Sean O’Meallie’s playfully
strange wooden sculptures grace some 200 private collections,
a dozen corporate collections and a respectable smattering of
public collections. Not bad for an artist who, after years as
a professional toy designer, only turned his hand to fine art
in 1994.
But ask an O’Meallie collector to describe the work—or
even just tell you what they like about it—and you’re
likely to draw a blank. People grope for descriptives: the word
“whimsical” is frequently heard. The formal langauge
of art criticism isn’t really designed for this type of work.
Thankfully,
we don’t have to be able to explain O’Meallie’s
work to be crazy about it. Born in New Orleans in 1955, Sean O’Meallie
studied Fine Art at the University of New Orleans from 1973 to
1977. While there, he studied with graphic artist Howard Jones,
painters Jim Richard and Tom Young, and sculptor George Rowan,
and worked as a studio assistant to the nationally known artist
Ida Kohlmeyer.
After graduating, he moved to Colorado Springs in 1977. O’Meallie
produced no art for seventeen years, feeling he had nothing meaningful
to add to the artistic dialogue. Instead, he designed toys. That
work led to exclusive work with a toy inventor based in New York
City as a creative consultant, designer, engineer, illustrator
and model maker, traveling extensively to New York, Los Angeles
and Europe from 1987 to 1997.
In 1994, encouraged by friends, O’Meallie included some “sculptural
doodlings” in a small group exhibition at the Roby Mill Gallery
in Colorado Springs. His artwork has been continually exhibited
since that modest beginning. His former role as a toy maker influences
much of his subsequent work in both sensibility and substance.
After years of building technically-precise prototypes, O’Meallie’s
detailed wooden structures are often brilliantly constructed.
On some pieces, weird hand-cranks activate movable parts and pull-toy
noises. All are lovingly hand-finished until the painted wood
feels like satin, making each work a pleasure to touch.
Meanwhile,
writers frequently conjugate the word “whimsy” when
describing his art, as in “O’Meallie’s painted
and carved wood combines a well-finished surface with a sense
of whimsy and a willingness to follow wherever his intuition leads”2
or “His whimsical imagery is buttressed by a terrific sense
of proportion.”3
Those able to resist that term still
tout the work’s playful quality: “With surfaces that
tempt the viewer with their child-like optical opulence and vigorously
oppositional colors, O’Meallie 's work deceives the viewer
into his imagination in the same way trompe l’oeil paintings
deceive a viewer into reality.”4 Another
scribe puts it more simply: “Half Matt Groening, half Salvador
Dali.”5
“You have to laugh at yourself,” says O’Meallie
. “There’s a certain kind of tiresome art that, in order
to understand what it’s about, you have to define the artist’s
symbols—what it means to be the artist. My own personal symbolism
is not as important as universal symbolism.”7
When not busy making art, O’Meallie also actively serves
in many art-advisory roles in the local and regional communities,
including the distinction of being the only artist on the governing
board of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
Footnotes:
1 “The World of Sean O’Meallie.”
The Gazette, December 19, 1999. By Katie Johnson
2 “Metal and more: Sangre de Cristo celebrates …” The
Gazette, June 14, 2002, pg 21-24. By Mark Arnest
3 Colorado Springs Telegraph Gazette.
By Mark Arnest (No date given)
4 “I Dare You: Contemporary art …”. Art review by Noel
Black. Colorado Springs Independent, May 30 - June 5, 2002,
p 24
5 Groening is the creator of The Simpsons
6 “From Hay to Nail Polish: UCCS faculty art show full of
experimentation, skill”. By Malcolm Howard
7 “LOCAL FOLK”. The Colorado Springs Independent
News Weekly, Jan. 22, 1997. By Jane McBee
O’Meallie: “When I make art for General Consumption,
I play to his sense and sensibility. He is my audience & I must
entertain him in some way to get his to think & consider what
I wish to say. Visually, graphic says it loudest, but then, quiet
and thoughtful says it best. I try to use both fondly along with
a little creativity and variety to further manifest the communicative
possibilities of objects and all their darned persistence. After
all, life and existence are real bafflers, aren’t they?”
More O’Meallie: “I wish to be
a sculptor of provocative objects. I use wood for its tactile
readiness. My interest is with the challenge of anthropological
discourse as possible through objects inclusive of the flux that
invariably pesters their encounter. I see myriad targets and distractions
within human activity and draw on the underlying tension of this
for subject matter. My hope is to create good and useful modulation.”
