A good professor gets students further interested in a topic. A great professor shares his passions with the community.
The founder of the group "Los Sonsabitches," Bryan Wheeler not only has been creating works of art and teaching art appreciation for years at Texas Tech, but has written original music, even developing a small band of loyal followers. With a passion for both music and art, Wheeler integrates West Texas culture into his work.
As I sat in on one of his classes on Wednesday afternoon, I saw that many students responded to Wheeler well. He put up a slide presentation of works of art on the projector then proceeded to offer 10 bonus points to the students who could name the musical artist in the background.
When one student offered the correct answer - Miles Davis - I realized that this was not just any old effort to gain a good report with his students, but it was a process of slowly teaching them to appreciate.
Afterward I was able to ask the professor a few questions.
Roe: Is there one area you prefer, music or art?
Wheeler: Jerry Reed, a legendary songwriter, guitar player and actor was asked which he preferred and he said it was like asking which leg he liked better. Music and art are the same thing, just making something out of nothing, noise out silence, presence out of absence. They complement each other too, in the sense that making art is solitary. You spend hours by yourself, living in your own head. Music is collaborative and social. I mean you're often alone when you're writing, but the process isn't complete until you're playing with other people, in front of other people, out having a good time.
Roe: How does your music spill over into your art and vice versa?
Wheeler: When I'm looking at a piece that I'm working on, trying to figure out what to do next, I'll often be playing, hammering out something new. When I'm actually working on a piece, I'll usually be singing or humming something that I'm working on. I don't think there is a literal connection between the end products of the two, like, say, there is with Terry Allen, where several of his songs are about art or the art world, though.
Roe: Is one more difficult for you than the other?
Wheeler: Initially, I think making art came a little easier, probably because I had always, even as a kid, drawn, colored, painted, etc. Plus, my brother Jeff was already in grad school for art, making cool stuff when I decided to start making things. That was when I was 25 and I'd been playing guitar and writing for four years. I was living in Montana at that time, where winters are long, cold and dark and a person needs hobbies. I think both music and art were difficult, but because I had so much time to do it - I would play anywhere from four to eight hours a day from the time I first picked up a guitar. I got better quickly. Now, generally, the technical side of both are pretty intuitive; it's the ideas that I struggle with.
Roe: Where do you draw your inspiration for each?
Wheeler: Even after I started making a lot of art, I wasn't really looking at artists as inspiration. I began writing much earlier than either playing or making art and was heavily influenced by writers and poets like Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Joan Didion, Denise Levertov, Richard Hugo, Ed Dorn and, later, David Foster Wallace. Musically, I grew up listening to my mom's country 8-tracks: Willie Nelson, Charlie Rich and Glen Campbell. I went through a Grateful Dead phase and, when in Montana, listened to a lot of jazz and blues, from delta blues to big band, bop and fusion. At that time too, grunge was coming down I-90 from Seattle and influencing what local scene there was. I was living in Missoula at the time. Bands like the Melvins, Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and later of course, Nirvana were huge up there.
Roe: Are there any running themes both share?
Wheeler: A majority of my experience has been in, and all over, the American West. So there are Western themes in my art and I use some of the musical forms that have come out of the West or at least are now associated with the West, like the occasional slow waltz. The main themes of both though have a lot to do with examining alternative viewpoints to the dominant kind of trajectories of contemporary Western culture. My old man was a preacher who, along with my mom, was always telling me and my brothers to think for ourselves; don't let anybody tell us what is or isn't, what's right or wrong, to be critical, figure things out for ourselves. So a lot of my work is just that, trying to figure things out for myself.
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