Rentz: At ladies' luncheon, the menu for art gets deeper

The Ladies Who Lunch are organized around two principles: good food and good community.

For their lunch a few weeks ago, they chose MJ's, a new soul food place out on St. Helena Island, and artist John M. Bradley Jr. as their guest speaker.

MJ's small storefront on Sea Island Parkway opens into wide dining rooms and a long bar. The owners, Mary Holmes-Jenkins and Susan Pessie-Jenkins welcomed us and described how the community helped them get ready to open.

"They're our neighbors. They knew what we needed to do," they explained.

Art was the next community need, and it arrived in the form of Bradley painting a mural-- a bold "MJ's" framed by palm trees. He described his process as we ladies lunched, including Veronica Miller, a long time community arts supporter, and Alva Brown, who writes poetry. Our table was filled with fish, collards, sweet potatoes, shrimp and crab rice.

"Growing up here I had no walls to practice on so I went to paper," Bradley said. "Once you master paper and pencil, it automatically leaps over to whatever you want to do. I put energy into everything I do and in drawing it comes out as details and speed."

Other than those few muralized palm trees, Bradley chooses not to depict the Lowcountry "because I just want to enjoy it, go out by the marsh and savor it. I'm thinking big, I don't limit myself," he said.

Bradley is a performing visual artist-- at our luncheon he did a wonderful, realistic drawing of Alvesta Roberts, another arts supporter in the Ladies group. Bradley's fine lines bring out the best in the artform and the person. His pencil work is impressive, nuanced, and so smooth.

These mealtime portraits are a new outlet for him: "I can see how people like it. I love the feedback. It's relaxing and I'm thinking about adding some color," he said.

Though I like the monochromatic approach, anything that puts more pencils in the hands of this artist is a good thing.

Melba Cooper was enjoying a shrimp salad, and (not at all coincidentally for this small town) was Bradley's art teacher in high school.

"He destroyed the idea that you can't draw and talk at the same time," she said.

Bradley is so energetically thoughtful that it seems like he's playing basketball with his art talent-- he anticipates, he executes, and he scores.

One drawing for sale at MJ's was a Hip Hop hot rod parked in a markedly docile, suburban neighborhood.

"It's so architectural," commented Cooper as we browsed, "and original use of the genre, too."

Bradley refers to his pieces as "creativity structures" onto which he hangs levels, layers and depths. His work, and the way he talks about it, is full of synonyms, the chain-reactions that are happening in his mind. He's got a light touch, too: certain details aren't necessarily visible at first.

"Some people want food now, some want take out," he observed.

In his deep designs, words form cars, hats, spaceships, and landscapes, and the words are furthermore scriptures, like tire treads that refer to Egyptian chariots losing their wheels.

His colors can also be unpeeled like an onion: first there is the surface layer you'd expect. If you shine a black light, the drawing turns into a night scene. If you don 3D glasses, you get a different view. These techniques are more than velvety gimmicks, Bradley is conducting how the piece will play out in different lights, before different eyes, like a movie.

Bradley has ventures beyond MJ's.

He's got work in LyBenson's Gallery in downtown Beaufort, he's airbrushing commercial art, building a graphic novel, and planning a series of all 176 verses in Psalms 1:19-- "words, precepts, commandments," he said. "I will see the growth as I gain knowledge and stay focused."

His idea reminded me of Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, sixty paintings of life in the 1930s, so I asked Bradley what famous artists he likes. He recalled visiting the Salvador Dali Museum in Florida, and a painting of a chair fighting a cello.

Dali once created a series of etchings of the Song of Solomon, also turning words into a different kind of energy.

Bradley will, most likely, keep his focus-- and refine, reconsider, and retool it, too.

Lisa Annelouise Rentz lives in Beaufort.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 9:25 AM with the headline "Rentz: At ladies' luncheon, the menu for art gets deeper."