Priscilla Richardson

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As you enter the new Attic Productions theater to enjoy the final major event of Virginia's 400th birthday celebration, the musical "From Sea to Shining Sea," look up. You'll see the mural on the wall in the theater lobby, the mural planned and commissioned by the late Geraldine Lawson, Attic's founder. But Lawson never actually saw the mural as a finished work before she died.

It shows Lawson's three grandchildren playing in an attic. The artist, Buchanan's Helen Hubler, started this work with an idea from Lawson. "Geraldine named Attic Productions from her own childhood of children playing dress up in an attic," Hubler said. "That's the theme of the mural."

Hubler filled in the details. "I put in the trunk, the books of plays, the mirror," Hubler said. And everybody loves the dog. "He had to be dressed up, so he's dressed in red ribbon."

Two elements came from others. "While I was working at the Methodist center, a woman asked me to put in a butterfly," Hubler said. "So I did. And Marsha Campbell had an antique parasol and old playbills, [including] ones of the first plays Geraldine directed." So they came into the mix.

One special touch you wouldn't understand unless you knew Lawson's history: a little branch with a leaf shows through the cobwebbed window. It refers to "The Last Leaf," a play based on the famous O. Henry story of the same name -- and the name of the first play Lawson directed.

How did an artist who could not work from scaffolding paint this enormous work? She worked on the three 5-by-11-foot panels one at a time as they lay flat on tables in the basement of the Fincastle United Methodist Church Family Center. Considering the amount of canvas to be covered, the work went rapidly. "I was commissioned in April, by June, I'd started the sketching," Hubler said. "By July, I was applying gesso to the canvases. I first projected images onto the canvas, but in August I started going freehand."

Hubler then painted nearly every day until completion. "My husband was very good. He was there every morning and then every night, and for consultations during the day." But how did they get the panels to the theater? "Theater volunteers moved them in large trucks, one at a time. Then when they were up on the wall, you could see that the trunk edges didn't exactly mesh. So I did paint in the theater to fix that."

You might well wonder how an artist with such capability came to be available for this commission. Hubler started life in Chicago in 1940. After college, she studied at the Art Students League and lived in Manhattan for 8 years. "I had won prizes in art in high school but nobody picked up on it or suggested I go into art." But she knew her calling.

Then a move to New Jersey, and a career move into commercial art, followed. Her husband, Bud Hubler, wanted to move to Roanoke because as a child his family had come here to see the trains. She fell in love with Fincastle, and they came to Botetourt. Now officially retired from her job, she paints every day. Although she never stopped, painting one day a week while working full time.

So when Tina McConchie started a Botetourt association of artists, "we all flocked to it," Hubler said. "Then she started the gallery in Buchanan. She was 90 percent of the effort, got us incorporated, found fixtures and found someone to do the books." McConchie left the group, "but we decided to continue anyhow."

The roster of artists in the cooperative effort, Gallery by the James on Main Street, changes as careers move on. Currently, Jimmy Carter, Carolyn Deck, Lois Bittner, Jessie Stull Burton, Betsy McGinnis, Anne Fournier, Eva Lewis, Mary Elizabeth Emory and Hubler work together to sell their works there. Rotating shows highlight individual artists, but you can always see something from each of them, in media as varied as oil paint, pastels, acrylic, glass, film, and fabric. Hubler admires all of their work.

And you can admire her mural at Attic.