Lynchburg artist's work comprised of unconventional materials

A chance encounter on an airplane set Lynchburg native Chris Noel on his current path.

Six years ago, Noel, now 56, sat next to a younger guy on his way to Nashville to record a demo.

“He was so excited,” says Noel, an E.C. Glass grad who lives in the Washington, D.C., area and runs his own graphic design business, Particle. “He wasn’t talking about it a lot, but you could tell he was practically jumping out of his seat.”

It got Noel, a onetime fine artist, thinking: If he was going to start painting again, now was the time to do it.

He bought a few canvases and began working, but didn’t like what he was seeing.

“You have to feel like you’re creating something you haven’t seen before, or you lose interest,” says Noel.

He eventually found inspiration in what he calls debris paintings, made up of anything he can find that no longer seems useful: plywood, metal scraps, computer parts, wires, bolts, even the parts from an old record player.

“That’s when I started to get passionate again. Now I’m like obsessed,” says Noel, who will show his work at the Light Wings Gallery this month. A First Fridays opening reception is scheduled for 5 p.m. Friday.

His work is very much an extension of his day job as a graphic designer.

Noel, who majored in communication arts and design at Virginia Commonwealth University, opened Particle in 1987. He designs brochures, educational materials, press kits, Web sites and other product identity systems for clients like PBS, the Smithsonian Institute and Honest Tea.

“In my professional life, I’ve always felt my graphic design was my canvas,” he says.

Now, he considers his paintings to be graphic designs.

“I’m composing them, basically, on a board instead of a page.”

At first, Noel used things around the house out of convenience. Now, he says, “it’s become a mission. I try not to buy anything.”

Most of his materials come from his own home, others from friends or the occasional Dumpster dive.

Once he’s got them, Noel isn’t content to just attach each random piece onto a canvas or a piece of wood; he likes to add color, too.

“I just love painting. I love to see things change for the better … the process of transforming.”

Just don’t ask him how those transformations occur — Noel says he often looks back at his work and can’t remember how he did it.

And once he gets started, watch out.

“I gotta do it every day,” he says. “I don’t like things to be unfinished.”

He’ll usually work until a name — often something random like “Destiny’s Second Coming” or “Analog Time Machine,” both of which will be on display at Light Wings — comes to him.

“Sometimes they make sense; sometimes they don’t,” he says. “It’s just a feeling.”

“The beauty of (my work) is not in the visual,” he adds. “It’s in the idea. The beauty is in the details.”