Sept. 22, 2023

Without a doubt, this month’s exhibit of works by Dr. Carl Gombert won’t be the last time his talents are on display in the galleries of the Clayton Center for the Arts … but they may well be the last time he hangs his work as a faculty member.

Gombert, a charismatic and gregarious art professor who’s been a Maryville College fixture for 31 years, announced recently that he will retire at the end of the 2023-24 academic year. Through the rest of September, an exhibit of his works — titled “Newer Things” — will be on display in the Blackberry Farm and William “Ed” Harmon galleries at the Clayton Center, and an artist’s reception for Gombert will take place on Sept. 29.

While his retirement isn’t an out-of-the-blue decision, the reaction by students and fellow faculty members alike has been tinged with surprise, he said.

“They’re all like, ‘Wow! Really?’ I guess my childish behavior has misled them, and they don’t realize just how damn old I am,” Gombert said with a chuckle. “There are certain things I’ll miss, and I’ll still be around, but I’m certainly looking forward to spending more time in my own studio.

“People tell me, ‘You’re really productive and get a lot of work done,’ but I’ve always felt like I barely have time to devote to the studio. So I certainly plan on painting a lot and really getting in there and figuring out some work. As the inimitable Bob Dylan said, ‘I’ve got a head full of ideas, and they’re driving me insane.’”

Some of them, at least, have been unleashed this month in the form of rubber stamp ink prints, mixed media works and more that range in size from 6 inches square to several feet long. Like Gombert’s colorful personality, they run the gamut — from a work titled “Selfie # 1” that utilizes the Batman symbol (“Have you ever noticed that when you flip it upside down, it looks like a mouth full of bad teeth?” he added) to a long canvas of concentric circles decorated by ribbons of paint, hobby shop stick-on jewels and ink stamps.

“I called the exhibit ‘Newer Things,’ because these works range from newborns to toddlers,” he said. “A couple of them are monoprints; some are rubber-stamped ink on paper; others are paint and collage-y things that are hard to describe.”

And while Gombert is no stranger to hanging his works in galleries throughout East Tennessee, the opportunity to do so never loses its luster, he added.

“It’s good and it’s important for a lot of things, not the least of which is that you get to see the stuff outside of your studio and in a way that you envisioned it, but that you never really get to see when it’s in the studio,” he said. “In my studio, I’ve got works in there in various states of progress, and sometimes I’ll have two or three pieces side-by-side, looking at how one relates to the other.

“A gallery is a place that’s uncluttered and it gives folks a chance to see individual works in isolation, as well as how they relate to each other. In this particular case, I’ve got one that’s a work in progress hanging in (the Harmon Gallery), and I get to look at it every day and think about what I can still do to it and how to finish it.

“It’s a chance to see the work as I envisioned it, although I’d love to see it in people’s houses,” he added.

Given his tenure at MC, it’s no surprise that many of his colleagues have Carl Gombert works in their offices and homes, and retirement, he said, will hopefully give him the chance to make more. He plans on doing some traveling, and he’ll continue to play stand-up bass and washboard, among other instruments, with his friends in the local roots band Pistol Creek Catch of the Day. And he’s got other ideas percolating as well, he added with his trademark mischievous grin.

“We’ve all heard the saying that a painting is worth a thousand words, so I would love to write 1,000-word essays about specific paintings,” he said. “Not 997; not 1,003 — literally, 1,000 words on paintings I’ve seen, and those I’ve only seen in photographs that I’d like to travel to see. Having that time, and the possibility of making larger things and mural-sized works and finding some place to put them, is really exciting.”

A reception for Gombert and “Newer Things” will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29, in the gallery space, located in Building B of the Clayton Center for the Arts on the Maryville College campus. The event is free and open to the public, and “Newer Things” will be on display through Saturday, Sept. 30.

Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200  students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”