- Will you consider this?

He had talent and that artistic ability landed his work with special brief appearances on local newscasts back in the day.

Well, those artistic strokes led him to a revitalized show on a local TV station, and he claimed a new persona.

The hats he wore were ever-changing and he's now known as Joe the Art Guy.

Stay right here.

(upbeat music) There's an entire generation that remembers him as Bosun Joe and his idea was to teach kids that drawing wasn't as daunting as they may have thought.

Meanwhile, he practices his craft and gives painting instructions to an entirely different audience, all the while creating beautiful artwork in his home studio.

And he does other things, and he's got a lot of side hustles.

Please welcome my dear longtime friend, The Art Guy, also known as Bosun Joe, Joe McGuire.

How are you, my friend?

- It is so exciting to be with you, Christine.

We go way back.

- We do.

- Had a lot of fun over the years.

You know, I did my college internship from ISU at WEEK in 1977 and it was a great experience for my whole career as far as meeting folks like Tom McIntyre and Tom Connor and the very famous and fabulous Christine Zak.

- How about it?

Yeah, well.

(chuckles) So 1977 you were doing something called Cartoon Comment.

Maybe people remember what that was, and Tom Connor would give you those ideas?

- He would, he would, and it was an editorial commentary that was in cartoon form, and I did several of them during my internship and we just had a great time.

There's so many wonderful projects that the station allowed me to do that was a great springboard to my career.

And there was this female news anchor that even typed my resume letters.

- [Christine] How about it?

- For when I was looking for a job.

So just made great friends, it was wonderful, wonderful team, both behind the camera and in front of the camera and it just was a great springboard to my whole career.

- Okay, so let me tell you, so this is your camera.

Okay?

All right.

Just so that you know.

You can tell you were behind the camera.

Excuse me, it's the one with the red light.

There we go, okay, you're good.

Okay, so you did Cartoon Comment, but you were also working at Brown's Sporting Goods at the time?

- That was my first job out of college for 12 years.

I worked for Brown's, I was the advertising director.

I first started as a graphic designer.

That was my major in college and worked there 12 years.

Some people might remember Brown's.

Brown's grew the chain to about 20 stores all over the Midwest.

And I handled all the advertising, the newspaper advertising, produced a lot of TV commercials at WEEK, still stayed close to the staff there.

Even during that time, I did some of the promotion as a freelance basis for the station.

Worked with a gentleman you might remember, Jim Zurich back in the day, who we worked together on lots of projects.

And that was actually my first job.

When I was on the "Captain Jinks Show" I was actually working at Brown's at the time.

- Okay.

- And Brown's was sold after about 12 years that I was there.

I think it was 1988 and I hooked up with this guy, a big tall, redheaded, gangly guy named Dennis Upah who was our station manager at the time.

And he brought me aboard to WEEK and I worked in the sales staff.

I worked producing commercials and came up with sales ideas, things like that.

We put together an event called Kids Nowadays Festival.

- And it was so much fun.

And it was, how many years did we do that?

I can't remember.

- I think it was seven or eight before I left to go to the "Journal Star".

- But we did it in Peoria and also in Bloomington-Normal.

- And the idea for Kids Nowadays Festival came from a series that you did, a weekly series that was extremely popular, where you took the trials and tribulations of raising a family and raising kids, and that was kind of the theme for our show.

Your series was called Kids Nowadays, and we call it Kids Nowadays Festival just to kind of build on that.

And you were our official face and emcee and helped with the show a lot and it was really successful.

The first time that we opened the doors, there was 20,000 people that showed up.

We never knew what would happen.

A lot of my crazy sales ideas, we never really knew what would happen but that one was a major success.

- It was a huge success and so much fun.

My legs ached, you know, for two weekends in a row, but that's okay, but you did so much work to put that together.

And it was fun to have community involved like that too.

- Oh, it was great.

But before that, and a lot of people don't know, when I first went into the professional world after I graduated from ISU in 1977, the station decided to bring back a very popular kids show that aired mostly through the '60s called the "Captain Jinks Show".

And we decided, I'm not sure exactly who came up with the idea, but we decided that we needed a ship artist.

And I came on the show every Wednesday and showed kids how to draw.

I would show a piece of the artwork that I would pre-prepare and I would show the basic shapes and kids drew along with me.

And we did several pieces of art, - That's not it.

That's some of the shows that were on, but you did this one.

- I did that one, sure.

That was one that was kind of fun for me because it showed how you can create illusions with art.

Kids love that fact that that kite was holding up the one side of the hammock there.

And the kids would follow along at home.

People don't realize how amazingly popular, how amazingly popular the show was.

I mean, some of the ratings rivaled some of the Super Bowl numbers of today.

And it was fun, I would go on personal appearances once in a while with Jinks and Sam, and it was a fun five years of my life.

And people still remember.

- Your hair has changed a little bit.

You're now the young guy with the old hair, yeah, exactly.

- But it's just amazing to me, the power of television, right?

I mean, people remember things for many years that sometimes you think you forget about yourself.

I mean, you know that really well and once you're on TV or you're in somebody's home, and people remember that.

And the "Jinks Show" was a great fun time of my life.

We showed cartoons, we played skits.

The second day on Thursday, I would play a game called the Bosun Joe Game.

- Okay.

- And it was a drawing guessing game that I still do to this day.

My classes that I teach at Washington Park District, my kids drawing classes, that's something they look forward to at the end of every session is that we actually play it.

- [Christine] Well, how do you play?

- I split the class up in two teams, It's always the turtles or the frogs.

And I invite two kids, one from each team, to come up and I start drawing and the first one to guess wins a point for their team.

And they really get into it.

It's still the same way that we did it on the show.

You know, we had a studio audience that came in- - [Christine] Yes.

- When we would record the show and I would split the studio audience up the same way.

And kids from the studio I asked would come up and draw.

I teach some classes to senior groups at supportive care living places and we still play the Bosun Joe Game and those people remember.

And that was on the air.

- And you just made that up?

That's just something that came in your head and said, well, this ought to be a good idea, interaction.

- You know, some people compared it to other popular drawing shows that came along.

But I will say that I did it before any of those shows came on.

In fact, I used to play the Bosun Joe Game before it was called that with my brothers and sisters when we were little.

So it's been something that was always, always there.

- You weren't Bosun Joe to them, though.

- Not yet, that came.

I think it was, it was Stan, Stan Lonergan who played the captain who came up with the name.

- Okay.

- Bosun Joe.

- Okay so, and maybe you said this, and I'm just spacing out a little bit, but you came up with the idea to be on the show or they thought?

- I don't remember exactly how it came together.

I think maybe I initiated that it would be fun to show a drawing segment and some of the other background people, the people behind the show said, yeah, well, let's see if we can put that together.

And I remember doing a test run where I set up how I envisioned how this would come together.

And they said, okay, let's, let's give it a shot and it worked out really well.

But I used to play, I used to watch "Captain Jinks Show" when I was little, when it was on in the '60s.

- [Christine] Right.

- I remember I sent a drawing of the SS Albatross to the show.

- [Christine] And did they show it?

- They had it on, they showed it, it was pinned to the set and I was the hero of Edwards School in Bloomington forever because my drawing, when I was 10 or 11, was on the "Captain Jinks Show".

And who knew what was coming, right?

- I know, well, you know, sometimes it's that serendipity.

- It's wild, but it was a fun ride.

You know, sometimes my wife Kathy thought it was a little bit of a pain because you go out, you go to a restaurant or mall and kids come up and- - And as food's dripping down your face, they're talking.

- Yeah, we're trying to eat, but, you know, asked for autographs.

I signed autographs and things and it was a great time and the show was great.

It was at a time when local TV, you know, had a very special place where you had programs like that.

- Exactly, well, yeah.

Real, live programming.

So they, Captain Jinks and Salty Sam, nothing was really scripted.

- No.

- And so how was that for you?

- It was wild, it could be wild.

No, they would, you know, Stan and George, George Baseleon who played Salty Sam, they would talk a little bit, but so much of it was right off the cuff and they just had fun.

They really cared about the kids, you know.

It was a very sincere thing, but yeah, there was lots of cartoons and there was some other things that were put in later.

A lot of people ask, well, we should bring back all the reruns and show that show again.

And the sad part is, is that there's not really, because the show was taped on the segments that were done in studio, there's not really total complete shows because the cartoons and things, they had royalties and licensing.

- Right.

- And those were actually put in after we did the in-studio segments.

And then what we did is even on the in-studio segments, a lot of times we taped over the past week, so there isn't a lot of footage from the show.

There's probably maybe two or three complete shows, but I get that asked that all the time.

Let's bring back the reruns, let's show the "Captain Jinks Show".

But there isn't that much that's available.

The station- - Well, you know, go ahead.

- The station compiled a nice DVD that I'm sure that's still available of some of the segments and things, but that's really all that there was.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, those big old reel to reel, that was big business back then.

So after that, after you were doing sales and a lot of promotion for Channel 25, and then you went to the Peoria "Journal Star" from there.

- Right.

You know, what happened was this thing called the Internet came along and I was kind of one of the instigators, maybe the prime instigator, that thought that WEEK-TV should have a website.

- Right.

- And that's when media outlets and businesses were just sort of starting to get involved.

And I found a local internet provider and we got on the internet, the first media website in the Peoria Bloomington area, which was called week.com.

- [Christine] Right.

- And that really kind of took off.

I'll always remember we're trying to figure out how to promote it and we actually had an opening come up in the Super Bowl for a couple of promos that an advertiser dropped out or something.

And we ran promos in the Super Bowl that year, I think it was 1995 for week.com and the thing just exploded.

- [Christine] From there.

- We were the first ones to sell advertising, we were the first ones that have local news on the air.

- [Christine] And then you had (singing) I 25.

- Right, the jingle that.

I've always been told that, that whenever there anybody plays bingo, you know, at the local bingo places or at the church or whatever, and the caller calls out I25, everybody in the audience sings (singing) I25.

We had such great production people and folks that produced commercials and promos and they came up with that.

And it really took off as the media's first website, and I got a call from some friends at the "Journal Star" saying, we'd like to get our site going.

- We need you, yeah.

- And I helped kind of bring pjstar.com into the rural.

I just went over there and, and that was my primary job is the internet director for the newspaper.

And that took off, and so, but I did end up coming back to 25.

- [Christine] Right.

- That's where I finished my career.

Mark DeSantis and the folks there thought we needed to rebrand the website.

That's when WHOI then joined WEEK in the same building.

- Like a duopoly, yeah.

- Exactly, and I put together the branding and the website for the new site that represented all the stations that were under the WEEK umbrella at the time.

And I worked for three years and it was great to come back.

- Yeah.

So now you can use your artistic ability.

You said you're teaching classes in Washington and Fond du Lac and at some of the senior living facilities, Home schools?

- Right, exactly, I do parties.

You know, I get calls for parties that folks maybe their condo association or whatever, they wanna have a party and they get together some beverages.

And I go in there and we do a painting and they just have a great time.

And, you know, I got away from art for a while because I got into management at Brown's and WEEK.

And I always forget Kathy, Kathy, my wife, I think it was 1997, got me for Father's Day a Bob Ross class.

You know, Bob Ross used to have his disciples, his folks, his teachers go out.

And at the time they made regular visits at that time to Jeffrey Allen's.

And it was almost kinda like a joke but I took the class and I really got reinvigorated in art.

And I sort of forgot and I really got into painting.

And so it was about then that I really started doing a lot more art again on my own, and I did lots of paintings and things like that.

And Bob Ross, he's my hero of all time and I just think about all the people that he brought to art and to painting.

And he got me going again and so I really started painting, oils and acrylics and watercolor.

- [Christine] What do you like best?

- I probably like acrylic painting the best because it has that nice rich feel.

And actually, honestly, it's easier 'cause it dries faster.

A lot of my earlier paintings were in oils, but a lot of times you'd have to paint and then if you wanted to go over it, you had to wait a few days.

With acrylics, they dry a lot faster.

Watercolor's cool because it's more spontaneous.

I have several paintings that I brought that we can show that, show the watercolors and show the acrylics and show the different styles that I do.

But like it all, and I teach it all.

Don't teach as much oils, because that's really hard 'cause it has dry.

- Again, they have to wait another week in order to add something to the painting, yeah.

- But that's kind of when I got back into it.

- That's awesome.

- And I started painting and drawing some more.

I kinda lost my way for many years and it was during that time I started doing caricatures again.

I love to draw caricatures.

- Yeah, so tell me about that.

Well, this is, it's not exactly a caricature, but this is- - [Joe] It's a cartoon show.

- This is a cartoon that you did for Channel 25.

- That was by Bosun Joe.

- For Thanksgiving, yeah.

- I used to like to draw things that were coming up and, you know, that were themed.

And that was one, I would set that up on the easel, and then right next to it, I'd have different paper and I'd show the basic shapes and how it's put together.

And kids, and a lot of times sometimes adults, adults would draw along as well.

- But they'd watch too.

And you would get letters every week and some drawings from kids, and there were some pretty talented kids out there.

- Very much so.

What we decided to do the last couple years is we actually had a drawing contest where we invited kids.

We separated age groups and we would pick them and then there would be winners and really excellent art.

And I remember one year we had like 1,200 entries.

- Wow.

- From all over Central Illinois.

Kids really got into it.

- So who judged?

- I got an independent group of three or four local artists that I knew, artists that I work with.

I let them judge and whittle it down.

And it was a Think Spring drawing contest and we did it for a couple years and it was amazingly popular.

- Are you just like, in awe of everything that you've been able to do because you have this artistic ability?

- Well, you know, God's been good to me.

You know, He gave me the impetus and the spirit to create and to draw.

And I remember ever since I was a little kid, if I found a paper bag and a pencil, I would just love to doodle.

I liked to draw from "Mad Magazine" and things like that.

Draw my brothers and sisters.

You know, we had a big family.

My mom kind of, she was the one, she was a single parent, we didn't have a lot of money and there was some struggles, But I could always find some way to draw, right?

It's an inexpensive way to go and I get my brothers and sisters involved, and ever since I was little, I took every art class I could.

When I was in high school, I was a graphic design major at ISU and just kept building, you know?

And then you look at your body of work over time and you think, wow, it's a lot of stuff.

- [Christine] (laughing) Yeah.

- The springboard, the internship that I did with you guys at WEEK was really integral to me and I just kept adding and doing things.

I always thought that I was a very creative soul.

I used to drive our sales department nuts.

If I was in a meeting, I said, how about this idea?

And they go, oh no!

But very often it turned out to be something that worked for the advertisers, it was something they could pitch the advertiser And that was fun.

The events were a big thing, I mean- - They were.

- Kids Nowadays, we followed that up with one called Mature Lifestyle Expo.

- Right.

- Which was also very successful.

And then that internet thing came along and, you know, I embraced it.

Some people, ah, I don't know if this is gonna work.

I don't know what this is gonna be, but yeah.

- Just like the car.

- Exactly.

(Christine chuckles) I thought we should have a website and that sprang to my career at the "Journal Star" at pjstar.com, I was there for 13 years.

I just had three jobs my whole career and I spent about the same amount of time on all three with Brown's, WEEK, pjstar.com and then back to WEEK.

And great people, media people are fun there's a lot of energy.

Wasn't it fun work at a TV station?

- It was and is, I gotta say.

- I know, exactly.

- 'Cause I'm back.

- I saw you're still at WTVP.

- Right.

- Show's wonderful that you do.

- Well, thank you.

- Interviews are fantastic.

- Well, you know, everybody's got a story to tell and I like human interest stories.

- You do, you always have.

- Thank you, thank you, sir.

- You always touched people in a very special way.

- [Christine] Oh, you are so sweet.

- Well, it's true.

- You are so sweet.

- Just because I typed his resumes and his cover letters for him a couple of times.

And in return I asked for a picture, a drawing of a lion with blue eyes.

And you blew me away with that one, so I still have it.

- No, it's great.

You know, I've had a very full life, full of work experiences and fun experiences.

And I still get a kick out of, it was probably about 15 years ago, I was drawing little kids at a birthday party and- - [Christine] That's evolved into caricatures now.

- Exactly and yeah, and I was thinking, I was getting this nudge that, you know, you should really get back and do this.

And at that time, Kathy and I worked together and we actually, I was very fortunate.

I was able to retire early, I was able to retire at 57 and I thought maybe this would work.

And now, you know, I have like 30 wedding receptions and I do birthday parties, anniversary parties, corporate events.

Every weekend I'm going somewhere and it's just great fun.

It's a wonderful way to meet people.

- Right, and you have a studio in your basement?

- I do, exactly.

- So you don't have a whole lot of time to do stuff in your studio though, 'cause you're out doing all these other events and- - Well, I do quite a bit of commission work.

People will call me or email me and they'll want something done of their parents for their anniversary or something like that.

And I would knock that out for them.

I probably get, you know, 20 or 30 a year of special commission work and I like to do that too.

'Cause sometimes Kathy kinda laughs when people ask me how retirement's going because I had no idea.

- It hasn't happened yet.

- I had no idea that I would be this busy and it's been great.

- It's worth it, it's worth it.

So what does the near future hold?

What's on your bucket list that you haven't done yet?

- Well, you know, one thing I would personally like to do is travel more but as far as the art goes, I can't imagine anything more.

I can't imagine, I'm just, I'm so busy.

I'm doing different things with the teaching and with the painting and with especially the caricatures that, you know, I just, hopefully I can keep doing this and, you know, keep my brain together and keep working on it and I'd be very happy to just continue some of the things that I do.

- Do your kids have your same artistic abilities?

- I don't know that, they don't have as much in the art area, but my daughter Tina, she was in music and band.

You know, I sort of consider that as the same, the same kind of draw, same kind of creative.

- [Christine] It's right brain.

- Yeah, exactly, exactly right.

And she was in her high school band, she marched on the Big Red Marching Machine.

I'm very proud of her.

She's the announcer for the Big Red Marching Machine now.

And our son Steven, Steven he's more of a technical guy.

He's more of a computer, things like that.

He's doing online education work for a group of community colleges.

But if you wanna consider the music and the direction that Tina had gone, that's about it.

And not so much drawing and painting.

- Yeah, but you did internet, so that's technical and that's, you know, I mean that's where he's finding his success today 'cause it's everywhere.

- Exactly, and it covers a lot of area.

Designing websites, you know, graphic designers are doing very well with careers and doing that and digital and- - But yeah, it's digital, it's not the same.

All right, so show me this big surprise you have here.

- This big surprise?

- It's upside down, I haven't seen it yet.

Oh!

Look it, that's awesome.

Thank you.

- Well, I wanted to do a special piece of art of somebody who has had a wonderful media career with both WEEK, which is News 25.

It uses the vintage logo, right?

- Right.

- And then your current program, which is very good and very popular, I wanted to give you this piece of art- - Thank you.

- That I knocked out of the fantastic Christine Zak-Edmonds right there.

(Christine chuckles) - He's so funny.

You know what?

I'll do another resume for you anytime.

(both chuckle) Okay, well, how fun.

We have cartoons here, we have a little bit of everything.

We'll get some more pictures here shortly to show people your work.

And you did a wonderful thing of the St. Jude telethon for Steve Shaw.

- Right, exactly.

You know, I worked on this telethon for several years and Shaw and I, we decide, you know, I said, do you want me maybe to draw a kind of cyclorama, a whole shot of the set during the telethon?

And I did that and I kind of put it away, it was a few years ago.

You know, Shaw just recently retired.

He had this long, fabulous career.

- He did, 45 years.

- He's a buddy of both of ours.

Same place, same job.

And I wanted him to have that and I gave that to him.

- That's wonderful.

- And he's done fantastic things for the station.

Shaw and I worked a lot together.

I spent a lot of production van time with him.

- Yeah.

- Traveling around.

- Well, thank you for being here, Joe.

It's so good to catch up with you.

- It's wonderful, you bet.

- And I hope everybody out here knows, I mean, they recognize your work and we're gonna keep you plenty busy after this.

- You bet, joetheartguy.com, if you ever wanna see them.

- joetheart guy.com, there we go, all right.

Well, thanks so much for being with us today.

Hope you learned a lot about Joe Bosun Joe, Joe the Art Guy Stay Cool.

(bright music)