[upbeat music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side By Side.

My guest today has traveled the world to capture its beauty, but he's always been anchored by his Carolina roots.

From watercolors to home furnishings, he's a celebrated artist and caring philanthropist.

His name is William Mangum.

Stay tuned.

- [Announcer] Funding for a Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Narrator] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola consolidated, your local bottler.

[soft music] - Phil Mangum, Welcome Side by Side.

I'd been wanting to ask you this question.

You have had 4,000 original artworks, you've written, what, a dozen books or so, I'm dying to know how, does an artist like you think up the new piece of artwork.

Do you sit there with a little pencil and pen?

Do you see an image somewhere, does someone whisper in your ear a creative idea?

Run us through that process that an experienced artist like you goes through?

- Well, it's a great question, Nido.

Thank you for that and thank you for having me.

Early on in my career, obviously you look around you and oftentimes you just look at what's in your backyard.

And North Carolina to me, is an artist's paradise.

My career began with a .59 cent tray of watercolors, while I was a senior at UNCG.

And early on, I had the opportunity to have an exhibition at my university and wound up selling all of my works.

Thus hinted to the idea that I might do this full time.

- What was the price tag on the first piece of artwork?

- Oh gosh.

$75 to $150.

- So how old?

- I was 18.

- You were 18, and you sold your first piece for $75 or up to $150.

Were these students or somebody who came into the art?

- No, these were parents of students that came in for.

- What did you do to advertise for them to come to your art show?

- Well, actually one of the Deans saw me painting as I was working my way through school, and he invited me to have the exhibition.

- [Nido] I see.

- But what I realized early on was that, if I was going to succeed with this, I couldn't just paint for art's sake, but I really had to have some business acumen behind it.

Early on, when I began to approach this, the university was great at teaching you the fundamentals of painting, but they didn't talk about the economy of how you make a living from it.

- You think you think things have changed now, you think they're teaching you the fundamentals of life?

- Maybe some schools, but early on, one of the things that I did, was I delved into a magazine called American Artists.

And as I was in school, I would study these artists that were making their livelihoods from their gift.

And I dreamed that maybe one day I would be featured in that publication before I died.

Interestingly enough, two years after I graduated from school, I was the featured artist.

So early on, I came up with this acronym called the Art Of Doing Business, the 'A' stands for Alliance, that ability to align yourself with brands that are already a recognized, 'R' is resourcefulness, the ability to use lots of your gifts besides just painting, whether it's publishing.

And the 'T' is for timing, is to look for those opportunities.

But for me today, in order to produce such a massive body of work, it's to never leave the end of the day with something that's untouched.

So in the mornings, when I go into my studio, I already have pieces that are underway.

In construction.

- How many typically at a time do I see, you know, five or six pieces that are in the works?

- Exactly.

And these could be pieces that are transitional landscapes, you know, more representational work, or there could be very contemporary pieces, which I've really yielded to these days.

- So you get an idea and then you go into this dark studio somewhere all by your lonely self?

- Well, it is by myself.

It's not dark.

- It's not dark.

[laughs] - No, no, it's was quite, it's quite well lit with natural light.

- And you spend how many hours a day in the studio?

- Believe it or not, six to eight hours a day.

- Six to eight hours by yourself, actually painting.

Painting or drawing something first on a, on a draft and then painting from it?

- Well, the preliminary concepts are what I call field studies are sometimes actually captured literally out in the field.

And then I come back and the medium watercolors allowed myself to do that.

But my signature paintings are really too extravagant to do out in the field.

So with those renderings, I'll come back, I'll size them up.

I'll scale them up, and I'll begin those pieces.

And sometimes in the early days, a painting might take six to eight weeks.

But a really great painting is not measured by the amount of time you pour into it.

Some of my most creative works are done in an afternoon.

You just get lucky.

You really never know.

- Yes, yeah.

How do you, first of all, how long give, us an idea.

So a painting could take from what, from an hour to what?

- It could take two to three weeks, depending on the complexity of scale and timing.

Lots of the contemporary works could have 30 to 50 layers of paint.

- [Nido] I see.

- That has to dry, but today with the new work, it's not only in the construction of the pieces, it's almost in the destruction.

It's putting it on, it's taking it back off that creates - What does that mean?

Putting it on and then taking it back off?

- Right, yeah, exactly.

So sometimes one of the most unusual effects that you can achieve, is right before the paint adheres to the canvas and it dries, and you literally spritz it, or you wipe it, or you rake it back off, you tear it back off, and it clings to the edges.

In really good paintings, it's all about the edges.

Early on, when I first began, I was almost considered a photo realist.

You could look at my paintings and you go, "Is that a painting?

Or is that a photograph?"

And I took great pride in sort of being a magician and confusing the viewer, so to speak.

But today, what I love is the mystery of the medium itself and almost becoming like a chemist, getting in there and seeing how wet, how gooey it could slide or adhere.

And sometimes these effects only come about through sheer luck and by destructing, ripping it back off.

When I went from watercolors to acrylics, one of the greatest lessons that I came about, was that I had to be an amateur once again.

For nearly 40 years, my goal was to be one of the finest watercolorist in the nation.

And I really feel like I achieved that, through the mastery and skill sets that I took on.

But I tried to use acrylics the way that I did watercolors, and it was an utter failure.

So I had to go back and be a child once again, with a box of crayons.

- It's a very interesting perspective.

That would be true of a writer, who changes the pattern of the writing.

And be true of a poet, perhaps.

How does Bill Mangum decide how much a piece of art is gonna sell at a show?

- Well, early on, what I tried to do was to keep up with the number of hours that I put in it, and my cost of goods.

And that was really pretty rare for artists to do it.

And in the beginning I would make about 42 cents an hour.

- [Nido] Yes, yes.

[both laugh] - I was literally giving my paintings away.

And one of the greatest mistakes that I see amateurs doing as they might have success with one particular piece and they price it, or they look around at what other artists are acquiring and ask the same amount.

And it really isn't a great way to do it.

So for me, my scale, my rates have obviously gone up because of the popularity, but early on, I just wanted to provide for my family.

And the biggest key, is really in producing work.

Like a musician, one of the things that separated me and gave me some notoriety early on, was the ability to be resourceful and publish my work.

And like a musician.

- Which is the business side you were talking about earlier, how to wrap around the piece of art itself by publishing it, promoting it, et cetera.

- And leveraging it.

So like a musician could only put- - What does leveraging it mean?

- Well, for me, it was publishing.

- [Nido] Publishing.

- Licensing.

- People think post cards, whatever.

- It could be just fine art reproductions, was the core of what I did.

- I see.

So the piece of art and then limited edition of 500, whatever.

- Right, a thousand.

So like a musician can perform live in a concert, and then they make CDs of their music, I did the same thing with my original.

It's like a fine original, make 500 prints, or a thousand prints, and then became national in my distribution of that.

- [Nido] I see.

- And we had two international publishers that would take a lot of my foreign subjects and reproduce those into open posters.

- So when you say publishing, you don't mean in a book, you merely mean making - [William] Reproduction - Reproductions of it, I see.

- So oftentimes I could sell maybe an original for $10,000, but I could make a hundred thousand dollars in the publishing rights of that piece.

- Yes, yes.

So I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions.

Just think of me as a novice in terms of art, but also think of me as someone who has a depth of appreciation for art in all of its forms, whether it's sculpture or, painting, or poetry, or music, whatever.

I have a love of art, but I don't really understand the fullness of art.

So, Picasso and Monet, aside for a moment, what makes a piece of art so expensive?

You know, you hear about these pieces of art that are a hundred million dollars, and then you see another piece of art, that to someone like me doesn't look quite that different, but it sells for $500 or a thousand dollars.

I understand that the fame of the person, and the historic value of it, and the appreciation that a museum might put on it.

All, these are variables that affect the price of something.

But give me an idea, if I were gonna be an art collector, what do I look for and how do I know the value of real art?

- Well, the show's not long enough to answer that question, Nido, but honestly, it's a great question because a lot of people say, well, I'll just have a reproduction versus owning the original.

It looks the same to me.

And we all have our desires of craftsmanship, or uniqueness, or one of a kindness.

I mean, one of the most expensive paintings went on the block of Christ just a couple of years ago.

So for $450 million, there's a lot of controversy around as to whether or not Leonardo DaVinci actually even created that work.

So- - Who would buy that?

Would be a museum somewhere?

- Well, it was to my understanding, it was bought silently through Saudi Arabia.

And is that piece probably will never be seen in the public.

- [Nido] I see.

- In the future.

But honestly, when I began my career, art is a very intimidating thing for the average consumer.

Particularly to me, as an artist, because they don't quite know how or they operate or, and I've tried to break down those walls and be comfortable, and make the viewer comfortable, with what I create.

- Intimidating how?

- Well in that, artists are just unique in their ability to create something that most people can't even draw a line with the pencil.

- I see.

- So I say, use a ruler.

- You mean the appreciation of the skill is intimidating.

I see.

- The talent.

So for me to have an open studio and to walk people in to the other side and actually see works under construction is one of the most enjoyable processes.

- Because you understand it.

- Well, you do.

- Yeah, it'd be like an engineer or an architect walking into a beautiful, fine art center, and appreciating how it really comes together, how it's built versus the average person who just admires the beauty of what they see.

- Well, so often that's the only thing you do get to see is the finished product.

So if you can go behind the scenes and see a piece that's under construction, or watch a YouTube video of how the artists might share in its creation, it then becomes an educational tool, and it helps them step-by-step.

And that was one of the marvelous things that I did in the first interview with American Artists magazine was that I captured the creation of my painting from beginning to end and provided that.

And it was the stepping stones.

- So, Bill, I want to go back to that question of people who want to collect the art, for the beauty of the art, how do they evaluate it?

How do you know?

I mean, I've been on cruise ships when they put all this art stuff out there and, it's all auctioned off and someone pays this much and someone pays this much, and you have really no idea if that person [laughs] got value, or they were just, you know, frankly, just, persuaded that this is a good thing for them to do.

- Well, early on what I learned was that art is relational.

And by painting the landscape, that's what people really connotated to.

They had a love affair with that.

One of the greatest memories that I have in my studio was a gentleman that came in one day, and he wanted to buy a gift for his family.

And as I began to talk him, he welled up and he began to cry.

And he was sharing with me that he had stage four cancer and he wanted to pick a scene that was memorable to him and his family.

So it was a piece that I did of Cape Lookout lighthouse.

And he was very specific and he wanted to give that as a tribute to his family.

So sometimes it's meaningful, people relate and they identify with the locale.

And that helps a lot.

Well with contemporary art, it's totally different.

I think a lot of people really doing it because they're in a transition of their own life, but they love to decorate.

They become an artist almost in their own environment.

And they love to pick up on the scale, the texture, and the colors of the pieces.

- Is it important to build an inventory, a collection of the same artist or not?

- No, I don't think so.

I mean a lot, well, I should be careful the way I say that because I have a lot of collectors that are quite enthusiastic about my work, but it's like a sprinkles on a donut.

You know, the more colorful you have, the more entertaining it is.

A lot of people will come to my home and they'll say, "Well, Bill, where's your paintings?"

And I really collect other individual's works.

And of all the pieces that I've retained, it may be just a gift to my wife or kids, or maybe a piece that I love, that didn't sell.

And I said, well, I'll just hang on to this.

- I know a guy called Michael Israel.

Does the name mean anything to you?

- I can't place it.

- Michael Israel is reminds me of these artists that you see in Paris, or in Rome, or in Madrid, who are out on the plazas, you know, just doing something either of another person, or just a sketch of something else and then they sell it.

And Michael Israel is the one who travels across the country now.

And he's one of many by the way, who traveled around the country, and does all these big conventions.

So what he does is he'll go into a convention.

He'll listened to what the program is, and then he'll prepare something out of it.

And he will have this, you know, big picture made of, just throw it in front of you.

It's a lot of theatrics.

Paint in the air and brushes in the air and all that.

- Can't quite figure out what it is.

- When it's finished, it's quite a beautiful piece of art.

This is not a fair question, perhaps what I'm intrigued by your point of view, do artists look at other artists in, through a lens of what?

A lens of that kind of thing is hokey?

This is not real art, or do you just appreciate it as different kinds of art and so be it?

- Well, there is the finished product itself that you would examine, but it's also in the presentation or in the creation.

The art, for the most part, is in the creation of the work.

That is the embodiment and the relationship.

- But the average person doesn't understand that.

I mean, looking at a piece of art, I wouldn't know what went in the creation of that art, right?

Is it because I'm just ignorant or, most people are more like me unless they're art collectors.

- Well, I think if you were to pause and maybe to go into that artist studio, if you had that opportunity, or if that artist were to publish the production of a piece, it would help carry it forward a little bit more.

Years ago, I did this film called Carolina Preserves, and it was going out into the field and it showed the creation of how you brought that genesis, and then you executed it, and you ultimately delivered it.

But you know, I think any artists that can make a livelihood from their talent is pretty extraordinary in this, even today.

- Why is that?

- Well, it just, it's hard.

It's difficult.

- It's hard to market it?

Hard to sell it?

Hard to be noticed?

- Well, an artist is an entrepreneur first and foremost, and they have to be a manufacturer.

They have to be a retailer, a wholesaler.

They got to be a shipper.

I mean, you carry every category.

- Solo practitioner.

- Yeah, I mean, it is daunting at times.

And at the same time, you walk into that studio for eight hours a day by yourself, and it's intentional, but you are a dreamer at the same time.

So when you look at the success of other artists, whether it be commercial or they have a kitschy style that has caught on, and it's a fever.

You can be prideful and you could be jealous, but at the same time, you really have to admire and also recognize there's a lot of luck in being at the right place at the right time.

- True of book authors, true of a lot of professions, shall we say?

So I hear you say that, that art appreciation is dependent to a great extent on art education.

And this is why in colleges and K through 12, we are teaching our students about the appreciation of art in all of its forms, regardless of what your major is.

You agree with that?

- I totally agree.

Creativity is a lost art.

And we are unfortunately schooled in academia so much that you don't know how to get your hands dirty any longer.

- So Bill, you sort of made a transition between this traditional art, my word traditional, I'm not sure what you would call it.

To this contemporary art.

I saw your last book, which is all contemporary.

If the name Bill Mangum was not on it, I would not have guessed that Bill Mangum did that.

What caused you to do that?

- Well, for 42 years, I ran a commercial gallery of my own work and it was fantastic.

And I had a collector base of over 25,000 buyers, really across the nation.

But that also was a machine that depended on seven days a week of my time.

And while I was still able to paint in the studio, it really never allowed me to do something outside of what I was talented at.

So about five years ago, I was deeply involved with a company called Klaussner Home Furnishings.

And they brought me on board to help them create an artist inspired home collection.

And they felt that if you could take an authentic story, like an artist, and mix it with good product, it could then help promote their brand.

And that's what I've enjoyed doing for years.

A part of those collections, was one that was called Simply Urban.

It was a contemporary bent and it demanded a different look.

And with that was they ask Bill, can you tack?

Can you do this?

And I said, absolutely.

And what I learned was I was about to take on a foreign language and it really, it broke me.

And it was a great breaking, but it was a soft introduction that if I wanted to tack, if I wanted a new season in my career, this was the window of opportunity.

So we had great success with it early on in the trade.

And then I decided I would close my retail operation, and I would pull everything into the studio, and I would pour myself into a new direction.

And here we are today.

- And is contemporary art easier to do than traditional or not?

- It is not.

- It is not, it looks easier.

- It does, it looks very elementary.

But I dare anybody.

- I'm not sure if Picasso actually did his pieces or they just splashed some paint on a canvas.

It looks easy.

- It looks contrived at times.

And I'm sure there were apprentice that maybe have came along and helped because he was the most prolific artist that ever lived.

But once again, it is, the execution is not the amount of time or the hours.

Picasso shares this great story when he was dining one day with one of his girlfriends and a fellow came up to him and asked him for his autograph.

And they said, you know, would you just sketch something on this napkin?

And he was totally interrupting them, but he did.

And as he reached for it, Picasso said, that'd be $50,000.

He said, "$50,000?

It only took you a couple of minutes to do that."

"No, you're mistaken.

It took me 50 years to learn how to do that in two minutes."

So that is what I guess you pay for today, is you pay for the knowledge and the history, and what looks so simple is years of building up professionally.

- And that's true of all forms of art.

I mean, professional speaking is that way, music is that way.

Sculpture is that way.

I mean, I think all skills, architecture, all of it, seems easy to the naked eye, but it takes one, sometimes generations, to become actually proficient.

Bill I can't end this program in the short time that we have without telling you that what I admire about you is not just your skill and your capacity for, for sustainability of your career for all those many years.

But rather what I admire more about you, is that you've found a way to build a bridge between your capacity to create art, and your desire to help the homeless.

And United Way, and other nonprofits in one form or another.

What made you do that?

- Well, you know, artists can get real prideful and get big-headed when we have some success.

But back in 1987, I actually came across and befriended a homeless fellow by name of Mike Savedra.

And I'd heard about this shelter called Greensboro Urban Ministry, and I took him down and as I dropped them off, I reached into my pocket and I'm sure Mike thought I was going to give him five or ten dollars, but I gave him a business card.

And I said, why don't you call me up in a couple of days and let me know how you're doing.

That turned into a three-year friendship, where ultimately I became Mike Savedra's caretaker.

Because not only was he homeless, he was mentally ill. And during that time, it really pricked my heart to use my talent as a resource to help institutions that are combating homelessness.

So in 1988, I did a painting called Not Forgotten.

And it was used as an honor card where people would make a donation and all the proceeds would go to support.

And that year raised over $50,000.

- [Nido] Wow.

- Today I've been doing it for 34 years and I don't see stopping.

And it's been a popular program that's raised nearly $10 million.

- Wow.

You've had a life of success and it's been framed with significance and stories like that speak of the fiber and character of a person.

Thank you for being with me today on Side By Side.

Continue to do what you do, and continue to educate people like me about the true meaning of art.

Thank you very much, Bill Mangum.

- My pleasure.

[soft music] - [Announcer] Funding for a Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Narrator] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music]