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The Chamber Collection
For 125 years, the Greater Waco Chamber has been dedicated to growing the Greater Waco community. It has a long history of dedicated investors, supporters and volunteers who have helped achieve its historic milestones and build Greater Waco.
In 2008, the Greater Waco Chamber opened the Salome Conference Center, which is the first LEED-certified green chamber of commerce in the nation. The building is home to an impressive, permanent art collection featuring works by 27 Waco and Central Texas artists. The art selected for the Collection presents a positive, progressive image of Greater Waco and highlights continued cultural advancement and economic development.
Joe Barbieri – Chisholm Trail Waco
Longhorn cattle, the Brazos River and the Waco Suspension Bridge are focal points of Chisholm Trail Waco. This painting is a 48” by 72” oil on canvas and was commissioned for the Chamber and created by local artist Joe Barbieri. The immense captivating scene is displayed in the Sheehy Room. The piece was created to honor the cattlemen who were among the first to practice commerce in the Waco community.
Barbieri chose this setting because he wanted a Western scene unique to Waco.
“The Suspension Bridge was used by the Chisholm Trail cattle drovers,” said Barbieri. “Since this was the first suspension bridge of its kind built in the United States at the time, I suppose it was the only place where this scene might have occurred.”
When researching the scene, Barbieri said the most important element to “get right” was the look of the suspension bridge itself, which was plastered over and changed around 1914. He found an old photograph in the Waco library that he used as a reference point. Every detail of the scene was researched by Barbieri. Even the longhorns were sketched from a prize-winning herd owned by a rancher in Southlake.
Barbieri has been drawing since childhood and began studying drawing and anatomy in high school and college. He started with watercolors and has expanded to stained glass and oil on canvas. Since 1998, Barbieri has worked with Stanton Studios, a local, family-owned business known for its work in glass, wood and metal. He paints portraits, still life scenes and landscapes of the Southwest. His work can be found in churches, hotels, museums and private collections throughout the United States. Among his commissioned works are a series of Western paintings and a 120-foot mural depicting a cattle drive for the historic Driskill Hotel in Austin.
Mike Cunningham – Spadix
Spadix, a free form and flowing piece of art that evokes the imagination, graces the west lawn of the Chamber property. The gleaming bronze sculpture by native Wacoan and renowned sculptor Mike Cunningham rests on a limestone base.
“I believe I am a symbolist returning to the landscape of my youth and building images that reflect my desire to speak poetically of the mystery and beauty of my childhood visions,” said Cunningham. He began his artistic career at the University of Texas in Austin where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1965. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968.
A resident of Argyle, Texas, Cunningham continues to create magnificent sculptures. His works are displayed across the state and nation in galleries, private collections, corporate offices and universities. Cunningham’s works are generally bronze casts, carved wood or stone.
Spadix was created in 1993 and cast in 2001. The bronze sculpture is 54 inches tall, 48 inches long and 48 inches wide. The limestone base on which it rests measures 36 inches tall, 24 inches long and 24 inches wide.
The Chamber’s sculpture is the second in a series of six created by Cunningham. During the installation, the artist expressed his delight at having his work displayed in his hometown.
Spadix was acquired for the Chamber collection through the generosity of Jim and Nell Hawkins.
Virginia DuPuy – Earth Spirit I, II, III & Old Waco Woman
Virginia DuPuy is an accomplished artist, successful business professional and influential Wacoan. DuPuy studied theater and earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Baylor University. DuPuy served as mayor of Waco from 2005 to 2010. She was named the 2019 Legacy Award Recipient by the Greater Waco Chamber, among her many other significant community awards and accolades.
DuPuy donated her hand-dyed textile construction piece, Earth Spirit I, II, III.
Old Waco Woman is a collage donated to the Chamber Collection by Harold Alexander. Both works hang in the Greater Waco Chamber offices.
Dorothy Johnston –McLennan County Courthouse
Dorothy Johnston’s “McLennan County Courthouse” is the only watercolor in the Chamber Collection. Her courthouse, with its bold and vivid colors, hangs at the end of the first-floor corridor. The piece is a 30” by 22” watercolor on paper and floats in its custom frame and was the first piece acquired for the Chamber Collection.
Johnston, a Waco resident for many years, has been a well-recognized figure in the art community of Central Texas. She spent most of her career designing and producing art for industry. Upon retirement, she taught art at Texas State Technical College Waco, continuing education for Baylor University, and the Art Center of Waco.
She enjoyed her affiliation with various watercolor groups such as Central Texas Watercolor Society, The Waco Art Center, Southwestern Watercolor Society, Southern Watercolor Society, and Southern Colorado Watercolor Society. As a member of the Central Texas Watercolor Society in Waco, Johnston has taken and taught workshops and competed in competitions where her works have won numerous accolades.
For Johnston, art was always a focus in her life. She enjoyed painting on location, and Central Texas provided many scenic landscapes for her to create lasting images.
H. Wallace Wright – Untitled
H. Wallace Wright, born in Levelland Texas, earned his degree from Baylor University. After graduation, Wright studied painting in Chicago, Illinois in the 1940s. His paintings were exhibited across the United States until he returned to Texas. Upon his return, in addition to painting, Wright pursued several career paths. He worked in residential construction, helping build numerous apartment buildings in Waco, Texas and meat packing, eventually founding and co-owning Waco Beef & Pork Processors.
Karl Umlauf – Southwest Façade IV, V, VI
Artist and Professor of Art, Karl Umlauf received a BFA from the University of Texas in Austin, Texas in 1961 and an MFA from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York in 1963. He accepted a teaching position at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University - Commerce) in 1967, and taught there until 1989 when he became artist-inresidence at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
The numerous grants he received from East Texas State University and Baylor University during his tenure provided the support for his research in personal creative images, concepts, and technical processes.
Throughout his painting career Umlauf’s work has reflected the visual energy of the interaction of mechanical, organic, and relief elements. Since his youth Umlauf has been attracted to construction and industrial sites for their mechanical complexity, raw shapes, surfaces and linear energy. These works were acquired through the generosity of Sue and Ted Getterman.
Paul McCoy – Creation Urn II
Creation Urn II, created by Paul McCoy, is the only ceramic art piece in the Chamber Collection. Creation Urn II is one piece in a series of forms McCoy refers to as “The Ritual Vessels Series,” which includes traditional vessel forms commonly used throughout history within the context of specific rituals such as baptisms, burials and harvests. McCoy began to develop these forms in response to his lifelong fascination with the relationship of life and death and the concurrence of the physical with the eternal. Creation Urn II is a large funerary urn in the ossuary style, intended for the storage of ashes and bone fragments of one or more individuals. McCoy said the influence of these particular urns was the African ancestral reliquary urns. McCoy said his vision of what the urns represented was transformed into seeing them as vessels God might have used to store materials for His creation. This transformation took place when he saw the color and depth of the fired surfaces emerge from the kiln.
Originally from Chicago, McCoy moved to Texas after college to work in the oilfields. He began taking evening classes in ceramics through the University of Houston Clear Lake. He completed his graduate studies at the University of Iowa and moved to Waco in 1986 to direct the ceramics program at Baylor University, where he held the positions of Professor, University Ceramist in Residence and Director of the Allbritton Art Institute.
Kermit Oliver –Festina
Festina Lente, or make haste slowly, is a commissioned work by Kermit Oliver and one of only two commissioned pieces in the Chamber Collection. This unique and striking acrylic on wood panel painting presides beneath the grand stairs in the Robinson Gallery of the Greater Waco Chamber building.
As a Waco resident and internationally recognized artist, Oliver is best known for his still lifes, landscapes and portraits based on the Bible, classical mythology and literature and folk tales from around the world. His works can be found in residences, businesses and galleries worldwide. He also has designed several scarves for the House of Hermes in Paris.
“I chose to title the painting ‘Festina Lente,’ taking it from the emblem of Cosimo di Medici,” said Oliver. “It showed a turtle with a sail on its back voyaging slowly but surely. His efforts and standards established the first modern ideas of defining a city’s vision and influence manifested in its governance, commerce, industries, arts and culture and its promotion as a unique entity.”
Oliver presented the painting with an extensive description of the symbols within, created to capture the essence of the prosperity and growth of Central Texas.
FROM KERMIT OLIVER’S SUMMARY NARRATIVE EXPLAINING THE COMPOSITION’S IMAGES AS SYMBOLS AND METAPHORS THAT REPRESENT THE CITY OF WACO AND THE CHAMBER’S INTENTIONS TO GROW THE COMMUNITY.
• The hay rolls, sheep and cow reflect the area’s agricultural history and are related to the cultivation, shepherding and sustaining needed in a community.
• The dog depicts loyalty and protection with its intelligence.
• The fox’s guile and cleverness portrays a creator of interesting ideas.
• The rabbit in capture symbolizes those speedy, unguided actions that disregard the consequences of hurried decisions.
• The rooster, which represents the virtues of civic merit, watchfulness, courage and a herald of new ideas, stands on the back of the turtle, a symbol of strength, patience, endurance, stability and longevity.
• The horse is the painting’s centerpiece representing the city’s vitality and beauty, an emblem of power and continuity of life. Its color portrays light, life and spiritual illumination.
• The owl atop the horse represents the ability to see through the unclarity of unformed ideas, acting as guide and guardian.
