Artwork of late Pentagon official featured in First Fridays show

Lib Elder has always idolized her father.

“I grew up thinking he was Errol Flynn, with that pencil-thin mustache,” she says, pointing to one of his military portraits. “He was just my dream dad.”

John Howard Elder Jr., or Johnny as he was known to friends and family, served in the U.S. military for more than 30 years, the final 16 of which were spent working in a high-stress job at the Pentagon.

To unwind, Elder, a self-taught artist, would paint detailed landscapes or doodle in one of his many notebooks.

Looking at his work today, Lib says she can’t fathom how he could relax when creating such detailed work: “I guess the military mind finds order out of chaos.”

He’d even doodle during meetings at the Pentagon.

“That helped him to stay focused on what was being said,” she says.

“Finally, Henry Kissinger got sick of the black and white (drawings) and bought him a set of colored pencils.”

By the time he retired in 1976, Elder was the Director of Strategic Plans and Actions in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of staff — as well as an accomplished artist.

He and wife Jane, who went by the nickname Mickey, moved to North Carolina, where he continued to paint until his death in 2001.

“There was a partially-finished painting on his easel when he died,” says Lib.

Her father’s work, along with photo albums and his memoirs and medals, will be on display at the Avenue Arts Studio Gallery this month, with a First Fridays reception scheduled from 6 to 8:30 p.m. tomorrow. The exhibit is called “One Thousand Days.”

Elder worked fast; Lib says he would paint between 150 and 200 paintings a year in the family’s rec room, which doubled as his studio.

“He had a table in the rec room, where he could hear the TV, and we could all see him (working). Sometimes he would laugh at jokes on the TV.

“It wasn’t unusual for him to complete a painting in the evening.”

Elder became an artist purely by chance after Mickey signed up for oil painting classes but soon abandoned them, leaving a perfectly good set of paints and canvases unused.

“My dad, never one to let a purchase go, said, ‘I’ll give it a try,’” Lib says. “He just picked up the paints and said, ‘We won’t let these go to waste.’”

He’d found his calling and was soon painting scenes from out of his own life — the rural Virginia landscapes he was surrounded by growing up; the Chesapeake Bay seascapes where he discovered passions for fishing, crabbing and bird watching during childhood vacations; and even the lush, tropical scenery of Vietnam, where he served during the war.

“The man knew what he was doing,” says Mattox, who first saw Elder’s work when she came upon Lib selling them at a festival.

“He was very detail-oriented. Everybody I’ve shown (his paintings to) has just been smitten at the stories behind them. People are really identifying with them. They’re (depicting) things they’ve lived or seen or heard about.”

Mattox says Elder is the ultimate example of how practice really can make perfect.

“Look how much you grow in your own artistic skill by being prolific and sitting down to do it every day,” she says. “He taught himself how to use the medium.”
Lib, who is a glass blower now living in Gladys, and her three brothers — Jack, a photographer, Doug, a videographer, and Bruce, a musician — inherited their
father’s paintings, and she started selling them at festivals a few years ago.

There are several she’ll never sell, but Lib says she doesn’t really have a hard time parting with her dad’s work.

“(It’s) always so well-received,” she says. “I feel like I’m sharing him. People usually love them so much that I feel like he’s going on and being appreciated.”

Lib will donate a portion of all sales of her father’s work to the Salem VA Medical Center, which serves veterans throughout the state for psychiatric care and throughout southwestern Virginia for medical and surgical care.

In addition to Elder’s work, Mattox will also display several busts of World War II Allied leaders.

Richard Pumphrey, a Lynchburg College art professor, is sculpting the busts — so far, he’s done Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman — for the National D-day Memorial in Bedford.

Other shows:

The Academy of Fine Arts, 600 Main St.
The oil paintings of Rosalie Day White will be on display in the Academy Gallery in an exhibit called “New Works,” while the Up Front Gallery will feature the mixed media work of Starla Shaeff and Lois P. Crewdson.
The First Fridays reception will run from 5 to 8 p.m., with music by Square Peg and catering by Cook’s Alley, and both exhibits will remain up through July 31.
Other Academy exhibits include “Impressions of the Academy of Music Theatre” in the Arts and Education Building from July 3 to Aug. 7; the photographs of John Murphy Jr., in the UBS Satellite Gallery through July 29; and “Vietnam: Through the Lens of a New Generation,” an exhibit of Leah Meadows’ photographs, at Magnolia Foods.

Speakertree Records, 522 5th Street
Mixed media artist Joanna McGlothlin will display her collages, with an opening reception scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m. Refreshments will be provided by the Good Cherry.
McGlothlin grew up in western New York and was always collecting something. Her mixed media collages are born from a desire to showcase the items she has gathered around her — she’s a sucker for packaging, has a hard time throwing things away and loves old photographs.

Riverviews Artspace, 901 Jefferson St.
The Craddock-Terry Gallery will debut “Richard Nickel: Recent Works,” a display of vibrant, lighthearted ceramic pieces, installations and paintings. Nickel, program director for Old Dominion University’s Ceramics and Art Education Departments, uses his work to address themes of love, power and absurdity through folk-art inspired imagery.
The reception will run from 5:30 to 8 p.m. and will feature the bluesy alt-folk tunes of local musician Blake Reams.
The lower level of Riverviews will also be open for the building’s first Urban Art Bazaar, which will give local artists and artisans the opportunity to come together and sell their work during First Fridays.