other kids. The room was set up like a little theater and my bedroom was up there, too. The neighborhood children came on Saturday mornings for shows.”
Wallace, raised in Ridgewood, said his father was an NBC executive. But it was his father’s sister who brought him to a Greenwich Village marionette company. For many years, she was the director of the Macy’s Day Parade.
“As a curious kid, I think that’s what got me started,” he said of his visit to the puppet factory.
The adolescent Wallace wrote all the scripts on large pieces of cardboard from which his actors would read their parts.
“Of course, I painted the backdrops, made the props and made up the voices,” he said. “There was some music, too, because we had a record player.”
The stories were standard fairy tales with his aunt sometimes pitching in to make costumes, one which repurposed pieces of his mother’s discarded fox stole for “Little Red Riding Hood.”
“I did most of the work,” he said. “I was pretty adept in that way. I had gone to theater and opera as a kid, so I remembered a lot of visual things.”
As is often the case, his only sibling, a younger brother, had only a shred of interest in what he was doing.
“We were totally different people then and now,” Wallace said.
He also made the marionettes, from scratch. His father had a basement workshop with bits of wood, sawdust and small attachments which combined into body parts and facial features for sawdust-and-glue puppet heads. But when he entered Ridgewood High School, Wallace became disenchanted.
“I took art, but it was never creative enough for me,” he said.
It was not until his senior year and college that he began to produce artwork.
“Some of the works in the show are from 1959,” he said. “Most paintings are from 1960-62, when I was just finishing off college.”
He entered college to become a music teacher, auditioning on piano, but switched to the visual arts. He also recalled that during his college days, he attended music recitals by two younger students, Melba Moore and Kathleen Gaffney. Moore became a Broadway star and Gaffney, a longtime Glen Ridge music teacher. Both women were interviewed for a recent story in this newspaper.
In college, Wallace took classes in painting, sculpture and weaving.
“You’ll see all those things in the show,” he said. “I was very interested in textiles. About half the show is tapestries, weaving and stitching.”
He pretty much stopped producing his own art after college.
“Teaching engulfs you,” he said. “And I bought a small raspberry farm. That is where my work is, taking care of plants, trees and vines. I love plants.”
He knew in high school that he wanted to be a teacher. He liked the idea of helping other kids. Many of his classmates went to Montclair State Teachers School, too, just in different departments. As an art teacher, he said he would show students the technical aspects of and step back and watch them develop. He acknowledged that his vocation, working with kids and giving them a space to create, was probably engendered in a third floor marionette theater and basement saw dust. But there were moments when an artist had to be solitary, he did say.
“Nurturing people is a two-way street,” he said.
The gallery co-curator is Stephanie Kosbuka. For gallery hours, call 973-748-2924. Opening night is Saturday, Aug. 3, from 5 to 7 p.m.
The train station is located at 228 Ridgewood Ave.
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