Image new, yet familiar to theater fans

In one sense, the colorful tile painting recently installed on a fountain in the Dock Street Theatre courtyard is a brand new work of art.

In another sense, it's just the latest incarnation of an artistic and architectural motif that has floated around Charleston for 170 years.

The creation features at its center a mix of a Palmetto tree, a snake and two smaller South Carolina seals, and it's topped by a theatrical comedy mask and surrounded by a half dozen musical instruments and other flourishes.

The composition dates from at least 1840, when a Spring Street cabinet maker carved it for display inside the Academy of Music, once a prominent fixture at King and Market streets.

When that building was torn down in the early 20th century, the piece was salvaged and given to the Footlight Players. That theatrical group eventually placed it prominently on its proscenium, the great arch over its stage, where it still hangs today.

Before the Footlight Players moved

to its Queen Street property for its permanent home, however, the theatrical company migrated around other Charleston theaters, including the Dock Street.

That might be why architect Albert Simons commissioned artist William Halsey to paint a version of the image on wet plaster that backed a fountain in the Dock Street's courtyard.

Halsey's work was just a small part of the theatre's creation in the late 1930s as a Works Project Administration job.

While the idea for his fresco had aesthetic merit, it proved impractical in the long run. Over the years, the fountain - and the other elements - eroded away much of Halsey's original work.

When the Dock Street Theatre recently underwent its extensive renovation, the city decided to save what was left of Halsey's fresco by sealing it behind a new wall.

It then commissioned Mary Walker and other local artists to re-create a version of it, this time on painted porcelain tiles.

A painter and printmaker, Walker briefly studied under Halsey after moving here in 1975. Walker says she began by studying Halsey's color working sketch for the project, now in the Gibbes Museum of Art's collection.

Walker says her piece wasn't intended to be a copy, partly because it was created on a different material. Also, Walker says she chose to use similar but subtler versions of the primary colors that Halsey used on his surviving sketch.

"Halsey's palette was a strong Mexican influence, and mine was not that," she says, but because her colors darkened when the tiles were fired, "it ended up being stronger than I expected. My finished project is closer to Halsey's colors."

She was helped by tile installer Steve Voelkel of Art Gecko, his apprentice Mike Burns and Jeff Kopish, who sculpted the copper snake head that projects from the art and emits water.

The Footlight Players' history calls the original carving a subtle reminder of the continuity between what once had vanished and what is determined to live on.

The Dock Street courtyard fountain shows the continuity between what has lived on and what is determined to go forth and multiply, flourishing in new, yet familiar ways.

Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or at rbehre@postandcourier.com or by mail at 134 Columbus St. Charleston S.C. 29403.