By Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Art Meripol would smile and quietly agree when people pointed out the coincidence of his name.
The career photographer was an artist, they surmised, whose name is Art. But Meripol, whose given name is Arthur, never saw it that way.
“No, not at all. Other people would point it out to me before, once my career got going,” the 68-year-old Hoover resident said. “But I never thought of myself as an artist. If I did think of myself in that respect at all, it was as a craftsman.
“I think I’ve taken pictures that were artful, but I still think of as myself as a craftsman,” he continued. “You learn the trade and that’s kind of what I did. You learn techniques and experience teaches you things. The more mistakes you make, the more you learn, and I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot.”
The product of Meripol’s craft – a collection of photos from live music concerts – is on display in the art gallery at Hoover’s Aldridge Gardens. The showing runs Mondays through Fridays until March 3. An artist reception will be held Feb. 16.
The exhibition includes a collection of rock, blues, jazz and country concert photographs that Meripol captured from 1974 to 1990. It includes photos of B.B. King, Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Merle Haggard, Chick Corea, KISS, Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Eddie Van Halen and other artists.
“We originally planned for 38 (photos) and I kind of snuck four more in,” the photographer chuckled. “The people at the gallery have been fantastic. We talked about having a show and I showed (Rip Weaver, the director) and some other people here some pictures and they were enthusiastic and we scheduled it.”
That sent Meripol back to figure out which images would make the cut.
“It’s kind of curating,” he said. “Which ones are worth hanging and how big should they be? We walked around and talked about the sizes of the pictures and how they would hang and we came up with 38 that we thought would work – 18 of the really big ones that are 2-by-3 foot and these are 17-by-22 inches.
“We thought 20 of these (big ones) and 18 (smaller ones). Somehow, I just managed to instead of doing 20 of those, I did 24. I don’t know how that happened.”
In his artist statement, Meripol says he began photographing live music on campus while pursuing a degree in journalism at the University Arkansas. He fell in love with the experience and for 13 years spent his days as a news photojournalist and his nights in clubs and arenas photographing musicians.
Meripol’s side gig of concert photography ended in 1990, when he joined Southern Living Magazine as a senior travel photographer. He spent more than 3,000 nights on the road during the next 24 years, sharing the best of the South in his images.
The photographer rediscovered his old negatives of musicians a few years ago and began scanning images, many of which had been unseen since the shutter was snapped. There were exceptions, including some that were in posts on social media.
Stories Behind the Film
Every photo in the gallery has a story, like the portrait of Tina Turner. It was the only show he attended with a specific shot in his mind.
“I wanted to have her face looking right back at the viewer, tight with all that hair and attitude and power and personality that she has,” Meripol said. “I took a lens that was a manual focus, 350-millimeter lens that weighed more than a dozen cast iron skillets.”
The lens wasn’t made to be used without a tripod or monopod, but the photographer could have neither during the 10-minute access he was granted. And the moment came.
“She had been close to me and she started to walk away and then she just stopped … and threw her chin around and looked over her shoulder at me, pursed her lips and looked right down the lens,” he said. “At that moment I was fortunate to be in focus and you can see every little crease in her lips.”
Meripol has a picture of KISS in the makeup for which the band is known and another without the makeup. And he describes a frail-looking Ray Charles being led onto the stage and to his piano bench before he was transformed before his eyes.
“As soon as his fingers touch those keyboards, it’s like 10,000 volts goes through him. All of a sudden, he becomes this just … he becomes that,” the photographer said, referring to the photo. “The transformation was magic.”
And there are images that aren’t from a stage. There’s the one Meripol got while working for Southern Living. He saw a pink Cadillac convertible while doing a travel shoot in South Beach of Miami, Florida.
Then he looked in the back seat.
“‘Holy Cow! That’s Cab Callaway!’” he recalled, recognizing the legendary jazz singer and bandleader before going over to ask permission to snap the shot. “Look at these guys with him. They look like extras from the Sopranos.”
at the first Farm Aid Concert
Can’t Carry a Tune
Ironically, the gifted photographer of musical acts is not a musician, saying he could barely tune a radio. But he longed to be a rock star.
“When I was a kid, early ‘60s, the Beatles came out and I was just a Beatles fan. I still am,” he said. “My little brother and I both wanted to be Beatles.”
The pair found plywood and cut out guitar shapes and nailed yardsticks to them for make-believe guitar necks. In their back yard and in their minds, they were the Beatles.
“I’m sure my mom was laughing her butt off staring out the kitchen window at us in the backyard playing,” he recalled. “I tried playing music (but) I can’t. It’s not in me. I couldn’t be a rock star, but I can at least take my axe – which is a camera – and go to shows and be part of it that way.”
Meripol was intimately close to the show. Initially, he was in the camera pit with screaming fans pressing against his back while performers peered into his lens.
As a starving college student, Meripol took pictures for the school paper, student union and school yearbook. That gave him access to live concerts whose tickets he couldn’t afford.
“I loved it,” he recalled. “The first time I shot a concert, I just fell in love with it. It was so exciting.”
The photographer started working part time for the Northwest Arkansas Times while he was a student and then worked full time there after he graduated. But he didn’t graduate from shooting concerts.
“A lot of these I shot for newspapers,” he said of his gallery display, “but a lot I shot because I could get in … on my name and reputation. And I was shooting for me because I love shooting live music.”
The showing at Aldridge Gardens will run Mondays through Fridays until March 3. The gallery is normally open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (205) 682-8019 before visiting the gallery to make sure a luncheon or other event has not been scheduled when you plan to visit.
For information about the artist reception on Feb. 16, go to aldridgegardens.com, click on the Classes & Events link, then Events and Event Calendar.
