July 7, 2002
Patrick Connolly
Staff Writer, The Tennessean
Illuminating Work
Whether dealing with slivered glass or shattered lives, Paul Crommelin helps others see the light amid the darkness.
By the time a woman makes it to the chair across the desk from Paul Crommelin, she has already been to hell and back. The small, windowless room atop a building in downtown Nashville can close in fast as the stark, brutal stories of domestic violence come pouring out: I came home and he hit me with a baseball bat. He beats our son and threatens our daughters. He shoved me up against a wall and punched me, knocking out a tooth. The stories go on and on. Most of the victims are women, and most of them have children. But there are male victims, too, and those who are elderly as well. But before even the first word is uttered, Crommelin has his say: "I congratulate you on making it here," he will tell them, looking them straight in the eye. "Beginning right now, you are not alone. You have taken the first step in reclaiming your life."
They have indeed. As a volunteer with Special Advocates for Victims of Violence, or S.A.V.V., Crommelin will walk them through the process of obtaining an order of protection from the courts and, if need be, he will help hook them up with a shelter, counseling services, legal aid and medical attention. But for the 53-year-old Crommelin, who makes his living as an artist, there is more to it. "Most of my days are spent in my own head, with four cats and a radio to keep me company," he says. "To be giving of myself directly to other people is invigorating for me. It gets me away from the me, me, me of being artistic. And it has had a direct effect on my art."
It was in his role as an artist that he first heard about S.A.V.V. He was repairing a stained-glass piece at the house of Alice Zimmerman, a local arts enthusiast who had started the organization, when Zimmerman came home. She plopped herself down on her couch, exhausted.
"Alice sat there in this little tableau, looking both glowing and sad," Crommelin recalls. "I asked where she had been and she said the jail. At that time, that's where S.A.V.V. operated, and she told me about the cases she had worked with that day. It all just spoke to me. I told her right then that I wanted to get involved." And he did. Zimmerman describes Crommelin as one of her "steady Eddie" volunteers, a man with a calming, empathetic manner who can manage his way through the Byzantine paperwork involved as well.
"We never know what the situation is going to be that comes through the door," she says. "But Paul is a jewel, an absolute jewel. It's also, I think, good that some of these women see a man in a role like Paul has taken on. That shows them that not all men are like what they may have experienced."
Crommelin downplays the importance of being a man in his S.A.V.V. work. "It goes beyond gender to me," he says. "I don't like bullies, and I don't like people who seek to dominate others.
"The classic situation that we deal with is a woman stuck in a situation from which she sees no way out. In a way, we're like an underground railroad. I see myself as a doorman for these women, shining a light into the next dark room they must enter and reassuring them that there are resources available that will help them."
Crommelin typically is at the S.A.V.V. offices (now housed in the Mary Parrish Center on the fifth floor of 131 Second Ave. N.) on Tuesday and Friday mornings. It is a far cry from his regular, everyday existence, where he toils in the garage studio of the Franklin home he shares with his wife, Kathleen, and son Robert, 10. There have been many stops on the way. Crommelin grew up in Ohio, majored in history during his college days in Wisconsin, spent almost two years serving in Japan during the Vietnam War and once had a job in a pickle factory.
He also worked in crisis counseling with runaway teen-agers right after college. One of his clients gave him a set of paints, which led to him taking a stained-glass class. The irony is not lost on Crommelin that his earlier stint in front-line counseling led directly to his life's work ... and then back to counseling.
He has been a stained-glass artist for 27 years now. More recently, he has taken up painting as well. "I went through this whole mid-life crisis wondering about things," he says, "torturing myself by asking 'What is it? Stained glass or painting?' Finally, I realized that, hey, both work for me."
He likes the form and function of stained glass, how it can literally make you feel different. "I'm less intrigued by what it looks like - although that's certainly important - than the energy it generates in a room."
He does both commercial and residential projects. He currently is at work, for example, on an eight-paneled commission for a private home that will tell the life story of the owners. It is creative but exacting work.
"Glass can wear you down after you do it for so long," he says. "It's very left-brain oriented. You map it out, organize it, then execute it. That's where the painting has helped. I've been doing it for five years now and I can just let go and do it. It frees me from the confines of glass."
With his painting, he does not adhere to a single style. Lately, he has been experimenting with developing his own approach to Japanese ink painting. The shapes and angles of bamboo stalks and leaves intrigue him. So does perhaps adding a flash of color into the normally black-and-white medium. The glen behind his house also beckons perhaps a seasonal series?
"Paul's works are moving and spiritual and sort of draw you into them," says Heather Martin, owner of Main Cross Street Gallery in Franklin, where Crommelin has works for sale.
"They allow you to use your imagination to see things you may not see at first glance."
The one connection between his stained glass and paintings are the colors Crommelin seems drawn to: green, purple and amber. He views green as representing Earth, purple heaven and amber the light and space between the two. Now he sees a connection as well with his volunteer work in domestic violence. Sometimes the Earth/green can be conflicted and confused, the heaven/purple seemingly unattainable. And then along comes the amber/light, linking the two and making all things possible.
"Getting beyond ego and going outside your own head makes new thought possible,'' Crommelin says, talking as much about himself and his art as about the lurking possibilities in the life of others.
"Art can bring lightness into the dark. My world has expanded. That of others can, too."
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