Tony Fanning’s Eulogy for Clyde M. Fowler

I’m privileged to have known Clyde as a teacher, a mentor, a traveling companion, a collaborator, but mostly as a friend.

When I was first asked to take on the honor of speaking today, I found it quite daunting. Not only because I hate speaking in front a crowds, but because I would be solely expressing all of the love, the joy, and raw emotion that we all felt this week before and after Clyde’s passing. So I decided that the best way to approach this would be to listen, to read, to observe, and try and absorb as much as I could from everyone around me, trying not to miss a single detail. Because Clyde really liked his details.

When I would mention Clyde’s name this week, everyone had something they wanted to tell me. They would begin with a smile or laugh as they started to tell their tale. Each story was about what he had given, what he had shared, and how good he had made them feel. Often some were not aware until much later of a seed he had planted. But when they did, they believed that it had been given to them, and them alone. Each story brought up another story, and so on. This would’ve made Clyde very happy, because we all know how much he loved being the center of attention…and he was damn good at it.

Clyde lived a somewhat simple life. Simple things made Clyde happy, like sunsets, the beach, dancing, and movies; white twinkle lights, sequins and a little glitter. He loved his home here in Burlington with his church. He loved his family, and the friends he grew up with here. I discovered this week that he played golf and watched sports with his high school buddies. I know what you’re all thinking…Clyde played golf? That was my first reaction too, my second was…. I wonder what he would wear? I found out later that his idea of playing golf was to take control of driving the cart and serving the refreshments…. I like this kind of golf course.

He loved painting. He would work when the weather was to his liking by opening his garage door and letting the sunlight stream in. There was no rush, no deadline to meet. He just enjoyed the medium, the smell, and the sensation of creating art. There were no preconceived messages or set direction in his paintings. Instead he allowed each work to develop according to the nature of each added stroke, color, and shape. His imagery was strongly influenced by the masters he so admired and he grew stronger learning from. I always thought of his work as poetic expressions of the life he lead. Recently I was fortunate to have nine of his beautiful paintings hung on the walls of a set I designed for the TV series “Better Call Saul.” I have never heard him more excited. He was thrilled by the idea of his work being broadcast to the world. And from the moment he put down that phone, he was planning his red carpet attire for the Emmy awards.

But we all know that his greatest love was The School of the Arts, its faculty, its staff, and especially its students. He was one of the strongest forces in nurturing the institution from infancy to what it is today, one of the finest art schools in the country. He infused his passion for art and it creators into each one of us students. He would focus with laser precision on a glint of talent that each of us had. He would knock you down and make you cry, then make you laugh at yourself, and then at him. He would then pick you back up and lift you higher than you ever had been lifted before, then he would let you fall, on your own, taking the controls, knowing you would land solidly on your feet. He would do everything in his power to get you to realize what your talent was, to scratch at it, to grab hold of it and make it grow. To push it out into the world and share it with others. He was relentless in and out of the classroom, it was exhausting, he wouldn’t stop until he knew you had it firmly in hand, and then he would gracefully let you go.

This week I was fortunate to meet Shannon Brinkley through her blog. Shannon was a student in Visual Arts at UNCSA. She now resides in Egypt where she teaches art. She gave me permission to read the beautiful piece she wrote for Clyde titled “Marks of a Teacher.” To me this beautifully expresses what every one of his students experienced. These are her words.

This evening I walk down the road to my local fruit stand in the dark, picking my way through the sludge of mud left over from recent Cairo rains, my eyes misted. Clyde, a teacher who made a profound impression, is moving on to other worlds. He was tough. The toughest teacher I have ever had. I earned my first “C” for a careless figure drawing, a woman tipping forward into space, unbalanced.

Through his tutelage, I learned to draw from memory, to draw from my gut, to find movement on the page, to articulate nuanced poses, to highlight brevity, and to slash through the page with grit, tears and angst, only to find repose as works wound their way to conclusion.

Like squeezing water from a stone, poetry was found by digging through the drawn repetition of countless, mundane paper bags filled with sand. He would shout out, his voice echoing in the lofty room “the weight of the sand, the restraint of the tape, the release of the papers edge.”

One afternoon early in the fall, he invited myself, Liam, and the two Seans to his garage, where we cracked into abstract art works and dipped our brushes into molten wax, a formative afternoon in my young love of abstraction. He shared images of his favorite artworks, Motherwell and Rauschenberg, Kahlo and Rothko. All part of the continued lesson to cultivate an acknowledgment of other artists as holy as the artist process itself.

I had more than one meltdown in our critiques, where I eventually found my voice and learned to step outside my nervously high-pitched tones.

To continue your traditions, Clyde, I teach gesture drawing by launching cups of water into the air, by throwing sponges to wave daftly to the ground, and sending marbles to bounce their way through the eternity of scribbled lines on paper! One might think a drawing teacher primarily teaches you to see, witch Clyde did; more importantly, he taught me how to move through the world, as a gesture and a life force, with strength, with grace and with a bit of grit.

Thank you Shannon for your beautiful words.

And finally I want to thank Clyde. He saw something in me and quietly guided me into becoming an artist. He made me into the man I am. Our friendship never stopped growing. We could never stop talking; since the day we met, it’s been one long conversation, which I hoped would never end. Even this week as his life was ending, he took my call from Angus’s mobile. I could hear him faintly talking as he made poor Angus relay his words to me. Of course, it wasn’t being relayed exactly as he wanted, so in true Clyde fashion he made him hold the phone so he could speak. His every thought and word was to support me, to lift me up, to keep me going, so I could keep creating. He was a beautiful man that lived his life on his own terms. He was a loving, kind, and giving man. I hope in my lifetime that I can give back a fraction of what he gave to me. I feel secure having him in heaven, bossing everyone around, and keeping watch over all of us.