Winthrop art professor challenged his students to ‘dig deeper’

Paul Martyka loved to create, collect and teach. He was able to meld those passions in his longtime role as a fine arts associate professor at Winthrop University.

Students, faculty members and others said the campus lost an intellectual leader, artist and mentor when Martyka died unexpectedly Wednesday. He was 65.

“The day I met him, I knew this was for me,” said Jack Kinley, who earned a fine arts degree from Winthrop in 1999. “I knew the college experience was going to be scary and fun.”

Kinley, 39, who lives in Atlanta and owns his own communications firm, said some students were intimidated by Martyka, but Kinley was exhilarated and challenged.

“A lot of people were afraid of him because he was demanding and intense,” Kinley said. “But I think he was that way in an effort to get the best results from everyone. He knew his job was to dig deeper and see what you’re capable of doing.”

Gregan McAbee, 43, who earned her fine arts degree in 1995, said she had heard that Martyka was tough, but she enjoyed his class.

“He really taught us a lot about putting compositions together,” she said. “He was hard, but he made it fun. When I got an A in that class, I was the proudest I’ve ever been of getting an A.”

Martyka, a native of Detroit, came to Winthrop in 1979. He taught drawing, painting and printmaking in the Department of Fine Arts.

Fine arts chairman Tom Stanley said students regarded Martyka “fondly and with respect because of his influence and generosity, as he urged others to become passionate about their work.”

His daughter and only child, Sarah Fraker of Winterville, Ga., said her father was lucky to work in a career that combined his passions.

“He was like a force of nature,” she said. “He had energy that would expand into the space around him and the people around him. He was really amazing.”

Fraker said he touched a lot of lives in important ways.

“Just today, I talked with three people who said, ‘He was my best friend.’ That’s how much he had to offer. And I know there are many others,” she said.

Marilyn Smith, a business professor, bought a beautiful broach that Martyka made and sold at a low cost to benefit a student project. “That kind of captures who he was,” she said, referring to his use of his artistic talent to help students.

She also collaborated with him on university committees.

“When Paul would speak, it was quietly and politely,” she said. “He would be addressing the elephant in the corner. He would bring up some issue that people were either ignoring or that they hadn’t thought about.”

Martyka was the fourth recipient of the Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick Faculty Grant, created to further faculty work. An exhibition of his hand-printed cut paper collages, “Conversations with an Echo,” ran in fall 2009 in the Patrick Gallery.

His collages attracted regional attention. In 2008, his collage, “Totemic Talk,” was featured in the S.C. State Museum’s 20th Anniversary Juried Exhibition.

Martyka earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, respectively.

Survivors include his daughter, Sarah Fraker, two grandchildren, Emerson and Grayson, and six siblings.

This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 10:29 PM with the headline "Winthrop art professor challenged his students to ‘dig deeper’."