Being Scott Seekins

Scott Seekins gets up early, usually by seven. Not to punch a clock; he hasn’t held a job in thirty-five years. But to present himself as a living, breathing art installation. And since art can’t exist in isolation, he doesn’t like to waste time.

The first thing he does is decide what to wear. Given the fact that he only wears two outfits—an all-white suit in the light, warm months, a black one when it’s dark and cool—this doesn’t take long. Distinguished and trim, with almond eyes and high cheekbones, he slips into season-appropriate threads (he owns eight suits of each color), teases out tangly black hair extensions, trims his chopper sideburns and pencil mustache and slides on a thick headband. Only then is he ready to meet the public.

Each day, Seekins leaves his studio in the Warehouse District, has coffee, does some errands, and spends several hours walking around downtown Minneapolis. He heads up First Avenue, then ducks into the skyways. Later, he might veer down to the river or over to Loring Park. He likes wandering around and seeing how people react to him. Some enjoy his flamboyant appearance and flash a smile; others raise a nervous eyebrow and hurry past. He doesn’t mind; he takes it all in and puts it on canvas. He is, as Stewart Turnquist, a program coordinator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, calls him, “a work of art who makes art.”

Seekins doesn’t do it because it’s lucrative. There is no Guggenheim funding his work. And his is no carefree life—the hours he puts in far exceed the nine-to-five routine. He does it out of necessity—“I don’t have any other skills,” he says merrily—and because it’s the only thing that has ever made sense to him.

Seekins grew up in rugged, blue-collar South St. Paul. His childhood was what you would imagine. “I didn’t have a lot of friends,” he says. “Most of the children grew up thinking about hanging out, getting a car, being on the hockey team. I was interested in chemistry, history, biology, and snakes and lizards. Weird stuff.”

He spent most of his time in his basement, playing with his chemistry set, which isn’t exactly a formula for popularity. But one day in grade school he picked up a pencil and started sketching. After that, nothing else much mattered. “I drew so often that I had a callous on my little finger,” he says.

In 1964, encouraged by his mother, Seekins enrolled in the Minneapolis School of Art, now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He struggled his first year, partly due to an obsession with war imagery that sprang from the stories his father told of serving in World War II. “The guy was possessed,” remembers painter Leon Hushcha, who entered school with him at the same time. “He would draw battle scenes, tanks, and soldiers. The assignments were secondary. It almost got him kicked out of school.”

Seekins eventually broadened his palette, mastered color and line, and earned a BFA degree. Then came the two words that confront every art school graduate: now what? He knew he wanted to be a painter, but he didn’t know how to get started. Hell, he didn’t even know who he was yet. So he went looking for an identity. He found one at a thrift shop in St. Paul called Giesen’s. “I’d never seen a place with so much great stuff—Japanese dresses from the 1800s, Civil War uniforms, all kinds of stars, and little purses made of velvet and silver,” he says, still excited at the memory. He found some other items he liked: white linen suits, black frock coats, vests. And something clicked.