Jerry Beguin

Jerry Beguin’s artwork is being exhibited in the Portal Gallery at the Art Center at Fuller Lodge, in Los Alamos, May 8th – June 13th.

I visited his studio which is full of photographs, "Muzart" and paintings. The eight-by-five canvas by the door is covered in sketches based on String Theory. He joked, “It’s a theory of everything that predicts absolutely nothing!”

Beguin’s artistic life has truly been unpredictable.

He knew that he was an artist when he was in the third grade. His teacher was always scolding him for drawing in class, instead of doing his work. But one day she let him draw a castle on the chalk board with colored chalk, and she ended up leaving the drawing up for the rest of the year.

When he was older he talked to his parents about going to art school, but his dad said that it was a “sissy” thing to do, and so he went into construction instead. He worked as a carpenter for 45 years, but continued to work on his art the entire time.

Then in 2000 his was one of the 400 Los Alamos homes that burned down in the Cerro Grande fire. He lost everything. He had a lifetime of art in the house, including watercolors of his tour in Viet Nam, and and a five by eight painting that he had just finished. His family’s creativity had blossomed into two businesses. He had created dozens of games that he was going to sell, and his wife had about five hundred handmade dolls that she was about to sell online with a company called Blossom Dolls. His house and yard were completely leveled.



Having his work destroyed shook him. He asked himself Why did I become an artist, do all this work, only to have it burn? “I still don’t think I’ve recovered,” he said. “It was like losing my lover. It was like a death.”

The fire suppressed his interest in art for a few years, but then several years ago he just had a strong drive to do more artwork. When he started to work again he found that he had changed as an artist. “I see better. I see more clearly. I used to be finicky about artwork. It had to be perfect. Now it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

That’s why his newest work, Muzart, fascinates him so much. He and his son make music together (their duo is called “Metal Tomatoes”) and then he uses that music to create colorful images on his computer that he experiments with to create art.

He hopes to develop a program that would allow people to make art from music, and possibly to allow people who are physically handicapped to create art using only the movements of their facial muscles.

Looking around his home, I realize that we are completely surrounded by products of his creativity. He built and designed his house, and his son’s house next door. He showed me the tiny outbuilding where he and his wife lived while they were building their new house. He filled his yard with trees and a garden to give himself a peaceful sanctuary.

Being able to create after his work had been destroyed in the fire is what makes Jerry an artist. “There’s a meaning to it. It’s going to affect someone’s life.”