ART for ALL

A February 16, 1953 article in The Hickory Daily Record on the topic of HMA’s 1952 acquisitions says of Shirley Pruden's The Aerialist, the first work by a woman artist purchased by HMA, “It is an excellent work which shows superb knowledge of

Jef Raasch’s Manimal is currently on exhibit at HMA’s Temporary Satellite Museum at Hickory’s Valley Hills Mall. Behind him is a mirror so that you can see all sides of the sculpture and maybe also glimpse yourself on the scene!

Raasch says of his work, “My sculpture represents the symbiosis of life; all creatures mixing together to form a greater existence.” The life-size human form of  HMA's Manimal is composed of dozens of different animal species, most native to North Carolina.

One of HMA's other Crowell paintings, The Gourd Lady), is of life-long Conover resident Margaret Sparkman. She had adopted this persona as her artist identity, and that landed her a spot on the Jay Leno show in 2003.

How did this Hickory resident who went to Duke University on a football scholarship and married a local girl become a painter and art entrepreneur?  Here’s a bit of the story, and some pictures too.

They settled in Hickory where Paul nurtured his artistic talents and pursued his ambition to establish an art museum for Hickory, while Mickey actively supported his endeavors in both areas in a number of ways including

… That location served well as a museum for the most part, except perhaps the time when the floor of the main gallery caved during a crowded reception. As Paul's steadfastly supportive and collaborative wife Mickey reminisced in 1984,

In June 1944, the citizens of Hickory built a hospital in 54 hours to save their children from the worst polio outbreak that had ever hit the United States. Looking back now, even knowing the final results – 13 wards erected in under nine months, doctors and nurses flocking in by the dozens, hundreds of patients treated and released, with only 12 deaths, one of the country’s lowest-ever rates for polio – the enormity of the undertaking still bewilders.

Williams played basketball for the University of Kentucky with the team that won the NCAA national championship in 1978, and after graduation he played professionally in Italy and Japan. After years of the strict practice regimen of college and professional basketball, the freedom of woodworking was