Now professor emeritus, Dr. Carl Gombert returns to Maryville College with a new September art gallery exhibit
Aug. 26, 2025
When beloved Maryville College Art Professor Dr. Carl Gombert announced his retirement in the spring of 2024, a collective wail of lamentation could be heard ringing out over College Hill.
As it turns out, Scots nation needn’t have fretted. Gombert, now sporting the title professor emeritus, taught a course per semester during the 2024-25 academic year, audited an additional course each semester, and turned up for numerous theatrical productions, athletic events and other activities that made it feel as if he hadn’t left at all.
I always had a lot of freedom at the College, so (retirement) doesn’t seem all that different,” Gombert said. “Maybe less hectic at times, but I am still looking forward to sitting in on classes and attending music, theater, and sporting events.”
Now, starting Aug. 29, he’s bringing a collection of works to the Blackberry Farm and William “Ed” Harmon galleries of the Clayton Center for the Arts as one of the inaugural exhibits of the 2025-26 academic year. He’s still the same resident “weird, old dude lurking about,” as he self-deprecatingly described himself in announcing his retirement — just not in a creepy way.
And certainly not in a non-productive way.
“I also had the opportunity to teach a week-long residential class at Arrowmont (School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee), and I did a big mural for the Knoxville Museum of Art,” he said. “I also have done some traveling, and I am reading more than ever, including proofreading for friends with works in progress. I am playing in three different bands, painting a lot, writing a bit, and so on. I also do a lot of farting around.”
A native of Ohio, Gombert paid for art lessons as a child by delivering newspapers, eventually earning a bachelor’s in drawing from the University of Akron, a master’s in painting from Kent State University, and a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary fine arts at Texas Tech University. He taught at Maryville College for 31 years before retirement, but like so many successful academics who are considered Scots even though they hold no degree from MC, his influence reached far beyond the classroom.
From sitting in with the Maryville College Pep Band to volunteering to help Biology Professor Dr. Drew Crain pick apples from the Maryville College orchards (which he did last week), Gombert was and remains an active member of the MC community. Returning to campus to show some off the works he’s created in retirement, along with a few older pieces, is a nice way of reconnecting with that community.
The exhibit opens Aug. 29, and normal gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, with extended hours during Clayton Center evening events. “Retro Spectacles” runs through Friday, Sept. 26, when a closing reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. The receptions, he added, are always a pleasant time to “meet some of the new students, see friends and colleagues, and eat Peanut M&Ms.”
“One new piece called ‘Farush Dreams of Freedom,’ is a return to the kinds of big hyper-realist heads I was doing years ago, and I have included it with a few others,” he said, adding that he’ll most likely title the exhibit “Retro Spectacles. “I also am doing a lot of drawing from life these days, so I am intending to show a variety of things done from direct observation of live models over the years. I am also thinking about juxtaposing a bunch of smaller quilt-like paintings into a large multi-piece installation on one of the gallery walls.”
“It’s good to get the work out of the studio and to see it in a gallery and to have a chance to see how people react, although this often becomes an opportunity to learn what isn’t good about the piece and what needs to be done to make the piece stronger,” he said.
