Review by Jayne Mabus
Local Art – October 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHAT WOULD YOU DO if you sketched a drawing of a mountain, and a co-worker looked at it and blurted, “Man, what you doing here?”
That was a great moment of epiphany for artist Jon MacManus. And the best part is that he didn’t ignore it — he did something about it.
This experience wasn’t a bolt out of the blue, though. MacManus attended Southern Colorado State College in Pueblo as a history major. Finding history classes boring, he switched to art and found something he excelled at. “I took all kinds of classes: graphics, pencils, pen and ink, print making, life drawing. I was very good at it,” MacManus said.
Ironically, despite his disillusionment as a history major, one of the classes he liked best was art history. “It just riveted me. I spent a lot of time in the library just looking at paintings, and reading about painters and what they were thinking about when they were painting a particular picture.”
Then MacManus got married to his first wife and adopted her daughter. He decided that trying to make a living from his art and supporting a family was too risky. They moved to Denver and he got a job at Public Service Company. “It was a good job, so I just turned my back on the art and devoted all my time to my family and job.”
One day, a co-worker was sharing his experiences skiing and racing cars. “All of a sudden, he looks at me and asks, ‘What do you do?’ I really didn’t have a hobby, but I backpacked every once in a while. I told him I guess I backpacked. After that, I started becoming a really avid backpacker.”
ONE OF HIS BOSSES was a climber and invited MacManus to go climbing one Thanksgiving. MacManus describes the experience as grim — mostly because he didn’t have the proper equipment and was freezing most of the time — but he got hooked.
Then his interest in backpacking and climbing led him to the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim hike. “It’s a 50-mile hike that you have to complete in 24 hours. After competing for a couple of years, I realized that some people were running it. That’s how I got into running.”
MacManus started out driving trucks, but later he built trucks for Public Service Company. While still working at Public Service, he started drawing pictures on his three kids’ lunch sacks. Soon, he was spending almost every night drawing while sitting in front of the television. The reason he had to decorate new lunch sacks so frequently was because the teachers collected them.
MACMANUS BOUGHT some pens and started drawing different things. “I built trucks, so the logical thing was to draw trucks. Different salespeople would come through and see my drawings. They liked them and sometimes bought them. I also designed Christmas cards. It was actually a good supplementary income,” MacManus laughed.
Raised in the Denver area, MacManus was familiar with Salida. “I always thought the town was cool. I loved the mountains and liked delivering here. One time when I came here about 10 or 15 years ago, I went for a run and wound up on First Street. I ran past the First Street Café and thought that would be a good place to have dinner. I saw houses that were for sale for $20,000 to $25,000. I ran to the top of S Mountain and thought, ‘I could easily live here.’
“My intention at that point was to finish my career at Public Service Company. I was on track to retire from there. Then they started buying companies and being bought out. I had to reapply and reapply for my job. The fifth time out, I reapplied not for my job but for a higher level job. I didn’t get it and hadn’t applied for my own job, so I no longer worked for them.”
MacManus took the opportunity to move to Salida a little over three years ago and pursue both his art and sports – sometimes simultaneously. He draws pictures that then become posters, and produces prints and T-shirts for various events.
In addition, MacManus has done illustrations for several books, creates drawings that he can sell as prints and cards, and works with local companies creating brochures. He is always looking for ways to market his work, and even though history didn’t captivate him in college, it permeates his work (which sometimes includes histories he’s written while conducting research for a drawing).
DESPITE THE FACT that MacManus is now considered a successful artist, he still doesn’t make enough money to support himself solely by his art, so he recently started a window washing business.
As an artist, MacManus sees art in everything, even in the mundane requirements of marketing his drawings and doing windows. “Art is everything. Art is the world, as far as I’m concerned. Everything I do is art, and is related to art – even washing windows. That’s what I learned when I was in college, going to art classes. Art is just a part of us. It’s everything.”
Jon MacManus can be reached at 719-539-7626. His portfolio can be found at www.artoftherockies.org.
Jayne Mabus lives, works, and freelances in Salida; she formerly worked as a photojournalist for a sailing magazine in Huntington Beach, Calif.