The Michelangelo of Maggie Valley
By Michael Beadle

It doesn’t matter whether Michael Meissner is painting on a canvas or carving a wooden bear with a chainsaw or creating a Web site for a business. He has an insatiable urge to dive into an amazing number of art projects that might range from ceramic tiling to photography to graphic design.

“I do a little bit of everything,” he says, grinning under the rim of a cowboy hat.

Since he and his wife, Tammy, sold their graphic design and ad agency in Hilton Head, S.C., a dozen years ago to find a slower pace in the mountains, they’ve built a new business in Maggie Valley selling vacation rental properties at Smoky Falls Real Estate. Tammy is the chief broker while Michael does the marketing along with occasional maintenance repair.
But don’t ask Meissner how he continues to find inspiration. He’d rather make things than figure out the reasoning behind it.

“I keep a lot of stuff in my head,” he says.

And that can be troublesome at times — like when he’s building a barn with his son, Travis, a broker with the family business who also enjoys building. For Michael, it’s easy to follow his own intuitive plan. But it’s harder to realize that other people don’t have that same mental picture of how the puzzle pieces fit together. He’s got the whole thing laid out in his head, down to the last nail.

“I don’t know where it comes from,” Tammy shrugs. “You never know.”

It’s nothing for her to come home one day and find a room in their Soco Road log cabin completely changed, rearranged or newly formed. A back porch might suddenly become a dining room in her absence. There might be a window or a door where a wall once stood. It’s like living out her own personal episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

They had guests coming one Christmas when Michael took down a wooden banister, including the end post of the stairwell. Most people might have scrambled to get the mess back to normal. Instead, he took a tree trunk, carved it in the shape of a bear, replaced the missing stairwell post, and had the banister repaired by the time company arrived.

Ingenuity and resourcefulness are nothing new to Michael’s family. His father, who lived through the Great Depression, was constantly tinkering and learning how to save a dime by finding his own way to fix things when money was tight. Michael’s mother, meanwhile, showed him a world of art, taking him to museums and community art classes. Her appreciation of classical music might have stuck, but his interest in the arts has fueled a decades-long career that is busier than ever.

Originally from upstate New York — where he once played water polo for his high school team — Meissner attended college at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale before moving to Hilton Head as computer technology was just taking hold. At a time when design costs might have bankrupted aspiring artists, Meissner taught himself the computer and printing skills, and created an ad agency. Pretty soon, he had clients and connections to some of the biggest names in golfing. Meissner bought his own graphic design machinery, experimented with printing techniques, and built a handsome business in the epicenter of a golfing mecca. He painted a few covers for Golf magazine, had golf course developers consulting him for advice, and helped promote coastal business clients that lured tourists to wind surfing, sailing and waterfront amenities. Ad awards piled up and so did the profits. He also met and married Tammy, and the two worked together to build their own graphic design and ad agency into nearly a million-dollar company.

But Hilton Head was the kind of place where you could live there for 20 years and not know your neighbor, Tammy explained. One day their children were teaching themselves spelling words by using colored chalk on the sidewalk in front of their house. Some neighbors frowned. That was enough of keeping up with appearances, Tammy thought. And with hurricanes turning them into the Tupperware family — all those special belongings packed up at a moment’s notice — they decided to head west to the mountains. For years, they’d camped in Western North Carolina, and it got to where they were coming up once a month, so they drove around looking for some land to build a house.

“Bought a piece of property and it snowballed from there,” Michael said.

While home schooling their children, they’ve also been able to take advantage of trips across the United States from Yosemite and Yellowstone to the Great Smokies and Outer Banks. The world was one big classroom, whether they were investigating dinosaur footprints in Nova Scotia or exploring caves in the Bahamas. When school is not one single place, everyone takes on the role of a teacher. As parents of seven children — three boys and four adopted girls — who range in ages from 15 to 27, the Meissners are proud of that sense of wonder and curiosity they’ve grown up with and share with others.

“They’re not scared to ask questions,” Tammy said.

And from the looks of it, these children have taken their parents’ gusto for adventure. One’s a budding architect at UNC-Charlotte. Their youngest son is studying computer graphics at Appalachian State University. Daughter Catalina is in the Air Force.

Since Michael’s father passed away in 1994, the couple has taken the attitude that life is short, so live it to the fullest while you can.

“Why wait?” Tammy says. “Do it now.”

It’s become their personal mantra.

“My father lived his life like that,” Michael adds.

So the two aren’t afraid to tackle the next new adventure, whether it’s managing more than 50 rental properties in and around the Maggie Valley area or building a barn for their horses or entertaining the idea of a first-ever artists cooperative in Maggie Valley.

Michael, meanwhile, still maintains advertising clients from Hilton Head. Over the years, print ads have become Web pages, while the businesses he’s promoted have grown from wind surfing outfitters to ecotour enterprises and boating expeditions.

Having done pencil portraits in high school and painting in college, Meissner later found an art mentor in Joe Bowler, one of the nation’s preeminent portrait artists of his generation. Under Bowler, Meissner learned how to use colors and shadows to create subtle details — a hint of cadmium red where you might not expect to see it, for example. Meissner still applies some of these basic principles to all sorts of work, whether he’s designing logos, developing a Web page, painting landscapes or creating a poster for a festival.

The paintings, which are a visual history of his geographical journeys, range from docks and fishing boats thick with rigging to mountain landscapes with rich skies, horses, bears and howling wolves.

“I like the old architecture of the mountains,” he says, especially the functionality of old barns like the ones you still find in Cades Cove.

His paintings can be found at Deja View gallery in Waynesville, in Hilton Head art galleries and in the Smoky Falls Real Estate rooms in Maggie Valley. He designed and built the wooden sign out front, and a few of his bears, carved with chainsaws greet clients on the walkway entering the office.

“He is the most talented and creative guy in the county,” says Deborah Williamson, vacation rental manager and Real Estate broker with Smoky Falls for the past two-and-a-half years.
On a typical day, Meissner rises early to walk the dogs and feed the horses, checks emails, and updates some of the 200-250 Web sites he maintains for various clients. By the afternoon, he’s making the rounds on rental properties, fencing, working on a road leading into a property, photographing houses for marketing, meeting with clients, and taking business calls to troubleshoot and put out small fires that pop up throughout the day. By the evening, he’s back at his home studio for creative time, which might include building Web sites or painting or sketching.

It’s no wonder Meissner’s advertising and graphic design skills make him one of the most sought after creative minds in the region — whether it’s a chamber of commerce in need of marketing advice or a local business looking to build a better branding image. Meissner likes to think that his success comes from simply listening to the client and creating a customized image that represents the client’s personality. It sounds easy, but it’s one of the most challenging aspects to his work — and the most rewarding, fulfilling the promise to turn a conceptual vision into a reality.

But after the job is done, there’s a little sadness in his face. In the process of making something, he finds his greatest joy, and when it’s over, he can’t wait to find some new challenge.

“As long as I’m creating something,” he says.


michael@smokyarts.com

2629 Soco Road, Maggie Valley, NC 28751
828-734-5573 • Fax 866-591-7569