Photograph by Patti Gabriel
There are dogs on wheels, clowns on high wires clutching parasols, trapeze artists slumped together at rest, Dot and the Daredevil Poodles. There’s a guy drinking a martini while riding a zebra; a tender romantic interlude called “Corndogs”; a shadow box of “The Clowns Next Door.” More clowns, arms flung in the air as they joyride in a red convertible…
Step right up, see it all at the grand opening of The Funhouse Gallery, a new venue to show Disney’s work in St. Louis. Why a circus theme? “’Cause I’m just having so much fun,” Disney says gaily. Her art didn’t always have the national following it commands now. “In St. Louis, I was so…different,” she says, giving the word its full damning pause. “I did a show here once, I think at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild. Somebody said, ‘You did this?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘Nah, you didn’t.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I did,’ getting prouder and prouder. He said, ‘Nah, your kid did this.’”
Disney found warmer audiences in Georgia, Alabama, Florida. “The South gets it, and they celebrate it,” she says. “In St. Louis, an opening’s a social event: ‘Let’s go drink some wine.’ There aren’t many risk takers here.” She pauses. “I’ve got my self-esteem now, though, now that I’ve been in New York shows and L.A. shows. So I’m, ‘OK, people, this is me,’ and I’m just having fun. I go to museums and see Matisse and these other people and think, ‘They were just being themselves, not trying to fit in a box.’”
If you did try to shove her work into a box, would it be stamped “folk art”?
“People need to communicate with each other, so they have to find words,” she says, sounding like she regrets the necessity. “This is just me. I’m not a Washington University grad; I don’t have a degree. But I went to Atlanta, to the Folk Fest, and thought, ‘Oh my gosh! These are my people!’”
The other possible box is “outsider art.” “Yeah, I don’t know,” she says. “These art-school grads say, ‘I want to become an outsider artist.’ It’s too late. They know too much.”
When Art Institute of Chicago alums gushed, “You’re so creative!” she retorted, “Isn’t everybody?” She had a scholarship to the institute after high school, but she never made it there. “Teenage mother. Horrible marriage. When the kids were little, I just started painting the walls. I had two boys, and I painted all their furniture—cars, cities, designs.”
Art was in her blood: Her father was an architecture professor at Wash. U.; her mother, a photographer; two grandparents also artists. “They have pictures of me in my diapers painting,” she says. Ah, sure, with finger paint. “Nope. A brush.”
Art kept getting her through hell. “Cancer. Twice. In different places. The last was just two years ago—that time was fun, though, much better than the first time. The first time, the boys were in grade school, and I was a single mom. And the house burned—well, just the top half. But this last one, I bought this building [on Columbia Avenue, on The Hill], and I’ve got this patio, and I was able to paint the whole time I was sick. When you get up in the middle of the night not feeling happy—painting soothes me through that. I was in the hospital for days at a time. And then I got spinal meningitis, so that was not good. I’m just so grateful now. I’m really praying.”
Her mother was once a nun, but Disney didn’t grow up with much formal Catholicism. She went to Rosati-Kain High School—“for one day. There were no boys!” Disney’s prayer is “more of a peace meditation, just peace, peace and color. And I like to paint Mary and the angels. Grace. That’s really what it’s about. Doing unto others. I’m just keeping mine simple.”
She lived in Clayton for years and hated it, “’cause you couldn’t do anything. Here I can be obnoxious—freedom in the city. I built a fountain from an old swimming-pool pump with horns, trumpets. I put a rowboat up for an elevated garden. I love to paint outside—the colors are even brighter. There’s a painting in my front room that I did on the ground outside, and then I lifted it up and thought, ‘Oh boy. That’s big.’”
Years into her adulthood, her father said, “Theresa, thank God you didn’t go to the art institute. They would have made you be just like everybody else.” Her nerves scream when a well-wisher says, “Oh, your work’s just like [whoever’s].” “It’s not,” she says. “It is from my soul. I call it soul art. Actually, I call it gambling—that’s what it really is. I’m going to a show this weekend in Atlanta, and I have no idea what’s going to happen. You just have to let go. I’ll be doing portraits. People show me pictures of their dogs on their cellphones, and I paint them. I just love, love, love dogs, and I can’t have one; I travel too much. But when you are making them, you are petting them.”
The Funhouse Gallery is sponsored by two St. Louisans, Ruthie Zarren and Mark Phillips. They used to travel to see Disney’s work and didn’t even realize she lived in St. Louis, too. Her friend and next-door neighbor, photographer Patti Gabriel, made her studio available, and they’re closing off the back parking lot for the November 8 opening, which will be loud with music, color, food, and overdue celebration.
Is there anything somber in the show? “The jackass in the back room,” she says. “That’s about as somber as I get.”
The Funhouse Gallery’s grand opening is November 8, and will be open thereafter by appointment. Go to thefunhousegallery.com or call 314-896-1386 for details.
