The Art of Mr. December

The Art of Mr. December

a Carolina Paddler Article

Text and Photography by Alton Chewning

-Scott Honeycutt recently curated an art exhibit on William Nealy, adventure sports’ signature artist. Honeycutt, an avid outdoorsman, recalled how he came to the art of William Nealy.  “I started making maps to remember my hikes.  I call them psycho-geographic maps.”  What?  “A memory map, a story map.”

Scott explained, “Psychogeography is how landscape effects consciousness. How we perceive the world is very much influenced by the landscape and geography that surrounds us.”

Australian Aboriginal culture has long used Songlines or Dreaming scapes to mark routes both physical and spiritual through their lands and to honor the ancestors and beings defining the lines.  So, are the Nealy maps hanging on our walls Songlines of our culture, our beings?

William Nealy was born in Alabama but migrated to North Carolina, a self-described political refugee.  There he became immersed in kayaking, climbing, mountain biking, skiing and all the other outdoor sports that enliven our spirits and threaten our limbs.  At the urging of other paddlers, Nealy began drawing river maps.  The maps led to cartoons, then to books, both humorous and instructive.  Water was his friend, trails his companions, mountains his motivation.  They beat his body down and let his mind soar.  His enthusiasm for adventure sports was contagious and his art captured attention worldwide.  He built an idyllic home in woods near Chapel Hill and shared it with a soul mate every bit his match.  And then he killed himself. Nealy was a Hemingway drawing cartoons, the parallel continuing until death.

Scott tells the story of finding Nealy.  Scott had drawn many of his early “Rambler Guide” maps and wanted to share them. Showing them to outfitters, he would often hear comparisons to William Nealy’s maps.  An internet search led to Nealy.  Scott recalled seeing his river maps tacked on the walls of camping stores and rafting companies. His next thought was, “This guy is the real deal.”

Five years later, Honeycutt, a professor of English at East Tennessee State University, was curating an art exhibit for the Reece Museum on campus.  A grant jump-started the project and Scott began looking for materials to tell William’s story.  The search soon led to the Nantahala Outdoor Center.  Holly Wallace–William’s longtime companion, wife, and business partner–had consolidated much of Nealy’s artwork after his death.  She gave some to friends, but the vast amount went to the NOC.  In 1979, William Barber, the manager of the NOC for many years, gave Nealy his first boost towards making a living from his artwork. He bought a thousand copies of the Nantahala maps.

Scott found the NOC agreeable to loaning items for the exhibit. Scott returned the favor by featuring references to the beloved Barber at the exhibit’s entrance.  A mannequin sports a Barber souvenir t-shirt.

Exploring the NOC’s trove of maps, calendars, sketches, life planning charts and other varied memorabilia, Scott determined the title of the exhibit could only be taken from a self-portrait in one of Nealy’s calendars, “Mr. December.”  Nealy as he would have the world see him, winking behind the sunglasses.

Discussions with Nealy’s publisher, Menasha Ridge Press, led to other contacts.  One of the most prominent was Daniel Wallace.  Scott knew of Wallace from his novel, Big Fish, and the resulting film version.  What he learned was Daniel was a brother to Holly Wallace, Nealy’s companion.  Daniel had grown up in awe of the dashing, adventurous Nealy.  William had inspired Daniel to take chances, live fully and to write. Their long relationship darkened in later years as the personal challenges William and Holly faced clouded Daniel’s adoration.  Nealy’s suicide in 2001 was seen as an abandonment of Holly.  Wallace was publishing a book on his coming to terms with Nealy, This Isn’t Going to End Well, due out soon after the ETSU exhibit would open.

Scott had experience curating art exhibits at the Reese Museum including ones on Carl Sandburg and the Black Mountain Poets.  An exhibit on Nealy would be a departure–an outsider to serious art–but one popular and well respected.  Nealy has been honored by various institutions including the ACA Legends of Paddling and the International Whitewater Hall of Fame.

 

The exhibit began taking shape.  Bits of memorabilia accumulated.  A “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” comic book to connect Nealy’s contributions to the Underground Comix movement. A video display featuring music and clips from Riversense, the 2001 Kate Geis documentary with rare interviews of William and Holly (along with shots of a pipsqueak Dane Jackson scurrying around the big kids.)

 

 

Honeycutt, an ardent hiker, included a few personal items:  his first handdrawn map, a t-shirt from the legendary Rusty’s Hardtime Holler hostel in Virginia, an early hand crafted mountain bike.  The CCC’s Marco Harkness contributed whitewater kayaks and paddling gear.  A Newsweek magazine with a feature story on arthritis and a photo of Holly Wallace on the cover.  Holly was afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis in her early twenties and would eventually die from complications of the disease, ten years after William’s death.

How to explain Nealy to a new generation?  Scott knew he wanted to feature the maps, starting with Nealy’s first, the rare Upper Haw River, composed while working with Howard Du Bose at River Runner’s Emporium in Carrboro, NC.  The exhibit would include early notes for the map, a first crude sketch, with rapids unnamed and then the finished map of the Upper Haw, complete with side notes, a touch of humor and political commentary.

When the exhibit opened in March of 2023, walking past a line-up of maps gave a sense of Nealy’s maturing artistry and the accompanying sophistication of his published work.  More popular rivers were tackled, starting with the Nantahala and moving on to the Chattooga, French Broad, Cheat (pre and post flood), the Savage and many more.  The side notes and commentaries became increasingly involved, with more humor and insight into how to paddle the rapids and what to avoid.

The first maps were published by Holly and William’s own company, Class VII Publishing, out of a cinderblock rental house in Chapel Hill.  The formation of Menasha Ridge Press in 1983 brought a new degree of professionalism to the maps and under the marketing guidance of Holly and publisher Bob Sehlinger, Nealy was able to reach a much broader audience.  Nealy’s books and maps now have fans around the world, some of whom will never see the rivers he paddled, the trails he biked.

The maps are well mounted. Honeycutt embraces current techniques in displaying the maps.  The note board for each map contains a block that links to the RiverKeepers site for the river.

Any exhibit on “Mr. December” would have to include the calendars. The calendars have quirky occasions noted:  Lizzie Borden and Charles Manson’s birthdays, Save the Neoprene Day, two Mister Decembers.

Existential questions abound in Nealy’s art.  Is the fun worth the risk?  His answer was often, “Well hell yeah” but the fear didn’t completely go away. One section of the exhibit revolves on Fear.  Danger.  The icing on the adventure cake.  His posters for the Gauley emphasize the things that could go wrong.  But that doesn’t stop people from paddling.

Nealy entertained, surely, but he instructed as well.  His paddling manuals, Kayak and Kayak, the New Frontier, are still among the best sources of kayak instruction available.  His ability to take a multidimensional view of the paddler, the boat, the water, the forces at work, is unique.  He truly portrays the Songlines of paddling, the meaning beneath the surface. David Quammen observed, “I thought there was a wonderful clarity and a robustness to his illustrations. He knew water. He felt water.” Kate Geis thought William, “could translate water.”

Of course, Nealy had many interests.  He wrote books on mountain biking, skiing and in-line skating as well as kayaking.  Honeycutt includes nods to these other pursuits. Yet William’s greatest interest in life was Holly Wallace.  A section of the exhibit is devoted to her.

We see book dedications to Holly.   Christmas cards featuring their pet pigs, Sherman and Harold.  William’s adolescent attraction to Holly.  And an invitation to a party celebrating their marriage.

 

Nealy was always quick to provide art for a good cause.  His posters and t-shirt graphics grace many organizations’ memorabilia.  William was particularly active in the fight to save Duke Forest from development, producing many maps and posters to accentuate the beauty and value of this wooded gem.

Some of the more surprising and puzzling artifacts in the collection are the flow charts Nealy made to guide himself into the future.  They were his attempts to chart a path through life that he could find meaningful and within reach.  Here the humor is dormant.  The concerns are both logistical, professional and financial.

One life map revolves arounds Law School.  What a different world we would have with William as a lawyer.

Another chart shows numerous paths, many lines William could have taken.  One look at the larger map and the eye is drawn to one word:  ART.

Art became the Songline for William, the path through the tangled landscape of adulthood.  Art would not save him from life’s severity, from disappointments, from the murder of his best friend or his companion’s debilitating disease.  Art would not even save him from himself.  Yet art is what we have of William now.  Some have memories, some have souvenirs.  We all have his art.

 

Part of Scott Honeycutt’s joy in putting together this exhibit was in introducing young people to an artist new to them.  Some students weren’t much interested but others were excited by Nealy’s outsider art, his political jabs and social incorrectness and what-the-hell humor.  The maps connected them to their geography.  “Hey, let’s go to the Nolichucky this weekend.” Or “Shenandoah, that’s up near my grandma’s house.” Scott says, “It gets into their mental state.  We’re just planting seeds and who knows, down the line, maybe inspiring the next generation.”

William Nealy could be many things.  The left winger, the survivalist, the partier, the loner.   Scott likened his appeal to another artist.  “He’s kinda like a Willie Nelson type figure in that hippies and the rednecks both like him.”  Surrounded by axes and guns and snakes and pigs, living in the woods but only ten minutes from downtown Chapel Hill where he could watch French films.  Our hero, our paradox.

Scott has also enjoyed meeting the people who were friends of William.  One day, a burly fellow with graying beard and a wide grin visited the exhibit.  The visitor was touched by all the affection and appreciation shown to Nealy.  He picked up a Nealy book at the front display and turned to a multipage cartoon inside, entitled, “Regan’s Brain.”  “That’s me.” he told Scott, “ I’m Regan.”

John Regan is another fixture of Southern rivers, pioneering many runs and still vigorous and enthusiastic in his sixties.  Art has preserved “Regan’s Brain”, the gist of which is how some people are happy to have made it down the river in one piece.  Others run the lines with style.