Musician Mary Rocap said she initially missed what was a very important email from the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts.
She skimmed right over it, thinking it was a reminder for an upcoming show. Fortunately, she said, they reached out again with the invitation for her to be the featured artist on the gallery’s 10th volume of their yearly event “It’s All About the Story,” which opened on Feb. 20 and runs through March 24.
Every year, the gallery, which was formed in 2006, has featured a local writer whose words are used as inspiration for its visual artists, who use their diverse mediums to interpret what they read.
After the event’s first few years of featuring authors, particularly of short stories, the gallery decided to branch out. Last year it was a poet, and this year it’s singer-songwriter Rocap.
“The other people who they’ve selected as muses — this is the 10th show — are superheroes of mine,” Rocap said. “Michael Malone, Allan Gurganus, Jill McCorkle —all these really important writers of Hillsborough have been muses before. So I’m just happy to be ‘and Mary Rocap’ at the end of the sentence.”
Rocap said she began making music when her parents gifted her a guitar in 11th grade, writing folk music in hopes of becoming like her idol, American folk singer Odetta.
It wasn’t until her 40s, though, that she started taking songwriting seriously. Since receiving a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship for songwriting in 2001/2002, she has released five albums. Her 2011 project “Deep December Dreams,” a collection of songs exploring the season of winter and its deeper meaning, is the written work being used for the exhibit.
Despite all of this success, Rocap said that her selection by the gallery is a total mystery to her. She did have one suspicion, though: Chris Graebner, one of the 21 artists who co-own the gallery and a friend of hers.
“I’m thinking that she was my champion and was the one who suggested me,” Rocap said.
