Howie Lee Weiss is a Baltimore based artist and professor emeritus of Maryland Institute College of Art. Weiss has been in Baltimore for more than forty years along with his wife, who is a classical pianist. With a love for design, a dedicated swimming practice, and robust teaching experience, he brings discipline to his studio – finding freedom in restrictions. Weiss has a knack for depicting the vastness of life through repetitive motifs with his preferred medium of charcoal. A painterly start leads to a progressive tightening of an image – resulting in graphic works on paper of various sizes. Recently, Weiss retired from teaching at MICA, where his name was synonymous with the senior thesis program for Fine Arts, Painting, and Drawing. He insists that his studio practice has remained much the same since retirement, but with now with more time for swimming. We met at his Woodberry studio, where he has been for over fifteen years, to talk about his work and this transitional time in his life.

Interview between Amy Boone-McCreesh and Howie Lee Weiss in Baltimore. November, 2025

AMY: I WANT TO START WITH YOUR MOST RECENT LIFE CHANGE, WHICH WAS LEAVING MARYLAND INSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART – HOW DID THAT FEEL? WHAT HAS TEACHING MEANT TO YOU?

Howie: Yeah, well, first of all, I want to say it was 46 years, plus 4 as an undergrad. So that’s 50 years I’ve been at MICA.  I first saw the school in 1968 with my mom and my aunt. We drove down from northern PA to check out the art college. I was in 10th grade in high school, considering where to attend art school. Never thought back then that I’d have a long career teaching here. So yeah, now I’m adjusting to being away from MICA. I think what happens is, if you teach that long, your inner academic time clock becomes institutionalized somewhat. And so your mind is geared to the start of the school year, rosters, midterms, finals, fall break, spring break, thesis defense, parents day, and in my case scheduling lecturers & visitors, overseeing senior shows, graduation and so forth. And so I’m finding that without that structure, life is a little different. In fact, life seems to be going faster without those markers, time is just flying.

It’s been a kind of a two-way street with teaching. I felt like I was able to effectively pass along information while at the same time receiving inspiration from the students. So to me it was a two-way thing, and I think it keeps you young. I was super happy to be around such talented students my whole life. And it was fantastic to be at a place like MICA, where it was so, (especially in the earlier years) spectacularly fine art driven. It was just a perfect place for me, both as a job and having a paycheck. And I had plenty of studio time. A lot of people who teach say it ruins their artwork, but I think I had the opposite experience. For me, it helped me, it structured my time, and I feel like my artwork thrived. I had enough time to focus and develop my art along with the students. If anything, maybe other parts of my life as a result of teaching weren’t as active as I could have been, like traveling because you’re bound to your employment. But yeah, it’s been a dream job!

A: HOW IS YOUR STUDIO PRACTICE OR THE WAY YOU STRUCTURE YOUR TIME DIFFERENT NOW THAT YOU ARE NO LONGER TEACHING?

H: I’m not sure it’s any different. Or maybe you’ve got to ask me in two years. You know what I mean?  It’s only been since August 1st. It’s not much different. I think my studio time is pretty much the same. What’s changed is my swimming time. I’ve been swimming for over 40 years. I’m in a good groove with my swimming, and now I swim in the morning. I don’t have to go to school or prepare things. So that has changed in terms of my daily timeframe. But as for my artwork, I don’t know yet. I’ve always been kind of a workaholic. I have to think about that, how things have really changed. Or like I say, you might have to ask me in two years. It’s just too soon.

A: YOU ORGANIZE YOUR WORK UNDER A FEW DIFFERENT CATEGORIES – SUCH AS CENTERPIECES – TREES OF LIFE, NARRATIVES, ENSEMBLES, HEADS AND MORE – CAN YOU EXPLAIN THESE?

H: Well, the categories keep growing. And there’s a new category now, these little columns that are starting. But I think it all goes back to the notion of style. Style is a word that sometimes students don’t like, and they don’t allow that word to enter into their art-making process. But for me, developing a style has been a huge part of my work. Over time, the style started to clarify itself and became clearer and clearer. And as a result of that clarity of style, then I could draw anything as long as it stayed within that realm of style.

So it could be this tree of life. It could be fruit. I went through a fruit period. It could be cups. I went through a cup period. It was about 250 cups. That was a big show at Goucher 20 years ago. If you had asked me a few years ago, “Would you be drawing heads ” I would have said no. But then I did one or two, and then I did a few more, and a few more, and then it kind of kept growing as this quantity unto itself.  Grids were a category for a while. As for these new column images, I don’t even know where they’re going. They’re just starting. They’re fresh. They’re new. May or may not develop further, I may even be done with them. There was once a category that looked like insects. Like that one over the door, for example. I like categories. It keeps it organized for me. And also, I like compartments and order. I tend to function well that way. I think my teaching was that way, too. Amy, you were involved in the senior thesis program, which I coordinated for many years – that was very much like categories and compartments and highly structured.

I like to squeeze as much as I can out of an image or a group of images through variation. And that’s kind of what happened with the heads or the cups. I drew cups until I got to a point where I didn’t feel like I could get anything more out of it after 250, you know what I mean? But I don’t set out to do a certain amount within these categories, I don’t set out to do 250 cups, or 200 of this or that, or heads, or whatever. It just kind of grows, for example, these little landscapes that were in the Goya show just started out as a few, like three or four. And then I said, “Well, they have some good rhythms side by side. Maybe I’ll add three or four more.” And then there was a whole row of them. And then next there were 10 rows of them and so on.

The variations are subtle. It’s not an extreme change from one to the next. It’s a minor variation within a set system. I like working within rules and imposed systems or structures. So part of the rule you set out for yourself states they are all going to be a set size and then everything has to be drawn with the same stick of charcoal, same size lines, same type of tones etc……and I like that. I’m interested in working within limitations, but trying to come up with limitless variety within those limitations. I’m really, really interested in that. It seems like you’re closing down options, which you are; but then if you stay with it and understand it and drive it hard enough, options start to open up out of the other end into other possibilities. But you are limiting yourself in some ways. You’re giving up a lot to gain a lot, basically.

A: THERE ARE RECURRING MOTIFS IN YOUR WORK, WOULD YOU SAY THERE’S ALSO SYMBOLISM?

H: Themes and motifs such as growth, joy, wonder, quests, vastness, history, beauty, water, air, light and elegance are a few issues that always interest me.

Oh, for example one might ask, “What does that turtle in that picture symbolize?”  That’s sort of a globular reference, that shell on the turtle. And turtles are very slow. The style and the look of my work is very fast. But then time really slows down once you step into each drawing’s inner narrative world.

So I’m interested in the speed of the image, and the speed of the style, and how quickly it releases itself to your eye. But then the subject really slows down, and you can linger, especially in the bigger narrative pieces. And I really like that contrast, the fastness of the style and then the slowness of the subject. This is part of the narrative series which I call Wonder. And so it’s about a naive view of who we are in the world. As for the crawling figure, babies start to crawl. It’s like a natural quest they have and about the wonder of their world.

You have this crawling figure, looking down into a hole. And you have the two little figures with telescopes looking up, also it’s a very plentiful world. There’s fruit and there’s intelligence and growth. Don’t miss that little crawly thing in the lower left. It’s a lower form of life. It’s not even a snake, more like a slug, a step below a snake. It ranges from these intelligent people who figured out how to use telescopes, studying the solar system, down to very basic insects or slugs. So that’s a little bit about that picture on the right – it’s about who we are in the world. These two large narrative works are variations on the same theme. It’s just that one was an earlier version. On the left is the earlier one, and on the right is the later one. The later one is quite full. I’ve expanded on this idea in some new ones that I’m working on currently in my other studio.

A: YOU ARE REALLY LOYAL TO CHARCOAL AND PAPER – CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR PROCESS AND WHY YOU ARE DRAWN TO THESE MATERIALS?

Yeah, well, like I said earlier, I like limitations. Working within a set limitation and getting down to a piece of paper and a piece of charcoal, is really basic. I do think and create like a painter. And you say they’re charcoal, and they are, but I think of it as paint. If you saw those works in progress on the other side of the studio, well that’s what they look like when they start out and well into their history; people are always surprised to see how rough, loose and organic they are. And the work remains flexible, painterly and open, for a long time. Most people think they start out tight with rulers and compasses, but they’re always surprised when they come into my studio and there are rugged works in progress. Some people want me to keep them like that. The charcoal, to me, it’s like paint. It’s a painterly medium because it’s so erasable, flexible and rich. And I work it like an expressionist painter, loose and really, really free. Over time though, it tightens up. Eventually, it gets exactingly tight, though one can always feel the worked, rubbed, arrived at or founded quality. That’s how I work. And this process just works well for me. Though I don’t recommend it as a way of working, everyone has to find their own unique methods that work for them.

For the process – I first coat the paper with a layer of tone. And then I freely draw very expressively all over the place, a lot of rubbing, changing and erasing with my hands. It takes me a really long time to find the image. I know you probably don’t think that, but it does. I really struggle in order to arrive at a refined finish. So yeah, the process is important, they’re so open for so long, many months for the large works. But eventually they’ll come together. And then, basically, in the end, I’ll exchange one type of drawing; expressive or malleable, for rigid or tight. I replace one concern with another. Maybe that also allows me to work a bit more like my sketchbooks. The early stages of the large drawings are more like my free-style sketchbooks. Allows me to tap into something else in my brain. Having two studios is a bonus for me because this studio is where I start the drawings, but finish them in my other studio. The final stage of the drawing is a matter of tiny decisions, tweaking every detail just right.

For the finishing stages of the work, I like working at night. I like to be home. And there’s something about the routine that I’ve gotten into; that they start out here in this studio and end up in my other studio. One drawing recently spent a year and a half in its early stages in this studio, just moving things around, making change after change. Then eventually I said, “It’s ready for me to take this to my home studio, to bring it to its completed state.” I’m actually still just finishing that one.

And so I have a different kind of focus late into the work, at home at night. I don’t know what it is. Though, my little ones start and finish in this studio, but the larger narrative ones, and centerpiece tree of life images, I finish in my home studio.

A: YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT YOUR WORK IN THIS CONTEXT OF FORMALITY, AND I KNOW THAT YOU HAVE SPENT MANY YEARS HELPING STUDENTS FIGURE OUT HOW TO DISPLAY AND PRESENT THEIR WORK. HOW DO YOU THINK ABOUT DISPLAY, ARRANGEMENT, AND EXHIBITION DESIGN?

H: During my grad years at Yale, I came in contact with some formalist thinking and it’s a part of me now, but I had to grow into it.

I would have been a good designer. I’ve installed a million student shows. So you get a sense for layout. As for my own work, there’s a kind of exacting quality that I’m interested in. That’s why perhaps I can’t leave the early stage of the drawings as an end stage. But maybe I’ll get to that point. And I know a lot of today’s artists who work on paper, doing drawings, or even photography and prefer their works pinned to the wall or displayed nakedly without framing. My last show was unframed, the one at Goya Contemporary, they weren’t sprayed or anything. But generally, I prefer a frame. I like the formality and finality that it brings to the image. The drawings are kind of fragile, so I also like the protection. The Goya show was revealing as the drawings were just raw and taped to the wall, as if they came right off the studio walls and onto the gallery walls. There were lots of them but none got damaged. So for that one exhibit, I liked seeing them that way, because when you spray drawings with fixative it changes the work ever so slightly. No one can tell but the artist, but it does change it. And then the glass changes it a little more. There is something rich about seeing my artwork unframed, but I always prefer a framed and exquisitely installed exhibit.

As for displaying the works in rows, categories or groups; well, if you’re working in a set format with similar images and sizes, it just simplifies the viewing. It’s like, well, these are just the facts plain and simple. They look clear this way for comparison. As I said, I think I could have been a good graphic or interior designer and in the end my works are quite designed. I’ve even done some fashion design – look at my sketchbooks that feature dress creations.

A: LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR SKETCHBOOKS – HOW DO THEY OPERATE IN YOUR PRACTICE?

H: Yeah, so the large and the small works in charcoal do take time. However, the sketchbooks offer me the other side of that as they’re very free. They’re totally automatic. I just run through one page after another, no thinking, no planning, just following the creative flow.

Each book can be based on a similar theme, exploring images one to the next, to the next, to the next and so on for many pages. It allows me the super-fast side of making art. I think in some ways I’m at my most pure in the sketchbooks and they a big, big part of my artistic life. And the thing about the sketchbooks is I work on them in other places. If I’m traveling, or in my car, or waiting here or there, I’ll have my sketchbook. That’s why I label the front of the book and it’s a record of where it was completed. I draw rapidly with markers, filling page after page until the marker runs dry, usually in one session. Surprisingly, a lot of sketchbooks are even colorful.

A: YOUR WIFE IS A MUSICIAN (A CLASSICAL PIANIST) – IS THERE ANY CROSS OVER IN YOUR WORLDS, DO YOU EVER COLLABORATE?

H: Well, I always say it this way, she’s the real artist. She’s a really great pianist. She was a little girl prodigy who played with the Boston Pops when she was 5 – 7 years old. Since then, she’s played in so many venues, as a soloist, with chamber players and operatic vocalists. So yeah, it’s really thrilling to have beautiful classical music in the house all the time. We own three pianos. Though I’m not only hearing finished piano works, as a lot of her time is spent working out phrasings, voicings, practicing small moments, just like I work out my drawings. I might hear her play a measure over and over and over, or even one note over and over, striking the note this way or that way, pressing high or low on the key, this much pressure, not enough pressure and so forth.  All of that, it’s inspiring to me. Her life, her musicianship, expertise and professionalism, well it gets into one. She’s the real deal! I get to hear behind the scenes as she works things out in her studio and then I also witness performances on stage in their finished form.

We have done several collaborations. She composed and performed a piano piece inspired by my set of sprout variations, superimposing my images over her hand-written score as a visual, accompanied by a head set through which viewers could hear her playing the piece. It was part of a travelling show called “Collaborations.” She has also published a memoir-essay about our life together as artists entitled “My Husband’s Heads.”

If we were both visual artists, or both pianists, well, I don’t know how that would work. We’re both very focused, really, really focused on our artistry.