WEST VIRGINIA BACKROADS: Drummer Dan’s Art Stand: Morgantown street artist stakes our his corner in Sabraton

Text and Photos by Carl E. Feather

Motorists grumble about them, but “Drummer” Dan Velloso appreciates the string of traffic lights on Sabraton’s Route 7 corridor.

He’s especially fond of the one at the Lewis Plaza entrance. The busy intersection, which includes a Kroger store and dentistry office, is where Dan creates and sells his art. 

“They leave this space open for me,” Dan says of the plaza owner. “I mean, they are very sweet people who look out for me. I’ve never heard one word about, ‘We don’t want you here.’”

Dan, a muscular man in his early 60s with a dark tan from months of sitting in the Morgantown sun, has been a fixture along Listravia Avenue since 2020. Bounded by concrete curbs and containing the massive aluminum pole from which the traffic light dangles, the little roadside island is Dan’s art shop.

“It’s near my house and there is heavy traffic,” he says, summing up his affinity for this peddling location. “And the people here have been incredible. I mean, how many places will they let you set an umbrella and sit in their parking lot?” 

As a result of “being a jock” and playing aggressive football in high school, Dan has bad ankles that make it very difficult for him to walk to the stand and carry his art supplies. A buddy usually transports Dan and his art to the intersection. If another friend who owns a truck is available, Dan also brings his supplies and paints en plein-air. The act of painting amid the traffic bolsters sales, even if the bucolic scenes he paints differ from the chaos in front of him.

“I’ve had people sit at that traffic light and watch me, you know, especially when I’m doing a background of a bigger painting and using a three-inch brush, like the kind you’d paint a house with,” Dan says. “And I’m trying to blend colors to make a cool sky, and people are like, ‘What’s he doing over there?’”

Some shout from their vehicle windows while waiting for the light and scan the paintings he trustingly perches on the curb inches from traffic. Occasionally, a motorist pulls into the empty parking spot next to Dan and goes home with a genuine Velloso to hang on the wall. Many more honk their horns and wave as they pass what has become a Sabraton fixture.

“I wave at people, and they wave back, they honk,” he says. “I got a school bus full of kids that comes by here at 2:30, and they’re like (shouting out the windows), ‘We love you!’ And that makes my day, I swear. The kids are my biggest advocate. I swear, I love the kids. They’ll be like, ‘Mom, we got to stop and look.’ You know, I can’t tell you how many paintings I’ve sold because the kids bugged their parents to stop and look. God bless the kids.”

And bless the dentist/property owner who graciously allows Dan to occupy this prime space with his umbrella, walker/chair, paintings, and unusual “easel”—a musician’s stool. The latter is from Dan’s other line of work, playing the drums, a profession responsible for drawing him to West Virginia years ago.

The Washington D.C. native says he had a rock band in high school and followed that passion for several decades as a musician. His road gigs took him from the East Coast to Wyoming and back, living out of suitcases and doing the hotel-performance-drive routine day after day. 

“Well, my claim to fame is I got to play drums with Bo Diddley one night because he was touring by himself,” Dan says, recalling the highlight of his career. 

After nearly a decade of that lifestyle, Dan returned to the D.C. area and settled into a catering job. “I was making pretty good money, but I ended up missing music a lot and my buddy needed a drummer in his band, so it was like, ‘Well, just come down here (West Virginia) and stay with us for a while.’” And that’s what he did; Dan became the drummer for several bands, including the West Virginia Hitchers, which played festivals throughout the state. 

An office job helped with the erratic cash flow from his drumming, but when his employer closed up shop, Dan found himself in need of something, anything, to put some cash in his pocket.

“I had some paintings laying around, and I needed some money one day, so I came down here and I just set them up,” he says. “And you know, at first, I was selling them for like ten dollars each, just to get a couple of bucks in my pocket. But then it started becoming a thing, and I was painting more and more. And my paintings got better, and they got to be more expensive. And, the next thing you know, I’m making a hundred dollars (for a painting).”

Dan says sales of that magnitude are the exception, however. His best day ever was $320, probably four or five pieces, because his prices are negotiable.

“I sell my paintings for $70 or $80 (apiece), but I’m a soft-hearted guy, and if a kid comes around and they are like, ‘I only got $40,’ you know I’ll let one go—I mean, it’s a kid,” he says. “I just think it’s great that people want to put my stuff on in their house to begin with … I don’t want anybody going broke buying my work, so it’s always negotiable.”

Dan says he got into visual art after a friend’s mother, the late Rita Rowand, fulfilled his Christmas wish several years ago. He was a part-time caretaker for Rita, and the two of them would watch the Bob Ross painting instruction shows on television. “And, I was like, ‘I’d like to try painting. I think I could do that.’ And for Christmas, she bought me everything I needed to start. She’s passed away since, a wonderful lady. She was great.”

One of Rita’s sons continues to assist Dan by buying painting supplies for Dan. “I’m very, very lucky,” he says. “I’ve been very blessed.”

Among those blessings is the multi-colored umbrella a friend provided. It shades Dan from the heat, rain, and wind and draws attention to his kiosk. But it can’t protect the paintings, which Dan displays on the curb and holds on his lap. Sometimes the wind pushes the 16-by-20-inch canvases into the highway 7; Dan, with his limited mobility, watches in horror when that happens.

“I’ve had my paintings fly into Route 7, but people were great,” he says. “They stopped for them—the Bud Light (delivery truck) guy stopped his truck and came out and helped me. You know, every now and then, I make a friend. Now, every time he drives by, I get the honk-honk from him.”

As one who paints to please the buyer and tease dollars from their wallets, Dan paints landscapes from the Ross repertoire—waterfalls, country churches, whimsical animals, snow-covered lanes. The latter is one of his best sellers; the painting is a scene familiar to any Mountaineer who has driven to work on a snowy morning. He modifies the scene according to the prospective buyer’s preferences.

As a protege of Bob Ross, Dan is modest about his work and skills. “I think I’m just a regular painter,” he says. “A friend of mine swears I’d be a good abstract painter, but I just can’t wrap my head around it. I would like to explore that avenue, but right now, I’m painting to make money.”

Photographs are his main inspiration source, but he also creates original works inspired by his love for classic rock bands and nature. Skeleton heads are popular with buyers. “It’s Grateful Dead-inspired art,” Dan explains. He infuses the art with his experiences at the Preston County music festival that his buddy operated and for which Dan drummed. “We spent a lot of time at that music festival grounds in its heyday,” he says.

Those gigs are rare now, what with encroaching illnesses, the post-Covid world, and time itself. Painting and drumming up business along Route 7 is his life now, and he’s resigned to earning his living this way, at least until he can go on Social Security and Medicare. In the meantime, he receives no government assistance and makes his way through this world one painting, one negotiation, one motorist at a time. 

And, almost miraculously, things just work out. Occasionally folks will call out suggestions for paintings from their car window at the intersection, saying they will return to buy the painting—a gamble for Dan. Recently, a lady yelled out, ‘Paint a mermaid!’ Dan points to the speculative painting resting on the street curb. 

Somebody will buy it, things always work out that way. Although he’s not a religious guy, Dan can’t deny God’s watching over him on this street corner. “I’ve been very, very lucky, very, very blessed. God has definitely blessed me. I’m a lucky guy,” he says.