From the Gridiron to the Canvas

When it comes to life lessons, art and football have a lot in common. Just ask Warren Irwin ’98. These two passions have taught this art major and former football player that the work itself is its own reward.

“With pretty much everything I do, I throw myself in 100%, fully knowledgeable that I might not be getting the result I’m seeking, but it’s the process that means so much more than the reward,” Irwin says.

Irwin, a physical education teacher and athletic director in Metairie, Louisiana, most recently experienced this through the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s statewide art exhibition, Louisiana Contemporary. For the past 11 years, jurors rejected Irwin’s submissions, and this year it seemed like it was going to be more of the same. Seated at his dining room table with his wife and son, Irwin was going through his emails and saw he had received three of them from the museum, one for each of the entries he had submitted. He opened the first email and was disappointed to read that his entry hadn’t been chosen. The second email conveyed the same message. Irwin almost didn’t even bother opening the third email, but it turned into a moment that’s been burned into his memory. When he finally opened that last email from the museum, he shot up from his chair and celebrated with his family. On his 12th try, Irwin had broken through the competition. His submission, “Pierce Street Sparkle,” will be displayed alongside 40 other selected works from August 3 through October 13, 2024.

“I think I’ve always put in quality pieces, but the planets aligned in such a way that my work got in front of the right juror,” Irwin says. “What’s really great is this is probably going to be the biggest audience I’ve ever had see my work. Opening night is White Linen Night, which is a major annual celebration in New Orleans, so that night alone it will be viewed by more people than any show I’ve ever been in. I’m really excited about it and am going to enjoy it as much as I possibly can.”

New Orleans is at the heart of almost everything Irwin creates. Unlike other artists, Irwin showcases both the good and the bad of the Big Easy, refusing to promote a strictly idyllic version of the city. In one of his works, for example, he scattered shards of broken glass he picked up from the aftermath of vehicle break-ins across the picture plane.

“New Orleans just gets in your bones,” Irwin reflects. “I’m spending my entire life trying to resolve all the constant back-and-forth emotions that you experience living here. This city is the cause of so many of our joys and, unfortunately, so many of our sorrows.”

Irwin acknowledges his limitations as an artist. He considers drawing his strongest skill, but he knows that he has to go in other directions to be relevant, just like he had to adapt to different roles on the football field.

After playing his first two seasons of college football at Ohio Wesleyan University, Trinity University caught Irwin’s eye when he was looking over regional football rankings. San Antonio’s warmer weather and conversations with Steve Mohr, the head football coach at the time, convinced Irwin to make the move and transfer.

“I could not get Trinity out of my mind,” Irwin remembers. “In your 20-year-old brain, you don’t make really well-thought-out decisions, but this is one I was determined to do, and it worked out. Trinity football will forever be right up there with all the greatest things I do in life. There’s nothing I’ve done that has had such a lasting presence in my life as Trinity football.”

Warren Irwin ’98 fondly looks back at his two seasons with Trinity football, cherishing the memories made on the practice field just as much as the ones from gamedays.

When he joined the team, the Tigers used a two-running back system. The first running back was the ball carrier, and the second running back was the lead blocker. The coaching staff determined that Irwin wasn’t fast enough to be the ball-carrying running back and made him a fullback, a position that Irwin discovered he was actually well suited for.

Over the course of his two seasons with Trinity football, Irwin formed bonds with his teammates that have stood the test of time.

“I went to the Hardin-Simmons game last year and sat with a bunch of former teammates, and that bond we have is still there. It’s a bond that extends to players before and after our time. We know we are a part of something very special with Trinity football,” Irwin says.

Off the field at Trinity, Irwin put all of his focus into art. He connected with professors like Bob Tiemann, who had played baseball for the University of Texas, when he realized they shared a mutual love for art and sports. He was fascinated by the museum studies course taught by John Hutton that he took his final semester at Trinity, and it led to him volunteering at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The museum asked Irwin to stay on as a full-time employee, and on July 1, 1998, he became the outreach coordinator, the first person to ever hold that position who didn’t have a master’s degree. After working at the museum for 14 months, he left to get his Master of Arts in Teaching in art from Jacksonville University and pursue a teaching and coaching career.

“A lot of people say art is about expressing yourself. Well, yeah, maybe it is, but not until you actually attain the skills to be able to do it,” Irwin remarks. “I don’t know that I had the skills until I was probably 25 or 26 years old.”

For one of his art classes at Trinity, Irwin created a self-portrait showing him drawing his reflection in the window of the art studio.

As he has honed his skills, Irwin has experimented with his creative process. He saw potential in collages when he started to cut up his own drawings and rearrange them into new images.

“From doing that, you end up with a lot of pieces you can’t use, but I’m not a fan of wasting stuff. I would use the pieces I had left over to build up a surface that I would draw on top of. That way, I give viewers something that is equal parts my stroke and the texture that I built,” Irwin explains.

As he continues to create new artwork, Trinity is never far from Irwin’s mind. He and his family have hosted students in New Orleans as part of Tiger Breaks, Trinity’s alternative spring break program, and he is always looking to get his hands on the latest news about Trinity football.

“When I think of a favorite Trinity memory, I remember a night I ran into some friends in Coates. We ended up hanging out there for four hours until they had to kick us out to lock the building. The time just slipped away,” Irwin recalls. “It’s those impromptu moments where you had nothing planned and no expectations, but you walk away feeling great about the company you keep and the high-quality group of people you are a part of as a member of the Trinity community. These normal moments in your Trinity experience can turn into something you’ll treasure for the rest of your life.”