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Chris Waters: I ended up at U of M-Flint at a time when U of M-Flint had no art department
but there was a desire to start an art department. I'm from Wisconsin originally. I'm from a
working-class family. My dad put in air conditioners and furnaces, so Flint immediately felt really
familiar to me. It felt like I knew the people, like I had grown up with the people. My work
about the city of Flint is all about ending up having a studio in the Northbank Center.
I walked up the spiral staircase in the corner and looked out the first window that I came
to and I saw paintings and that's what I saw. I saw the river, I saw downtown, I saw the
Pavilion, but I saw them all as paintings. When I'm deciding what exactly I'm going to
paint out of these windows, for at least the design part of the decision, it's not about
Flint, it's about the composition. And then when it comes to painting it, Flint comes
roaring back because I have to paint you know, windows and doors and building and you know,
it's like "gee, there's a lot of trees out there and they're all different colors of
green. Midway through painting the series, I started to have dreams about mixing colors
and I think it was just because you know, I was sitting up here during the day and trying
to mix all of these colors and match the things and make the thing the way I wanted to make
it. The grime is gone from up here and you see the original planning, you see the original
beauty, you can see the river, the plantings, and how the weather affects those things.
I don't know, it's almost like looking at something and squinting a little bit and when
it's a little less distinct or farther away, it crisps up and maybe that's part of the
you know, love affair of these paintings in Flint is that these, the paintings are about
the bones of Flint. They're not about the tarnish on the surface of Flint and they're
not about things that need to be fixed or buildings that still aren't renovated and
occupied, but it's about the bones. I do value civic engagement for a lot of reasons. I'm
an artist. If I'm not involved with every single venue for art in this community, I'm
not doing my students very much of a service. You have to see this place. You have to actually
physically be here and walk around to get a feeling of what it's really like.