Press

Behind the Faces

A few moments with portrait artist Suellen McCrary.

By Maria Johnson

They look like they’re fixing to talk, the 24 people whose spirits were gently snared and then brushed onto birch panels that will hang in the Central Gallery of Greensboro’s Revolution Mill until October 1.

Portrait artist Suellen McCrary is responsible for the catch-and-release operation, a project called The Faces of Revolution.

Everyone she painted is connected, one way or another, to Revolution Mill, which wove downy flannel for Cone Mills Corporation from 1898 to 1982. The reclaimed complex, which blankets the hill where North Buffalo Creek slides under Yanceyville Street, now functions as a hip hub of live-work-play.

Funded by a grant from the property’s current owner, Self-Help Ventures Fund of Durham, McCrary mostly painted people who worked in the factory, folks who grew up in the mill village and their descendants. A few of her subjects currently labor — in light-flooded, ergonomically correct offices — in the latest incarnation of the brick, steel and maple behemoth.

McCrary herself leased a space there until last summer, when she moved back into her High Point home studio.

In mid-October, the oil portraits will move into the main building’s Textile Hall of Fame, where they will appear with biographical sketches.

McCrary, a Greensboro native and Appalachian grad who worked as a graphic artist before settling into portraiture, agreed to sit for a Q&A in the spirit of the word “portrait,” which is derived from the Latin verb “portrahere,” meaning to reveal or expose.

The Faces of Revolution

One artist’s mission to democratize portraiture and preserve the past

When painter Suellen McCrary moved her studio to Greensboro’s Revolution Mill two years ago, curious walk-ins included folks who remembered the workspace from another era when the mill turned out flannel from 1898 to 1982.

“They had all kind of stories to tell,” says McCrary, who specializes in portraits. “Some of them said they’d worked there, or their grandparents had worked there.”

To honor that history, McCrary pitched a project to the mill’s current owner, Durham-based Self-Help Ventures Fund, which acquired the complex in 2012.

In return for a monthly stipend, McCrary would spend two years painting oil-on-panel portraits of 25 people connected to the mill, whether they’d worked on machines bolted to the maple floor, handled clerical duties, or lived in the mill village. 

At the end of the project, the portraits would join the permanent historical collection at the mill, now a hive of live-work-play development.

The portrait subjects would receive free prints of their likenesses, making possible an otherwise costly keepsake. The price of an original oil portrait can range from $3,000 to six figures.