Live Local: Walter Anderson Museum of Art

Lace up your shoes and take a stroll with News 25’s Lorraine Weiskopf in today’s edition of Live Local, a series you can catch here on News 25 on Thursdays.

In honor of this weekend’s Peter Anderson Festival, News 25’s Lorraine Weiskopf visits the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, a museum dedicated to the work of Peter’s brother.

In the Anderson family there were three boys: Peter, Walter, and Mac. All three boys were artists. Peter and Walter used their creativity to work as a team. Walter Anderson Museum of Art Executive Director Julie Rankin said, “Walter would decorate the pots and forms Peter threw and they had a really cool relationship. Peter would pioneer these cool glazes and pottery ceramic and Walter would come in and decorate them with his signature style.”

Walter Anderson’s creativity didn’t stop on clay. His block painting would also leave an impression. “In the 1940s he would carve out large scale linoleum blocks, he would carve out these decorations and design and print them on discontinued wallpaper.”

One example of his block printing is “The Ugly Duckling.” Most of his prints were very large since they were on wallpaper. “He believed that making these and propagating them widely was a way for people to have art that had an appetite for beauty, but not a lot of money.”

Walter would seek his inspiration in solitude. He would take many trips out to Horn Island, rowing out to the island for weeks at a time. “When he was out there, he would paint these wonderful watercolors. These are his most personal works. Example here of that is this awesome alligator gar. He would use typing paper, humble materials, to make these visionary artworks. The whole purpose for him was to connect with nature.”

Walter Anderson was very private, majority of his watercolors were locked away in a box in his room at the Shearwater Cottage, not discovered until after his death. “There was a padlock on the door. They came back to get his things, they busted open the door, they discovered thousands of water colors that he had made on Horn Island.”

The room has been relocated to the museum and they now call it “The little room,” it’s one of their most popular exhibits and shows a never ending day as it goes through the cycles of the day, starting with a rooster crowing at sunrise. “It was his way of preserving nature so he didn’t always have to go to Horn Island wildness to experience everything he’d seen.”

If you would like to learn more about the local artist, plan your trip to the Walter Anderson Museum.

Be sure to tune in next Thursday as News 25 continues highlighting places of interest along our Coast.