Gleason: A life lived in service to instruments, art (2024)

FLORENCE, S.C. — Jim Gleason’s “A Study in Brass” played to a full house at its artist reception Thursday night at the Gately Gallery.

Technically the Pentamerous Brass played at the reception. Gleason’s creations may have played in another time and place, but Thursday night most just hung on the wall, sat on the floor, or were displayed in cases.

Gleason stood in the middle of it all, shaking hands and smiling as people walked to the back of the gallery where stood refreshments, drinks and the band.

The artist, artisan, and advocate was in all three of his elements.

“If music goes out of the public schools, it affects everybody from the audience to the United States,” Gleason said. “If you don’t teach them to appreciate music now and stick with an instrument, they won’t appreciate it as an audience.”

Gleason has worked for most of his life — and continues to do so — to ensure music thrives.

“I spent quite a bit of time traveling when I was younger because of my family, and I spent 24 years in the military, but we’ve been here almost 32 years,” Gleason said of Florence. “This is the longest I’ve been anywhere, and it’s the only place where I’ve belonged to the community, and I just participate, and they let me in. They moved right over and made a place for me.’”

“Even wayward trumpet players and music educators I’ve knowns since what you were 14, at least,” Gleason said as South Florence Band Director Eric Terry walked by and collected a handshake and smile as he passed.

Gleason’s show at the gallery is comprised of bits and pieces of a myriad of instruments, reassembled into an octopus, elephant, ant, sea creatures — to start. Some of his creations have metallic ears.

Several human-esque instruments play other instruments as if they were born to it.

All are what somebody might call brassy, and absolutely no playable instruments were harmed in the creation of the exhibit.

All creations came from instruments that were well past their playing days, Gleason said.

Gleason got his start in art while stuck sheltering in a typhoon caring for instruments during a stint with the U.S. Marine Corps band.

“When I did my interview for the Marine Band in D.C., the person I had to see was the drum major. I had applied for the logistics spot to repair musical instruments,” Gleason said. “He asked me if I worked on percussion gear, and I said I only worked on musical instruments. Guess who was a percussionist? It set the tone for the next 12 years, not a lot of fun. I was still there, and I didn’t get fired.”

“I had made, from time to time early on, I had done the lamp thing for people who wanted me to make a lamp. When I got here, I had done some odds and ends for family,” he said.

Several of his lamps are on display at the exhibit.

After Gleason mustered out of the Marines, he did the “corporate thing” for a while before he settled in Florence and set up shop to care for instruments in need of repair — 4,000-5,000 a year before he decided to take it easy.

Now that number is closer to 1,500 instruments a year. He handles all of the instrument repairs for Florence One Schools and the occasional donation to Yale University. He rehabilitated two instruments for the Ivy League school recently.

“Jane Madden is my mentor. She pushed me out of my comfort zone. Between showing in two or three galleries and doing the largest music art competition in South Carolina, which was the state fair,” Gleason said. “First year I was there as an amateur, I won the amateur contest. Next year I did the professional, and I got third place. From then on it took on a life of its own. I kept getting requests and commissions, and I found out I could use the revenue to subsidize more work for the students. It’s funny how it took off.”

The instruments that wind up in his artist’s eye come from a myriad of sources.

“We lose a lot of music programs, instrument programs in South Carolina, and I actually have pulled instruments out of dumpsters,” Gleason said. I belong to a buying group, and when music stores unfortunately go out of business or factories go out of business, we go in and buy everything.”

And by buy everything he means metal by the ton.

“Before 1965 everything was 33-gauge French brass because it was made to pass on,” he said. “We haven’t done multigenerational instruments for a long time. They’re not made to repair, they’re made to replace.”

And Gleason recycles them into art.

“It’s like Michelangelo.” He said the piece is already there, and all he did was knock away the bits that didn’t belong there.

“This is how I started, those lamps and music boxes,” Gleason said.

“That violin was, I think it lasted two weeks in public schools, and then it got stepped on. They make really good music boxes,” he said as he gestured to a violin that had a wind-up key on the front of it.

“I really like getting the actual work done so I can do this. The main reason I do this is you don’t have to worry about whether or not they play,” he said.

“I’ve been doing it long enough people call me, and that’s pretty cool. Every band director around knows where I live. If I ever retire all the way, I’ll have to move,” Gleason said.

The exhibit runs through July 26.