By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Mention the Libbey Glasscutters to even the most devoted Toledo baseball fan and the name will draw a blank stare.
Even Dan Mauk, the team’s biggest fan, isn’t sure of all the names and stories of the 19 men on the squad.
He explains: “There was this team in Toledo in the sixties, and they weren’t very good. Libbey Glass sponsored them. They were just like a glorified softball team.”
Yet one of them “made it,” he said, not to the big leagues but to the Mud Hens, and for guys from Toledo that was making it. “They were working class people.”
The Glasscutters are the figment of the artist’s imagination. All this plays out in his mind, flowing to his pen onto paper.
The fictional portraits are realistic, drawn in fine detail, and brimming with personality, not surprising given they are the creation of the artist behind Portraits in Color.
Some five decades after their imagined careers, the Libbey Glasscutters will get their time in the spotlight at the Hudson Gallery, 5645 Main St., in Sylvania. The show opens with a reception at the gallery Friday, June 7, 6-8 p.m. and continues through June 29.
Looking over the still unfinished centerpiece of the show, a team portrait, Mauk points to various players. The team revolves around Danny Snyderfield, the guy who had a cup of coffee with the Mud Hens, and Bobby Jet Watson.
Snyderfield was the genesis of the project. Mauk drew this portrait of “this character, super handsome, totally cool, and everyone loved him.”
The artwork sat in Mauk’s closet for a while. But other characters grew around him, including Mauk’s favorite Cookie, Bobby Jet’s niece.
“What if there was a little stinker, Cookie, who always made sure the players looked good because she went on to be the editor and chief of Vogue in New York City?”
In December, Mauk shared the concept with Scott Hudson of the gallery, and Hudson suggested he expand it into a solo show to celebrate the new baseball season.
So Mauk went to work, making drawings of his characters in between the commissioned portraits of pets he draws through Portraits in Color.
He loves that the business is growing but “I’ve gotten away from doing faces, so I’m going to do 20 portraits,” Mauk said. “This is my first love. … For me it’s always been about drawing portraits, drawing faces.”
Little of what he depicts directly has to do with baseball. Showing the players out and about town is more interesting than showing them throwing a ball.
Mauk said he first got in the art game back in fourth grade. He drew the cover of “The Fox and Hound” — “the first movie that made me cry.”
When he showed it to his parents, Darlene and Thomas Mauk, they complimented him. “It was the first time I was able to register that they were actually impressed, my first real compliment.”
And, he thought: “That feels good. That’s pretty cool.”
He continued with art, graduating from Otsego High in 2003, and attending Bowling Green State University where he studied art education with a focus in 2D studies. He graduated in 2008. He worked in schools, though not always as an art teacher — he did a stint as a behavioral specialist. Five years ago he had a “renaissance.” He started teaching at the Maritime Academy, and devoting more time to art. He started thinking of himself primarily as an artist, and he launched Portraits in Color.
He also picks up DJ gigs on weekends.
The Glasscutters show, Mauk explained, is his “swan song” to the Toledo area. This summer he’s heading to Las Vegas to join his girlfriend, Sarah Drummer.
He wondered: “How can I bring other awesome Toledo people into it.” That included hiring fellow DJ Touch the Sky to provide classic 1960s sounds at the reception and having Upside Brewery serving up its new summer beers. He’s collaborating with printers, designers, and even a couple students such as Yue Pan, a Chinese student, he knows from occasional work at the Dayal House, Maumee Valley Country Day School’s residential facility. She showed interest in his work, so he left a couple drawings with her to fill in details. A couple former students from the Maritime Academy were tasked with developing the team mascot.
He’s working with Jupmode screen printers to make Glasscutter shirts. Printmaker Dan Welch is working on baseball-card inspired fine art prints. Mauk turned over the branding of the Glasscutters to long-time friend Alma-Lynn Dupont, a graphic designer from Bowling Green now based in Portland, Maine. His instructions to her are indicative of his approach to the project: “You’re a graphic designer back in Toledo in the sixties and you have this team, Libbey Glasscutters. Go!”
At first, Mauk said, he wrote the back stories of the players on the bottom of the drawings. Barnet Brantz was not a very good player on a not very good team, who went on to make his fortune in Silicon Valley. Then there’s Hollywood, a guy from California with long hair. There’s Backwater, with buck teeth and big ears, and Chef Mike, “a big Teddy Bear” of a guy recruited because they needed more players.
And there’s Brodie Miller — that happens to be the real name of the person who belongs to the face in the portrait.
He’s another long-time friend of Mauk, whom the artist wanted to include in the show. Besides, he said, “Brodie Miller” is a good baseball name.
But Mauk covered up what he wrote. “That’s boring,” he said. “Why should I spell everything out?”
Instead he wants viewers to step up to the plate and take a swing with imagining their own stories about these players.
“Everyone brings their own legend to this team, so the details of the characters remain intentionally sparse. They exist in my mind and the minds of anyone who goes to the show. ”
