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Arts

Building happiness: Sculptor Mark Cline offers a double take through roadside attractions

If you’ve seen a parade of 8-foot-tall ants climbing the side of a building, a life-sized foam replica of Stonehenge, or a T-Rex lunging through the trees with a Union soldier in its mouth, then you know the work of Mark Cline.

Dubbed “Virginia’s Roadside Attraction King” by Atlas Obscura, Cline has spent decades building foam and fiberglass sculptures, many inspired by monster and science-fiction movies. He’s got thousands of works at truck stops, amusement parks, restaurants, and other unexpected sites in the commonwealth and around the country.

Despite his relative fame as an artist, the Waynesboro native doesn’t seek accolades. “One time NPR asked me, ‘How do you want to be remembered? Give us three words.’ And I said, ‘A good man.’ They were expecting ‘a sculptor’ or ‘an entertainer,’ but none of that’s important. It’s really not important,” he says.

What matters to Cline is knowing that every project created in his studio in Natural Bridge, Virginia, entertains the people who see it. Whether he’s built a giant octopus eating a boat in a lake or installed Spiderman scaling down the outside of an old building, his projects mean something.

“[Seeing these sculptures] gives people a chance to smile. It gives them a chance to laugh, and laughter has been proven to heal people,” he says. “I had a conversation with my daughter earlier today saying, ‘Honey, if you can find something that you go into in your life that helps people, then you have found your place in heaven.’ Because that’s where heaven is. It’s a place that’s above poverty. It’s above hate. It’s above pettiness. It’s all about healing, and you’ve got to do it through whatever talents you have.”

You could call it divine intervention that Cline became a sculptor at all. He describes being 19 years old, “jobless, penniless, and fresh out of high school with no immediate or long-range plans.” One day, sitting on a park bench and feeling frustrated, he asked himself what he wanted out of life. As he wrote in his journal, he realized he wanted happiness—and the only way he would find it was by helping others.

He hitchhiked to Waynesboro, went to the employment office, and asked for a job. “They said, ‘We don’t have anything.’ I said, ‘Well, okay.’ I turned around and was getting ready to walk out the door—I had my hand on the doorknob—and the lady says, ‘We have something.’ I said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

The job was with Red Mill Manufacturing, a plant where they made figurines out of resin mixed with pecan shell flour. After work one day, a co-worker showed Cline how to make a mold of his hand. It was a revelation. “I said, ‘I can make all kinds of stuff out of this.’ He said, ‘You sure can, Mark. Here’s a five-gallon bucket. Go home and play with it.’”

That fortuitous connection gave Cline an outlet for the overactive imagination he’d embraced as a child, back when he built inventive props for school plays and pulled practical jokes like slicing off a fake hand in art class. The adult version of his creative streak became sculpting with fiberglass.

He taught himself how to do it, since “there was nobody out there to show me how it was done.” As a result, he developed his own technique—and for now he’s the only one in the world who sculpts the way he does.

As part of the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program at Virginia Humanities, which pairs master artists with vetted apprentices, Cline is passing on his creative approach for the very first time. He’s begun teaching and mentoring Brently Hilliard in fiberglass sculpture. Through the process of mutual discovery, he hopes to transmit the aspects of the craft that matter most to him.

“I could teach anybody how to be a sculptor,” Cline says, “but it’s no good unless you’re using your talents for something good. So ultimately I would like to see [Hilliard] use whatever I teach him to help others and inspire them in some way.”

Being an artist isn’t easy, he says. The work itself requires a willingness to suffer. “I lost my first wife over it. I had two major fires. I came so close to going bankrupt, one time I was on the courthouse steps.” But he welcomes the failures as well as triumphs “because that’s where you learn.”

Turns out the young man sitting on that park bench had it right. “Twenty-four hours a day on this planet, someone is being entertained by something that I’ve built, something that came out of me, something that I created,” he says. “My goal was to create happiness, and that’s exactly what this stuff does.”


Cline and his apprentice, Brently Hilliard, will be celebrated at the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase, along with 14 other master/apprentice pairs on May 5 at James Monroe’s Highland.

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News

In brief: City v. civilians, Bennett declines, memorial stomper, and more

City blasts Police Civilian Review Board

A couple days after C-VILLE opinion columnist Molly Conger wrote about the importance of the still-developing but much-scrutinized Police Civilian Review Board, the board found itself the subject of another controversy.

The CRB has been working for nine months to create bylaws to establish a permanent board that will process complaints against the cops. In an April 23 story on its most recent meeting, the Daily Progress detailed a “breaking point” between the board and Police Chief RaShall Brackney, alleging that Brackney would not schedule a public meeting with CRB members.

Then the city sent out an unusual, unsigned press release refuting those claims, and accusing a CRB member of “inaccurately characteriz[ing]” emails between Brackney and the board, specifically that the chief “refused to meet or was not available for the entire month of June.”

“I am that board member, and I said no such thing,” says Josh Bowers, who adds that he couldn’t have mischaracterized the messages at the meeting, because he was reading them verbatim.

Bowers also denies saying Brackney refused to meet, though he did say it has been difficult to schedule meetings with her.

“No city official was at our last board meeting, so I’m not sure where the city got its information,” he says. “It is quite clear to me that those responsible for this press release failed to do their homework.”

Conger tweeted that it was a “deeply concerning development,” and it seemed “wildly inappropriate” for the city to issue such a “scathing” press release without any representatives at the CRB meeting.

The city also said in its release that the terms of the current board members would not be extended this summer, when a new board is supposed to be selected.

“This could be a death knell for the nascent civilian review board,” Conger wrote. “The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the city wants to smother the infant board in its crib.”

Linh Vinh, a member of the People’s Coalition that teamed up with the CRB to draft bylaws, says Brackney has been “superficially flexible” with her meeting schedule.

When the CRB expressed interest in creating a memorandum of understanding with the chief, which would focus on access to department data and files, she appeared interested in the collaborative process and asked Bowers to send her the draft.

“He sends it to her, and all of a sudden her availability is all booked up,” says Vinh. When Bowers asked if there were any dates outside of the suggested period that she could meet, says Vinh, “No response.”


Quote of the week

“I’m hoping a few more Democrats jump into the race for the White House. If the total hits 31, the party can open a Baskin-Robbins and name a flavor for each candidate.” —UVA Center for Politics director Larry Sabato in an April 24 tweet.


In brief

Confederates score

Two years into the Monument Fund lawsuit against the city, Judge Rick Moore ruled that the statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which City Council unanimously voted to remove after August 12, are war memorials and protected by state code. Still to be decided: whether councilors have immunity and what issues the defendants can have decided in a jury trial.

Heyer memorial stomped

Over the weekend, a white supremacist in a purple T-shirt, cuffed jeans, and black boots posted a video to Instagram where he kicked over flowers at the longstanding memorial to Heather Heyer on Fourth Street. Activists have identified him as Dustin Dudley of Salem, and while police did not confirm his identity, they said the event is under investigation, and anyone with information should contact the police department.

Otherwise engaged

photo Matt Riley

UVA men’s basketball Coach Tony Bennett announced he’s received inquiries about the national champs visiting the White House, and with some of the team pursuing pro opportunities or moving on from the university, it would be “difficult if not impossible” to reunite the team. “We would have to respectfully decline an invitation.”

Rescue squad beef

The Board of Supervisors recently voted to dissolve the 45-year-old Scottsville Volunteer Rescue Squad because of a reported struggle to retain volunteers. But when the squad moved to donate its land to a nonprofit, the county wasn’t having it: On April 18, Albemarle officials filed a petition for a temporary injunction and requested an emergency order to prevent it from transferring its assets.

New job

Denise Johnson will take on the role of supervisor of equity and inclusion in Charlottesville City Schools, a job created this year. Serving as the current executive director of City of Promise and a former school counselor, Johnson is a Charlottesville native and graduate of city schools.

$2 million bill

That’s what Kim Jong Un wants the United States to pay for the hospital care of UVA student Otto Warmbier, whom North Korean officials released from their country in a coma before he died. Korean government officials say President Donald Trump pledged to pay the bill before Warmbier’s release—but Trump says he didn’t and he’s not going to.


All eyes on Biden

Joe Biden is getting some local heat for his Charlottesville-focused presidential campaign announcement.

From the moment rumors began to swirl that former vice president Joe Biden might announce his 2020 presidential run in Charlottesville, one thing became clear: Local activists did not want him here.

Biden ultimately decided to announce via video—UVA professor Siva Vaidhyanathan said “we stared him down” on Twitter—but the first word out of his mouth in that official campaign video was “Charlottesville.”

To no surprise, this prompted several local opinions, with many calling for Biden to donate to the Charlottesville Community Resilience Fund for August 12 victims, while former mayor Mike Signer joined the pro-Biden camp.

Tweeted Reverend Seth Wispelwey, “For how much #Charlottesville (and our traumatic footage) seems to be motivating and framing @JoeBiden’s candidacy, one might think we would’ve received a call or visit in the past 20 months.”

City Council candidate Michael Payne asked, “Will Biden show up for public housing in Charlottesville?…For the Black Student Union? For police accountability?”

Councilor Wes Bellamy said there’s no real way to get around the city being in the spotlight. “[I’d] much rather it be discussed and [have] national figures like the president talk about how they’re going to deal w/it.”

We won’t hold our breath.

Categories
News

Controversial calculations: Alderman renovation moves forward

Governor Ralph Northam approved the University of Virginia’s proposal to renovate Alderman Library on March 24, sending the $160 million project into development.

The renovation, which has been planned since 2016, involves removing a significant percentage of the library’s books and turning its cramped 10-floor layout into a more spacious five floors to meet modern fire codes. It will also increase the number of entrances and extend a bridge to the adjacent Clemons Library, to make it easier to move between the two buildings.

According to a December statement from UVA Library, over half of the roughly 1.6 million volumes currently housed in Alderman will return when the renovation’s finished, while the remainder will be redistributed to either Clemons or the Ivy Stacks, a storage facility one mile off Grounds.

Faculty and students have raised concerns about the project’s impact on research, with many criticizing the methodology used by Dean of Libraries John Unsworth to calculate the estimated loss of on-site books.

Tensions escalated in spring 2018, after a steering committee predicted an 18 percent reduction in Alderman’s on-site collections, which many professors say is inaccurate. Some, such as UVA professor of English John Bugbee, have estimated the university’s plan will result in a 45 percent reduction.

The dispute boils down to a disagreement over how to calculate the number of books that can fit in a foot of shelving.

Unsworth used an Association of Research Libraries algorithm that calculates 10 books per foot of shelving, while faculty point to academic sources that estimate eight books per foot of shelving is more precise.

In addition, the proposal also incorrectly claims that books will be stored in the basement, which is reserved for processing, says Bugbee. “It also does not account for growth space—the leftover space in a shelf left for new materials.”

In late May, Bugbee and fellow UVA English professor John Parker gathered over 500 signatures opposing the reduction of books at Alderman. Bugbee then relayed his concern that the Board of Visitors was misled them when it approved the project in a November meeting with UVA President Jim Ryan.

“I told them I would be happy if we’re only going to lose 18 percent of books,” Bugbee says, “but we would need to adjust the project to get there.”

He anonymously contacted the Association of Research Libraries, and a spokesperson told him the 10-books-a-foot metric was for a survey, not for any sort of capital project, he says.

Despite that information, Ryan continued to support Unsworth, who says this is the best option he has. “The only alternative that is not an estimate is to fill the library with books and then count them,” Unsworth says. “We’re not in a position to do that yet.”

Books will begin being moved out of Alderman this summer, and the first floor of Clemons will be closed until August, according to the library’s website. Construction will begin in 2020 and be completed in 2023.

Correction: The $160 million cost of the project was inaccurately reported as $305 million in the original story, based on a typo in a press release about the budget from Delegate Steve Landes.