KNOW: Beloved artist/teacher’s obsessions, legacy explored in ‘Seeds to Sow’

By the time artists wrap up long careers, they have often amassed considerable outside validation – a slew of major exhibitions, grants, residencies and such. But Winthrop University Associate Professor Emeritus Paul Martyka, who died unexpectedly while leaving his studio late one night in January 2016, didn’t seek accolades. This ornery, beloved artist’s legacy is a collection of ambitious works that deserve a larger audience and students who were inspired by him, loved him and sometimes collaborated with him.

“Seeds to Sow: Remembering Paul Martyka,” at Winthrop University Galleries through Nov. 16, covers more than 40 years of work by an artist who brought rigor, wonder and a sense of the absurd to his explorations of the unknowable as it existed in the mathematical, the spiritual, and the stars.

Martyka’s prints, drawings, paintings, mixed media works, and collages are exacting and detail-filled, but roiling with emotion. They are crammed with references to ancient and modern religious practice including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Pythagoreanism, and they abound with pyramids, spheres, cartographic elements, aerial views, birds, boxes, insects and structures.

“He originally wanted to be a mathematician,” says painter Janice Mueller, who first dealt with Martyka as her grad school advisor and later worked with him as a faculty member. “You can see that in his work.”

As the title indicates, “Seeds to Sow” is not just about Martyka – it is also about a web of relationships and the people he inspired.

Martyka held his students to high, often maddening standards, expecting them to bring to their work the same attention to detail he brought to his own. Jonathan Prichard, a self-described “property-based performance artist,” took nearly every class Martyka taught. “I remember him asking me, ‘Why are these marks vertical?’ ‘Is that the right head on this body?’” But he also had what Prichard calls “poetic sensibilities.”

In Martyka’s collaborations with students, both current and former, he stepped out of his role as teacher and worked as an equal partner. Knowing that Martyka was a natural performer, prankster and lover of costumes, Prichard brought him into his performance projects.

“Seeds to Sow” includes collaborations with former students Reed Elliott, Mike Gentry and Matthew Cordell. Most notable among these are Martyka’s and Elliott’s “Public Relations,” a series of small, inscrutable mixed-media collages.

A short film by alumnus Dylan Bannister is filled with wistful and funny remembrances from students, friends and colleagues: collaborations that did and didn’t happen; rituals, traditions and pranks; and Martyka’s odd assortment of kindnesses toward students, such as creating pins for their sales and auctions, changing their tires, and bartending at their events.

While Martyka’s interests and his attention to detail were consistent over time, his execution changed over the years. In large acrylic figurative paintings from the 1980s and 1990s, architecture-inspired etchings from the early 1970s, or aerial-view drawings from 1980, there is a spare, airy quality. But later work is more frenetic and packed with imagery.

While many artists peak early, Martyka’s later works – his cut-paper collages – are his most impressive. For these pieces, he created strips of hand-printed paper, which he meticulously cut and pieced together so they appear interwoven. While these vivid works are a pleasure to view, their intensity is almost nerve-wracking.

In many of these works, symbolism recedes and pure obsession takes over. The finished collages are often in eccentric shapes that appear to reference classical architecture or tombstones, although one work on view, “Three Blind Mice, See How They Fall,” is in the shape of three dropping bombs.

There is a lot going on in “Seeds to Sow,” so much that a visitor could miss something important – for example, the display cases that include studio and exhibition ephemera, etchings, sketches and notes.

Tucked away in one case is a remarkable, poignant item – a large note-covered envelope overflowing with strips of paper destined for collages yet to be made, evidence of an artist who never stopped thinking, never stopped creating.

This story is part of an Observer underwriting project with the Thrive Campaign for the Arts, supporting arts journalism in Charlotte.

‘Seeds to Sow’

Winthrop University Galleries, Rock Hill; winthrop.edu/galleries; 803-323-2493; through Nov. 16.

This story was originally published November 1, 2018 at 12:32 PM.