I listened to the Out of Bounds interview yesterday with a squirming knot in my stomach. Fortunately, it seemed to go okay and most of the knot subsided immediately. Not all of it, however, as I had a lingering, nagging feeling about an omission on my part that I need to correct . When Tish Pearlman, the host of the show, asked about the time when I first showed my work to the gallery owner at the West End Gallery she didn’t use his name. As I listened yesterday, I kept saying to myself as the interview went on, ” Say his name, for chrissake!“, hoping that I was about to utter the name. I was positive I had used his name during the interview.
But it turns out that I had not.
Tom Gardner’s Artemus the Buffalo Bursting from Rockwell Musuem
The name was Tom Gardner, who owned the West End Gallery at that time with his then wife Linda Gardner, the current owner who I did mention during the interview. Besides owning the gallery, Tom has been a mainstay and engine of the art scene in the Finger Lakes region for decades. He is well known for his oil paintings with collectors all over the country, his teaching of aspiring painters and his public sculpture. Visitors to downtown Corning are well familiar with his sculpture of the buffalo, Artemus, that bursts through an upper exterior wall of the Rockwell Museum of Western Art there. Or the Dali-esque melting clock that adorns the front of the West End Gallery.
Tom Gardner- Amish Drive-By
He is a non-stop ball of creation and a great and amiable character, to boot. You can’t walk twenty feet down the street with him in Corning without someone stopping him to talk or someone yelling at him from across the street. It was this amiability that made me comfortable enough back in January of 1995 to bring in my milk crate filled with scraps of paper and board for him to critique.
As I said during the interview as well as many times during gallery talks through the years, my life would have been vastly different if not for Tom’s willingness to look at my work with an open mind. I really don’t know where I would be right now if Tom had not seen something that day and had not encouraged me. I don’t even know if I would have continued painting for long if he had told me there was nothing there. I doubt very much that I would be in my own studio, writing this blog. I’m sure I would not be as contented in my life as I now am and, for that alone, I am forever indebted to Tom Gardner. Even if I do absentmindedly overlook mentioning his name on a radio interview.
Thank you, Tom, for opening a door of opportunity for me when I wasn’t even aware that there was one in front of me.
Redtree Times 
Thanks Gary, for the nice words. I’ve told your story a thousand times to students at the college and in workshops all over the place….not to take credit to myself but rather, to offer encouragement that it can happen to them too. But you have to get out there and try, not just sit around and hope someone will “discover ” your work (although that, too , can happen, but don’t count on
it, be proactive ). Gary, I hold out your sucess as an example of what is possible, much like Brian Williams, Tommy Hilfiger, Eileen Collins , the Bodine brothers and so many others that have reached out ,far beyond Chemung county, and touched their dreams.
Don’t think twice about not mentioning me, Gary, you DID remember West End Gallery, thats what was important and much appreciated ! Without the the hard work the ladies at West End do , where would any of us be ?
Now enough reading, get to the studio and make stuff !
TG
Thanks, Tom. I just wanted everyone to know that it was you and how much your generosity and encouragement has meant to my career.
All the best to you!