< Previous40 COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 CURRENTS | ART ‘IT ALL COMES TOGETHER’ Artist finds beauty and purpose in almost everything she sees story by BARBARA CANETTI | photos by JENNIFER REYNOLDS T o Stacy Gresell, there’s no such thing as trash. Gresell is an artist who creatively finds a use for everything she sees. She sees beauty and usefulness in wood that termites have chewed on and destroyed. And she finds purpose for old plastic mini-blind slats or discarded and out-of-date plat records. She even thinks rusted drawers or surplus silverware still have use. “I like to preserve things and use them,” Gresell said. “I was always a ‘granola’ girl. I keep everything and find a use.” For instance, Gresell makes intricate art pieces using materials she finds and stores for later use. She made a large swordfish with faucet lines, tape measure pieces, keys, zippers, a sewing ruler, dozens of sawtooth hangers and a vintage metal fender emblem from a Chevy 327. “I call these my ‘Where’s Waldo?’ art,” she said. “People stand in front of them and look for all the pieces.” Gresell, a communications professor at Lone Star College, has been creating art for several decades. She started by painting a large mural in her daughter’s room, and when she realized it looked pretty good, she accepted offers from friends and neighbors to paint murals for them. Artist Stacy Gresell creates works using found objects as well as encaustic painting, a technique using a heated wax medium and pigments. Gresell, who teaches at a community college in Houston, also has a small studio at her home in Galveston. COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 41 Stacy Gresell used reclaimed wood from her house in Galveston to shape a surfboard. It stands in the corner next to one of her encaustic pieces of a seascape.42 COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 CURRENTS | ART Her creative instincts further developed as she got into jewelry making, leather works, sewing and print making. She watched You- Tube videos and learned the complicated steps in encaustic art, which uses beeswax and color pigments to make paintings. Gresell studied different art forms, learning about shade, dimension, depth and color. In time, she became better at different mediums and challenges. But perhaps the most interesting thing she started doing was making her own frames — from anything she could find. Back to that termite-ridden wood. As Gresell and husband, Matt, were tearing apart their midtown Galveston home in 2020, they discovered the front wall of the house needed to be replaced because of a former termite invasion. As she pulled the once-infested lumber off the windows, she noticed the design carved into the wood by the tunneling termites. “This is so cool,” she said. “Look at the design they made.” She kept the wood, sanded it down and cut it into pieces to construct frames for her art. She realized then she could create paint- ings and canvases any size she wanted to if (Clockwise from left) Artist Stacy Gresell uses torn strips of navigation charts and geological surveys to create a piece that evokes waves on a beach; a peacock portrait created on the deck of an old organ; a swordfish made with found objects. COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 43 she could also build her own frames. “This was so freeing,” she said. “I could make paintings any size I wanted to and I can turn anything into a frame.” Her husband helps by joining her at garage sales and finding interesting pieces. He even gave her a tabletop saw for her birthday so she could make more frames. “He gets me,” she said. Her friendship with Scott Hanson at the Antique Warehouse in Galveston introduced Gresell to a wide variety of obscure objects she transformed into art. Parts from an out- of-tune and ruined piano became “feathers” on an owl and an egret and several frames for art. The base of an old organ framed a portrait of a bird. Discarded table legs and dresser drawers could be repurposed. Pieces of sheet music made interesting backgrounds for paintings, and using the rubber from a ping pong paddle generated an attractive texture on the neck of a blue peacock, whose beak was made from nautical maps. In her Galveston studio, she organizes her “found” articles by color, category or “beyond weird.” As a warning, there’s a box of rusted items labeled “tetanus.” “I call it junk art,” she said. “It is nostalgic.” Oftentimes, one little piece of junk moti- vates her to create something. “Some of the art is driven by one piece,” she said. “It all comes together.” Because she likes to do several types of art, her work is never boring, she said. “Doing all the other things makes me bet- ter at what I like to do,” she said. “It keeps me creative.” (From top right) Stacy Gresell works on a piece made with found objects at her studio in Galves- ton; bins containing yellow and black items sit on Gresell’s work bench where she is working on a found-object bee; Gresell keeps her found objects in labeled bins. The “tetanus” bin contains rusty items. “I like to preserve things and use them. I was always a ‘granola’ girl. I keep everything and find a use.” STACY GRESELL44 COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 TREASURE TROVE CHARTING A NEW COURSE A 1950s-era binnacle is among nautical antiques in a downtown shop story by SHANNON CALDWELL | photo by JENNIFER REYNOLDS M ade from brass and wood with red and green balls on either side of a cone-shaped porthole, it looks like a fire hydrant dressed for a party. It’s actually a compass binnacle from a ship and you’ll find it in the entrance of Nautical Antiques in downtown Galveston. The circa- 1950 binnacle is from Kelvin and Wilfrid O. White Company in Boston New York, Nautical Antiques owner Michael Culpepper said. “It is the housing for a magnetic compass and the red and green balls are iron to compensate for the metal in the ship and help the compass work properly,” Culpepper said. “They are red and green to show port and starboard and they help with navigation, especially at night. You could look down at the compensating balls and work out if a ship ahead was moving away or towards you.” Nautical Antiques has sold many compass bin- nacles over the years. The binnacles have gone to themed restaurants, corporate offices, movies, amusement parks and even private homes. January 2025 marks the 25th year Culpep- per and wife, Adrienne, have owned Nautical Antiques and it’s the end of an era. The couple is charting a new course of their own, closing the store in April and retiring from retail. “Over the years, so many people have told us that our store is the best store they’ve ever seen, and we know that’s rare in retail,” he said. “It is not lost on us how fortunate we’ve been, but 25 years doing anything is a long time and it’s run its course.” Post retirement, the Culpeppers plan to con- tinue living on Galveston Island while they rest, regroup and plan for the future. Each month, Coast Monthly highlights an intriguing relic or antique on the upper Texas coast. Near the entrance inside Nautical Antiques in downtown Galveston is a 1950s-era type K binnacle from the Kelvin and Wilfrid O. White Company.INDEPENDENT | ASSISTED | MEMORY CAREHungry for more? COASTMONTHLY.COM/ COOKBOOK Get your copy today!408 25th Street Catering & Venue: (409) 528-4500 Pick up this special & more at our booth at the Farmer’s Market: Roasted Poblano Stuffed with Cheese and Served with Rice in Black Bean Corn Cream 3rd Annual Vegan Dinner Tickets Available for the EATcetera 3rd Annual Fine Dining Vegan Dinner February 12, 2025 See our website for purchase www.eatceteratx.com Join us Sundays at Galveston Owns Farmer’s Market Soups, Specials & Selected Sandwiches 9 am - 1 pm (Oct thru May) 9 am - noon (June thru Sept)48 COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 CURRENTS | MUSIC ‘THIS MAKES ME HAPPY’ Persistence pays off for singer/songwriter who performs all around upper Texas coast story by BARBARA CANETTI | photos by JENNIFER REYNOLDS M elissa Jones Auld makes things happen. Once she gets an idea, she follows through and, much to her amazement, it works. At age 32, Auld picked up a guitar for the first time and started strum- ming. Although her father and grandfather played guitar, Auld didn’t have any inkling she would gravitate toward the instrument until that fateful day. She was the mother of two teenage girls and a full-time hairdresser, so music wasn’t on her horizon. But when she started plucking away at the strings, she found a new love. “I thought I would just learn to play and then go to nursing homes to entertain people, like my grandfather did,” Auld said. “But I just loved playing and singing and things took off.” Her father gave her a Martin guitar and 18 years later, it’s the only one she uses. She named it Lee-lee after her father, Lee. Despite the damage she has inflicted on this instrument — she’s a heavy strum- mer and wore out the area below the pickguard — it’s her constant companion. Auld, who lives in Texas City with husband, Dan, and 18-month-old Max, is a regular at local clubs and restaurants. Her one-woman band has regular gigs at venues in Galveston, Texas City and Kemah. She chooses to work only three or four evenings a week so she can spend time with her family. She always has loved singing and would entertain others at karaoke clubs in her native Dallas neighborhood, she said. She was asked to be a back-up singer for one band, and then another. Soon, she was singing several nights a week. She covers Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Willie Nelson and other artists. She favors rock, New Wave and country music. Her favorites are the original songs she writes, which was another surprise to her. “I didn’t know I could write,” she said. “But I started working out many problems through the lyrics. It just start- ed flowing out of me.” Song writing turned out to be great therapy, she said. “Things that pressed on you for many years come out in the lyrics and then these things do not hurt you anymore,” she said. “It is one way to turn a bad thing into a good thing.” And just as she got established in her new career, her hus- band was transferred to Utah, where the club scene was not as popular. But Auld would find places that wanted enter- tainment, she said. She went to restaurants and suggested to managers she could perform live music at their venues, and once more her career took off. “I’ve learned that the music doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be heartfelt. It has to sound real, with many layers.” MELISSA JONES AULD COASTMONTHLY.COM | JANuArY 2025 49 Musician Melissa Jones Auld regularly performs at local clubs and restaurants along the Gulf Coast.Next >