Justine Mantor-Waldie
by Audrée Peters

Justine Mantor-Waldie was five years old when she shocked her mother by announcing she was going to be an artist.

She never wavered from that dream her entire life. She lived it.

From the early 50s, while she was growing up in Neenah, Wis., her father took the family on many motoring trips.

“When we first came to Arizona I went crazy and fell in love with it,” she says. “That’s when I fell in love with the mountains, and the desert.”

After Mantor-Waldie finished her schooling at the Art Institute of Chicago and Northern Illinois University, she immersed herself in art as an associate professor at Loyola University of Chicago for 22 years, teaching, running the art gallery at Loyola and enjoying the diversified application of her skills.

Over the years she lectured and wrote papers on art and pre-Colombian art and architecture, which she also taught.

She took groups of students to Mexico and other locations, to experience the atmosphere firsthand.

At Loyola she was always taking on new challenges, and created new classes and programs for the students, such as the color theory classes she instituted.

Her work was a playground for her mind to find new challenges for herself and her students.

But there was always something missing in her life.

“Loyola is on the north side of Chicago, and the art department faced Lake Michigan,” she says.

She would frequently go to the top of the tallest building at the Daley Center, straining to see mountains.

“I would literally cry my eyes out, looking for mountains. I really wanted to go to mountains,” she says.

“I love the mountains and desert,” she admits. “I’m really a mountain person. So I had to move before I lost my mind teaching in suburbia. I finally just left and came to Fountain Hills in 1989. I decided I was going to start over, and I did.

“And when I moved here, it was the transformation of what I really became,” she recalls with pleasure. “I was a teacher, and then I became an artist. It was the difference between my feeling that I had a life versus not really having a life.”

Mantor-Waldie had also been a printmaker for a long time in Chicago, and sold her press when she came to Arizona.

But her printmaking background was what led her to the unique paintings she does now.

The resourceful artist utilizes black or white clay board, or pastel board, instead of the complicated process of printmaking, to achieve a similar, yet unique, effect.

She explains that a black clay board is a hardwood board coated with six layers of white clay, and six layers of black ink.

Using an etching needle, she “draws” the painting, etching down to the white to create highlighting outlines, starts the painting, then alternates etching and painting until she has the desired layers and effect.

“So you have things kind of contrasting,” she says.

Using the etching technique she has developed, the paintings will evolve in places with depth and height, giving them a 3-D appearance.

She uses mixed media for these paintings, most often pastel paints and iridescent inks, which complement naturally to create the stormy skies and jagged, mysterious mountains she loves to depict.

“I have a real passion for painting monsoon skies,” she says.

Another subject she enjoys painting is the desert, with cacti and other desert flora and fauna.

“Everything I do is layered in some way,” she says. “It’s a layered meaning and technique, because that’s what a printmaker does -- layering. I had asked myself, how do I translate what I do in printing into reality?  So that’s what I ended up doing, and I love it.”

Mantor-Waldie does every form of art from oils to collage, but admits, “My problem when I have a show is, I’m so diverse, because that’s what I taught – printmaking, papermaking, book binding – I’ve taught the whole shooting match. So for me to limit myself to one thing is really hard, because I realize here I am with this whole thing,” she says, spreading her hands. “But now I just use the dark pieces for entries into shows.”

Mantor-Waldie has had many solo exhibits all over the country and in Mexico, and her art work has been displayed her art work at Textures Gallery and Roman Gallery on Marshall Way in Scottsdale for four years, and at Peter Jones Gallery in Chicago for more than 10 years, as well as having shown at galleries in Fountain Hills, including Sami’s and Yates Gallery.

One of her paintings hangs permanently in the Fountain Hills Community Center, and a recent painting has won a juried competition for the cover of the Spring Scottsdale telephone directory.

A regular contributor to juried art shows and fine art festivals all over Arizona, she has received a number of “Best of Show” awards, and was Artist in Residence at the Phoenix Performing & Visual Arts Center in Phoenix for three years.

A charter member of Women’s Caucus for Art, established 25 years ago, and now a member of its National Board of Directors, Mantor-Waldie still enjoys teaching, and has been an adjunct professor of art at Mesa Community College since 1999, still introducing students to the joys of this expressive creation.

Summing up her lifetime passion of art, Mantor-Waldie says, “If you just believe in something, you can do it.”

Mantor-Waldie can be reached at (480) 234-3208. To learn more about Mantor-Waldie and view more of her art work, visit her website at www.JustJustine.com.

This artist was featured January 2007.