Andrew Bucci's Lifetime Achievement

When Governor Barbour hands out the lifetime achievement award for excellence in the arts later this month, he’ll give it to an artist who has spent seven decades working at his craft. MPB’s Ron Brown has the story.

Living in Fort Washington, Maryland these days and looking back on his lengthy career as an artist, 87-year-old Andrew Bucci says his high school didn’t offer art classes, so he had to go somewhere else.

“Back when I was in high school in Vicksburg I took a few classes with an art teacher at all saints college in Vicksburg”

Bucci graduated high school at 16-years-old and then studied art at Louisiana State University.
But it wasn’t until he returned to Mississippi that his art education really took off.

“I started working summers in Jackson in ’39, and that’s when I met Mrs. Hull.”

Mrs. Hull is of course, Marie Hull, a revered and influential figure in Mississippi art and generally in the South.
She was a teacher and mentor to a 17-year-old Andrew Bucci.

“She had a group of, I’d say, four to six people, and it was like every Tuesday night, one night of the week, or something like that.”

Bucci says not only was Hull a terrific artist, she was a gifted teacher as well. And Bucci was an attentive student.

“Oh she was very practical, and kind of no nonsense and she was a very good painter, and she was fast. She had a good sense of color and she knew the techniques and all.”

From the tutelage of one of the south’s most respected and best known artists, Bucci took his life in another direction.
Or rather the government did. The army and World War Two gave Bucci his next training, in the art of forecasting weather.

“I was a meteorologist. The army sent me to meteorology school at NYU, and I went there for a year.”

It was the training in meteorology that gave Bucci a life-long career. He worked for the weather bureau, now known as the national weather service, until his retirement in 1979. But Bucci has never retired from painting.

Brown’s Gallery has exhibited Bucci’s painting in Jackson exclusively for the past 25 years. Joel Brown is the owner.
“There’s many, many artists that come through here as well as collectors of really, really fine art. And they describe him as a genius. I’ve always considered him a genius. I probably have more of Mr. Bucci’s work in my own collection than any other artist just because I absolutely love him. Just for color, composition, the style is so unique and I realize that he’s probably one of the best artists the state has ever produced.”

The idea that anyone considers him an artistic genius amuses Bucci. But that high opinion of Bucci’s work is shared by a lot people. Brown’s gallery currently is showing a retrospective of Bucci’s work that includes a drawing Bucci made as a teenager studying under Marie Hull.

“I think the oldest piece that we’ve ever sold was from 1939 so he was only 16 at the time. His work has not changed that much in all these decades, but he has his own distinct style.”

But describing Bucci’s style is a difficult task - even for the artist.

“I’d say it’s eclectic. I’d say it kind of varies between different degrees of realism, a little bit towards abstraction, I do some things that are kind of abstract and yet they’re usually based on things seen in nature or something like that.”

There is little doubt that a great number of art fans have paid attention to Bucci over the years. As a result Bucci will receive the Governor’s Excellence in the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award on February 26th at the Galloway United Methodist Church in downtown Jackson.

Bucci says he’s honored and humbled by the attention.

“I was lucky because my family and all encouraged me and let me do what I wanted to. Along the way I found other people that helped.”

There’s one more emotion that the award brings out in Bucci when he thinks about an acceptance speech - fear.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m hoping I’ll pass out! It’d be more interesting than anything I could say.”

If his speech is anything like his paintings, it’ll be filled with color and delicate strokes. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown