PAINTING FOR LIFE

Wayne Manns says he probably has more paintings on campus than any other living IU artist.\nThe Arts Administration graduate student and oil painter has been using a paintbrush and canvas as his means for political expression, and not even a serious medical diagnosis can stop him. \n"I was always able to draw as a kid but I'd never known that I could transfer all this stuff inside me, I had all this stuff I wanted to say," Manns said, while reclining on a brown wicker chair in his home, the shock yellow cover of the Cornell West Reader relaxing on his lap. \nAbout 10 years ago, Manns was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, the most common blood-borne virus in the United States, a disease which follows a slow progression over mounting years. But the liver is the only organ in the body that can heal itself, Manns said. And healing himself is exactly what he seems determined to do. \nManns first tried undergoing western treatment -- a process similar to chemotherapy, which he described as "six months of hell, headaches and a tremendous amount of body pain."\n Manns discovered later he preferred the Eastern regimen of Chinese herbs, milk thistle, a low fat and low calorie diet as well as yoga, Tae-Kwan-Do, Tai Chi and acupuncture.\nA 10-day treatment in Asheville, N.C. cost him $3,500. As a result, Manns has been attempting to sell his work in greater numbers to cover the costs.\nBut his work is expensive, and he's in a town filled with broke college kids.\nArt hangs liberally about Manns's Bloomington home, both others' work and his own.\nHe points out his latest painting behind him, explains that the black images hauling cotton toward the viewer are meant to show the pride of his ancestors even while under slavery.\n"Black artists, we try to seek validation in a world, in American culture which is highly racist toward black art," he said. "Up until about the last maybe 20 years you didn't hear much about black visual artists."\nThey are hearing about him now.\nIn the last 10 years, Manns has shown his work at a myriad of art shows nationally and around the world, including Brazil and Germany. Six of his works are displayed on IU's campus, several of which hang in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center. \nHe painted the piece that hangs in the center's main meeting hall called "The Crossing" of black jazz musicians traversing the river toward New York. It's a parody of a famous painting depicting George Washington and company crossing the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. Manns points out the featured live jazz artists from a photo of his work: Jimmy Heath, David Baker, Ornette Coleman.\nBaker, a distinguished professor and chair of the IU Jazz Studies Department, has known Manns for three or four years.\n"I suspect there will come a time given his talent that his paintings will become so valuable that we will not be able to afford them," said Baker of Manns. "He's got that much talent."\nIn Manns's painting studio, an upright piano stands next to his easel and old record sleeves of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday lean against the windows. \n Manns grew up around jazz musicians, among them his jazz piano-playing father who belonged to a group called B Bop Inc. based out of Atlantic City where he grew up.\n"I had a father who was very, very creative and very, very self-destructive," Manns said. "My father was a heroine addict who was also a genius; he was just a very brilliant former composer arranger."\nIn his father's world of dance halls, clubs and burlesque shows, the young Manns stored away much of the inspiration that he would draw on later in life. He recalls the first time he ever applied a paintbrush to a palette. Liking the finished results, he attempted to sell it to a friend for $500. The friend misinterpreted the price tag to mean $5,000 and told him that he would give him $3,500 in consolation.\nThat was enough to keep him painting.\n"Being a painter is not an easy gig," he said. "This is not something that I would tell anybody to do unless you got the absolute passion for it." \nAs he explains, one reason why oil paintings are so expensive is that the paint is so expensive. A single small tube the size of a travel toothpaste costs about $40, and it takes many tubes to cover a canvas.\nSo why oil paint?\n"The masters, Picasso, Rembrandt, they worked in oil," he said simply. "Acrylic paint, if you look at a color like orange, that's the luster you get from oil, it's much deeper. I think for what I do it's important that I get rich deep pigments and colors. I think you should try to go as rich as you can." \nAs he says this, he takes out two tubes of paint, and dabbing some on his finger he compares the difference by brushing it on his canvas. He says his favorite artist is Gauguin.\n"I mean you go through IU and the (Indiana Memorial) Union and you see all these beautiful paintings, but they're all white men," Manns said. "And I'd love to see at least one black man or black woman or Hispanic man or Hispanic woman, just so that I know that I'm in a place that's for me where I can feel safe."\nManns said he hopes newly appointed IU president Adam W. Herbert will pose for a portrait sometime in the future. He also said he thinks the mural in Woodburn Hall depicting the Ku Klux Klan should be on display, so that people will remember the country's history.\nManns also painted a portrait of Won-Joon Yoon, an IU graduate student who was gunned down by a white supremacist in 1999. He gave the piece to Yoon's family. He said Yoon's father cried when he gave it to him.\n"That was the most important painting I ever did," Manns said.\nManns said that it is important for white people in particular to see his work so they can be reminded of civil wrongs. He seeks to get his work into as mainstream a venue as possible.\n"One thing I learned from my father," he said, "is that everybody goes to the bathroom, everybody does the same thing. We all have the same needs, desires, and when you think about it, really we're really that close to each other anyway"