Parallel lives colliding on White Street
Mary Springer came to Eureka Springs more than 40 years ago to start an art school. That school is her legacy, and her only wish is to live long enough to teach in the new building when it is finished. “I have outlived my tools,” she said.
“I came here in 1981, from Memphis. I came wanting to start an art school. I tried to buy the old Perkins Mill downtown, but somebody outbid me. It had that building, the barn across the street, three houses and eighteen city lots. We would have been right in the center of town.”
Mary Springer and Doug Stowe started Eureka Springs School of the Arts in 1998. It formed out of the Eureka Springs Guild of Artists and Craftspeople.
“Elsie and Louis Freund are all around me,” Mary said. “They were dear, dear friends and mentors. Elsie and Louis were all about art education. And that’s what Doug and I wanted the guild to be. Most of the guild wanted it to be a co-op, solely to promote the individual artists. We always wanted to take it into the educational realm. So, we finally told them we aren’t going to do this anymore and it was dissolved. We took the $6,000 that was in the guild’s bond and with that we started ESSA.
“Doug called an old-time friend, Bob Ebendorf, an internationally known jeweler who has taught at all the major [art] schools in the country. He came down for a class to talk with us. He arranged for Doug to go to Penland School of Craft and for me to go to San Antonio for the Art Colonies of America conference. I got to meet and talk with people. All the major funders were there, and Doug got to find out how a school worked.
“We all came back together. We started forming a board, and the first person we asked was Eleanor Lux. I wrote the 501(c)3. We got that and started the next year. Eleanor gets credit for being our third founder and first board member.”
The school started when Mary taught a week-long free class at her studio in Hogscald. Models were her friends who volunteered to pose nude.
“I think because I’m a sculptor I see things as shapes in space. Shadows and light are shapes in space that fit together. Once you learn to see that you can learn to draw anything. Negative space and positive space. I teach not how to draw, but a new way to see,” she said.
“Doug and I had talked with Elsie and Louis for a number a years about starting something purely educational. That was Louis’s big thing, passing the torch. They had done it in ‘40s and ‘50s and said it was time for the younger generation to take over that aspect.”
The 86-year-old laughs and says, “We were the younger generation then.”
Mary said their dream started 26 years ago. “Our first class lasted one whole week. We all taught for free. ESSA expanded to where we now have 55 acres, 7 major studios and a significant endowment from the Windgate Foundation. I’ve got to live long enough that I can teach in that new building. What’s so funny is one day I was looking at Doug’s hair and he was looking at mine. We both got grey. We said if we’re gonna do this we better hurry up. And Doug and I share birthdays!
The Eureka Springs School of the Arts is on US62W, on the way to the new opera house.
“The first two years we did one week at a time. Then we went to two weeks. Then I wrote a grant to the Arkansas Arts Council for emerging artists. They gave us $14,500 for three years to hire a part-time director. That’s when we started going to multiple weeks. And at the same time, we bought that first little house. Since then, we bought the house next door and acreage behind it as well as the house back on the point. There are four duplexes for instructors from out of state who are teaching and artists in residency.
“I teach life drawing. I used to teach metal and sculpting, but we have better teachers now. It used to be mostly local teachers because people didn’t know about us. But we got internationally known now and people come to us from all over the country wanting to teach.”
Mary Springer lost her husband in Vietnam after turning down a full art scholarship at Baylor University to marry him.
“Charles was a captain in the infantry. He received the Distinguished Service Cross. We started dating at 14, he was 15. We married when I was 17. I don’t know exactly what happened. All I know is what the government told me. My son is writing a book called Reflections of My Father Through the Eyes of his Men.
“After Charles died, I went to college to be an artist and discovered I was a sculptor, not a draftsman. Memphis Academy of Art is where I went, it has since been named Memphis College of Art. The academy was 80 percent studio hours and 20 percent academic.”
White Street Walk
Mary Springer, Doug Stowe, Eleanor Lux, Zeek Taylor and John Willer all migrated here from Memphis. “As Carl Jung would say, there is no such thing as coincidence, only synchronicity,” Mary said. “These are parallel lives colliding on White Street. This will be 33 or 34 years of the White Street Walk. Eleanor called me and Zeek to her studio and asked about opening our three galleries up. We did it that first year and then other houses on White Street joined in.”
“I was wanting to help the guild set up an art registry with the Chamber of Commerce and some guy on the panel said ‘Art who’s that? Doesn’t he own the filling station?’” There has been very little representation from the city at all.”
Bill Clinton swore Mary onto the Arkansas Arts Council representing the district that extends from Mountain Home to Fort Smith. “There are 16 districts and one at-large. I did this for four years but quit to start ESSA. This is where I learned to write grants and what the language was. Around that time, I was working for Helen Walton trying to bring a National Museum of Women in the Arts here. She was a wonderful woman, not pretentious.
“ESSA is my legacy. I came here to start an art school. The proudest thing I’ve done is partner up with Doug and Eleanor.”