Column: Local artist Pattie Stone goes to court

Dear readers,   

Last week, local artist Pattie Stone appeared in Shelby Circuit Court.  Not as a plaintiff or defendant, but as a visitor.

Pattie stopped by to visit one of her earliest and most viewed paintings: a Pop Art creation inspired by Andy Warhol. The artwork is now hanging in the office of the Shelby Circuit Court.

The bold repetitive image Pattie painted on the canvas blends elements of popular culture with the “file mark” of the court clerk. 

We’ll get back to the artwork in a minute, but first a little about the artist. Pattie grew up in Greenwood, just next door to Shelbyville, sandwiched between two older half-sisters and a younger brother and sister. After graduating from Greenwood High School, she pursued her passion at Ball State University, earning a degree in Interior and Environmental Design.

By the late 1980s, she found herself in Shelbyville, employed by Knauf, where she would work until retirement.

Now let’s get back to Pattie’s homage to Warhol.  The art of Andy Warhol is a world where he turned mundane everyday images into art. His repeated image of Campbell’s Soup cans became iconic.

 Andy Warhol taught us that art is in everyday images so often overlooked. Pattie proved Warhol’s philosophy true when she transformed a simple clerk’s file stamp (photo) into a vibrant tribute to Pop Art.

The date on the file mark is September 30, 1955, the day Hoosier movie star James Dean died. The signature on the file mark is Andy Warhol’s signature.

For those who’ve never set foot in a clerk’s office, the file mark is the date stamped on documents by the clerk. Back in the 20^th century, the clerk used a little handheld mechanical gizmo not unlike the price stamper used in grocery stores (a device I knew well from my high school stock-boy days).

Sometimes the mark was crisp; sometimes it was faint or even upside-down. And so, Pattie’s painting immortalized those common imperfections with one file mark deliberately upside-down, others fading as if the ink were running low.

The piece first found its home in the Shelby County Clerk’s office of the late Cathy Laird, a beloved member of our community. (Those who remember the View From My Schwinn Precision Drill Team might recall Cathy cruising on her Pee Wee Herman-style Phantom bike in the Waldron Fourth of July parade.)

A photo from the day Pattie’s painting was installed in the clerk’s office shows me in a white wig (photo), doing my best Warhol impersonation.

Years passed. The courthouse was remodeled. The clerk’s office was moved. The painting was tucked safely away in storage. But art, like history, has a way of resurfacing.

My granddaughter Rose discovered the painting. One day she surprised me with a photo of Pattie’s file-mark masterpiece now hanging in the office of the Shelby Circuit Court. Rose had helped her father/my son and current Circuit Court Judge, Trent Meltzer, redecorate the office.

When Pattie stopped by to visit her work last week, it was more than just an artist checking on an old project. It was a testament to how ordinary things like file stamps or soup cans, become extraordinary when seen through the right lens.

And in Shelbyville, where our new brand is "Next door. Next level," Pattie long ago took the humble image of a file stamp to the “next level” and turned it into an amazing piece of Pop Art.

As Paul Harvey always said, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.