I found myself fantasizing about being in the second grade and on a class field trip to Herb’s place.  The only rule was to not stab your fellow students with a crayon.  Cardboard boxes lined up along two walls, each chock full of Crayolas of one or another of those delicious colors that look like you ought to be able to eat them.  Plenty of paper, flat surfaces, and no time limit.  Snap!  Back to the present and this project.  Herb Williams has indeed shown us that you’re never too old to make art from crayons.  Good art.  Really good art.  From the whimsical rabbits and portable TV’s to fabulous recreations of guitars, color explodes from this artist’s work.  Even his laptop is orange.  He is one of only a few Crayola wholesalers in the world.  Herb’s been in this space for 8 or 9 years.  The front room, formerly the showroom of the first Rymer Gallery location, is now storage, and the back room here on North 6th is where the sketching, carving, jigsawing, laminating, and painting (roughly the sequential steps the artist takes before attaching the crayons) takes place.  Oh, and where he annually creates something fun and funky for the Jack Daniels folks down in Lynchburg, TN.  Hence, the life-sized statue of Gentleman Jack awaiting the treatment.  He builds his large shipping crates here to transport his work to the expanding list of international clients.  He feels inspired here.  Yeah, he’d like to have some windows and more room - like all of us - but it doesn’t seem to be slowing down this popular artist.

From the artist: “I’ve always been an artist.  I was just a bad artist for a lot of years.”

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