Diocese of Evansville
Jasper art teacher has created visual journey
Bill Whorrall flips through a book.
By Mary Ann Hughes (Message staff writer)
It’s a long way from the steel mills in Gary, Ind., to the natural wonders of Martin County, and that’s the path that Bill Whorrall has traveled during his lifetime.
He’s currently the art teacher at Holy Family and Precious Blood schools, both in Jasper, a resident of nearby Shoals, and the author of the recently published “Good Morning Martin County, A journey through Indiana’s natural treasure.”
He grew up in Gary, a place he remembers as “nitty and gritty, loud and polluted.”
As a young child, he came to southern Indiana to visit relatives and found “a different planet. I thought, ‘This is wonderful.’”
As a teenager, he had a lot of drive but not a lot of opportunities. He remembers asking his dad to drive him eight miles away from their home and then drop him off. “I knocked at every door on the way home, and I had three part-time job offers by the time I got home.”
When he graduated from high school, college was not an option. Escape was. He signed up for the Peace Corps and the Air Force on the same day. “I just wanted to get out of Gary.”
he Air Force paperwork came through first, so he headed to Vietnam where he spent four years driving a jeep.
When he returned to Gary, “I was right back at square one. I got a job in the steel mill which was the last thing I wanted to do.”
One day, he walked into a neighborhood art gallery and struck up a conversation with the owner. He felt encouraged enough to create “something” to see if the owner liked it. “I didn’t have artist paints or canvas so I used model airplane paint on a shirt cardboard. I took it in and there was something they saw. They said, ‘This guy has potential.’ They helped me get appropriate materials.”
About the same time, he met a fellow veteran who encouraged him to take classes at the IU extension in Gary. He told Bill, “You are smart.” Bill remembers thinking, “Yeah, right.”
He saved some money from his job, used money from the GI bill, took out some student loans, and soon he was taking college classes. “No one in my family had ever gone to college, but despite my family background, I really believed in education.”
One of the first college classes he took was art appreciation. “I made flash cards and I got a study partner, and I got through the first semester. I worked really hard, and I was on the dean’s list by the time I got ready to go to IU in Bloomington.”
On that campus, he was determined to “get as much as I could out of the art department. I ate out of the machines and stayed [overnight] in the art building sometimes. I was so dedicated because I was doing what I absolutely loved.
“I couldn’t understand how anyone could do art and not be passionate about it.”
When he graduated from IU, he and his wife, Karen, moved to Shoals where he began teaching. “I had job offers in Indianapolis and Shoals, but once I drove into that beautiful country, there was no contest.” Soon, he was selling his art at art shows, art fairs and to corporate collectors.
He taught for a while, but eventually “I felt I needed a change. I felt my art needed growth.” He headed back to Bloomington for a three-year master of fine arts in printmaking program. He then spent three years with the Governor’s School for the Arts, “an elite program in the state of Kentucky,” which he says is “life-changing” for participants.
As that job was ending, he was asked to participate in a Walk to Emmaus, the Methodist form of the Cursillo movement. “Your watch has to stay home,” he remembers, “and you can’t drive. You go there in a van. We were in cabins in the boonies.
“I wasn’t thrilled about it,” he said, “especially without my watch.
“They took us in a van on 231, and it was three days, very intensive.
“On the last day, I decided, ‘This will be something that will be worthwhile,’ and I began to focus on a painting of Jesus in the chapel. Then I got back in the van, headed to 231 and headed home.”
He soon learned about a job opening for an art teacher at Precious Blood School. “I immediately applied. Ron Pittman was the principal, and he interviewed me. I immediately liked him, and he said, ‘I think God put you here.’”
Bill still gets emotional when he remembers walking to the art room at Precious Blood where he found “the same picture of Jesus hanging outside that room, and it was room 231.
“That told me ‘something is going on here that is good. The picture and room 231 – something is going on here. Sometimes when you feel guided, it’s pretty cool.”
It’s been nine years since he was hired to teach art at both Jasper schools. During that time, he began working on his book, “Good Morning Martin County” which is a collection of photographs of birds, flowers and butterflies, as well as hills, cliffs, marshes and gorges. There are aerial photographs of forests, fields and the White River.
“Anyone seeing me race around the art room at school would be surprised to learn I have sat in ditches, swamps and even on top of a house for five to seven hours straight. That kind of patience is necessary for pictures of wildlife.”
There were days “when it was wet and foggy, and the nose pads on my glasses fell off and my face was drenched,” he remembers. “My glasses fogged up every two minutes. I just kept reminding myself of the recipe for luck: it happens when you keep trying.
“It is active watching, not just sitting. You have to be listening and you have to keep looking around.”
He explained that “after awhile getting up at 4:30 a.m. became a ritual. I would make coffee, dress in dark green, cover myself with mosquito spray and head out.” He got “pretty good” at finding a good place to “hunker down” before the forest creatures “get out of bed. They are hungry so they go to their feeding places. The time to see wildlife is always in the morning.”
Nature is a “God experience,” he believes. “Not a fluffy, peachy keen, gushy sort of thing,” but a “God is the artist, God has the palette” experience. In nature, he sees shapes and forms – spirals, radiating lines, circles, parallel lines – occurring over and over again. “Look at the galaxy and a ram’s horn. God made them both.”
And that’s what he teaches in his art classes in both of the Jasper Catholic schools.
“Teaching here for the last nine years has been the best teaching experience I could have had. I’m not Catholic. I’m Lutheran, but I’m sold on Catholic schools. There is something going on here.
“It’s because they go to Mass every day. They are reminded of doing what God wants them to do.”
For additional information about his book, go to http://www.geocities.com/billwhorally/home.htm.)
(Go to the website of the Diocese of Evansville) †