Waller and Weaver:Muralists on Cape Ann

Two Cape Ann artists have created many of the striking murals that not only adorn the interior and exterior walls and windows of a growing number of local businesses, but also catch the fancies of lots of their customers. These artists love their work.

Susan Waller from Rockport and Jeff Weaver from Gloucester both pursued and cultivated their innate artistic talents, were inspired and captivated by Cape Ann's natural beauty, customs, legacies and working-class people, and now specialize in their own mediums.

Weaver, whose parents encouraged him to pursue art, is well past the struggling artist phase, has built a name for himself, and is happy where he is today.

But, Waller, who was discouraged by her father to make a career in art, says, "I am still going through the struggling artist phase, and I'm not well-known yet." Although she is working on a large outdoor mural in town, Waller is eying another goal down the road that would take her out of the country for a while.

Susan Waller

Born in Manhattan, Waller, the daughter of a fine artist, book illustrator, industrial designer and architect dad, grew up in Pigeon Cove and attended Rockport schools before furthering her art education at the Art Students League in New York, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and San Francisco Art Institute. She also earned a Massachusetts Teaching Certificate to teach K-12 art from Salem State College in 1983. "I learned more about art from my dad than from eight years of college," Waller said in hindsight. Her father also taught her "You do your best or not at all," she said.

"I'm a painter before anything else. I'm an oil painter. I paint people. I'm a realist. I want to paint life," explained Waller, who found herself already drawing people by age 12. "The drawing is a slow, painful process because I won't stop until it's perfect," she added. "Once I start working with color and paint, it's like God is working through my hand."

Putting bread on the table with art has already led Waller down many trails. She raised a son, Christopher, during these treks, too. Besides being a muralist, she has been a fine, graphic and head artist, in this case for the Westminster Stained Glass Studios in New York City, a book illustrator and a calligrapher. Waller continues to give private oil painting lessons.

In conjunction, Waller has taught art at many institutions, including at North Shore Community College and local high schools. She once headed the art department at Gloucester High School. "I love teaching. I've been teaching since I was in art school. Painting is my life; today I'm loving it. I never expect to make any money with it."

"Michelangelo is one of my favorite artists. He's what got me into wanting to do murals," said Waller. She has completed murals in New York, Minneapolis, Boston and Gloucester. Assisted by her students at GHS, she did her first mural in town at the Gloucester House Restaurant in 1991.

Waller is currently working on an exterior mural - The Gloucester Fiesta People - for the St. Peter's Club, to be paid in part by a grant. She has already consulted the club's owners, the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association, and many club members about what they want. Waller has already made a sketch of the mural, which will have the statue of St. Peter at center stage, flanked by the fiesta founders, Capt. and Mrs. Salvatore Favazza, monuments and fiesta scenes from their perspective. "I want to give these people something they can be proud of. I've always loved the fishermen. They are a tough bunch, but I can get along with any walk of life," she said.

In the near future, Waller would like to study the buon fresco technique of painting in Florence, Italy. "My need as a practicing artist and teacher is to explore and perfect the early studio techniques and materials used by Renaissance artists, particularly those used by the great master, Michelangelo Buonarroti, so that I can come back here and teach buon fresco and also do murals in it in public buildings," Waller said.

Jeff Weaver

At a very young age, Jeff Weaver, who was born in Framingham, knew that being an artist "... is all I would ever do. I've been doing art my entire life," he added. "As a youngster, I was inclined to draw the things and people that I saw around me - my parents, pets. People paid me to do their portraits when I was 14. I started doing murals in high school for drama plays."

Weaver later graduated from the Museum of Fine Arts School. "I've studied everyone, including the old masters," said the artist. The aspiring artist even met Norman Rockwell in person at the master's Stockbridge home when he was 12.

Weaver also knew that Gloucester is where he wanted to settle after his father, an optometrist and an amateur artist who decorated his son's bedroom walls with animal murals he drew and painted, used to take him here to go deep-sea fishing. The younger Weaver did move to Gloucester after high school graduation.

But how was he to make a living as an artist here? "Back in the 1970s selling artwork in Gloucester was difficult," Weaver recalled. So, the artist worked the waterfront at a fish plant and later at the marine railways during his struggling artist phase for obvious income and to live and get a feel for the very art that he would later be painting. He met the waterfront community and also discovered art niches here.

One of those niches was creative boat painting. Weaver brushed on figures in oil paints like saints or mermaids or animals' heads, including those of foxes, on the bows or wheelhouses of Gloucester fishing vessels like the Little Flower, Vincie & Josephine and Sea Fox. He also made several fishing trips out on the Little Flower, aka Piccolo Fiore. "I used to trade paintings for fish," he said.

The boat painting led to a wall mural commission from the former Tony's Fruitland. "That was my first paid mural job," Weaver explained. Since 1972, he has done approximately 100 murals from Florida to Maine, the largest being 30 by 60 feet in Boston's North End. Weaver's murals decorate the walls of numerous Gloucester businesses, including Destino's Sub Shop, The Causeway Restaurant, Sunbanque and the latest this summer, The Lanesville Package Store, which has a summertime Lane's Cove scene with lots of the Cove's regulars depicted in it. He signs off many of his works by painting in somewhere an image of his 1950 green Dodge. "I'm known in Gloucester as a muralist or sign painter. Doing so has connected me to the city and its working side," he said.

"The mural thing is a large-scale format which can be a little daunting to some artists. I've learned to do something large in a reasonable time that is affordable to the average person and at the same time, achieve something that is good. Most of my work is for the average person," Weaver explained.

"Right now I work a lot in the fine art line," he added. "Murals have become a side line. I paint primarily in oils. My favorite medium for the murals is acrylic. I'm locked into full-tilt oil painting on canvas - that's where I want to be." Weaver runs a gallery at 199 Main Street in Gloucester, and he regularly exhibits his works at local art association shows.

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