His art is on display at the same place he works as a security guard: the library

A recent weekday for Mylar Liggins started the same as most mornings for decades.

Liggins gets up around 7:30 a.m. Before too long, he’ll head to the basement of the Fort Washington home his father started building in 1960 along Piscataway Highway. He might put on some classic rock — often Jimi Hendrix or Pink Floyd if he wants to get mystical, he said.

The 65-year-old will prop a canvas on his easel, grab supplies, usually acrylic paints, and get to work.

If he wants a change of pace, Liggins might set up at a different workshop at the top of his driveway. He’ll twist and contort scrap metal, picked up from a junkyard in Brandywine, to create the sculptures that dot his front yard.

Liggins, who goes by Nick, estimates he can knock out a painting in a couple of hours in the morning. He might return in the evening for the finishing touches.

“I admire people that are workaholics,” Liggins said. “Where they never stop. There are some of the greats that only had like four or five hours sleep a night, you know?”

He’s fast.

He needs to be.

Over much of his artistic life, Liggins has given away a lot of art to friends, neighbors and colleagues and sold some at community events. But on this day he was excited thinking about which paintings he would stuff in the backseat of his black Dodge Charger to take to work over the next month.

Since April, he has displayed his work in a little gallery inside the front door at Oxon Hill Branch Library. It’s also the place he’s arrived daily since January to clock in and patrol the corridors with a badge, black tie and ballcap that reads “SECURITY.”

“I was always wondering: Am I gonna walk up on somebody and they say, ‘That one sucked?’” Liggins said with a hearty chuckle. “But so far, you know, that hasn’t happened.”

Artistic beginnings

Liggins was born in D.C. and moved to Prince George’s County when he was around 7. His first artistic pursuit was music, starting on piano before gravitating toward guitar.

He still plays, and electric guitars dot the gaps in his house where there aren’t stacks of paintings, some dating to the 1980s and 1990s.

He started drawing while his father, Rudolph, was a printing teacher at a D.C. high school. Liggins would at times accompany his dad to clean up for the night. He would need a distraction, so his father would give him paper to occupy his time.

“I would sit in the corner and draw. So that paper, that was my world, that was my universe. I was like God,” he said. “You wouldn’t hear a peep out of me. I’d be over there quiet as a mouse.”

Liggins tried college, where he took classes to maintain his artistic skills, but enlisted in the Army and served for six years stateside. The quickest money came when, as a civilian, he worked as an armed security guard by night around the District.

The late-night hours allowed Liggins to draw and paint (and perform music) over the decades. He took a workshop at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, he said, but he honed most of his artistic skills by observing and trying it out himself.

He watched a lot of Bob Ross and other instructional artists, he said, while trying to mimic some of his favorite painters, including Frederic Edwin Church and Thomas Moran. His curiosity skews toward landscapes, portraits and abstract art.

Prolific and productive

Liggins estimates he makes 200-300 pieces of art a year. In 2019, his sculptures were the subject of a neighbor’s complaint to the county. An official fined Liggins and told him to take the John Chamberlain-inspired pieces down from his yard. But Liggins said the order was rescinded after an outpouring of support from neighbors.

The incident brought Liggins’ art to his employer’s attention.

The Prince George’s County Memorial Library System has rotating exhibits and showcases of artworks across a handful of branches. Oxon Hill is one of three, along with Baden and Greenbelt, that has dedicated space for visual arts from local creators.

Meisywe Cavanaugh, the Oxon Hill Branch Library manager, was surprised and delighted when she realized an artist was patrolling the halls. She loves featuring Liggins’ art at her branch because it provides unexpected teaching moments for families who might linger to view and discuss his works, Cavanaugh said.

“He gets a lot of compliments from the art community in the county, and people were just like, ‘Oh, wow, this is very impressive,’” Cavanaugh said. “And I got to go, ‘Oh, the artist is right here.’

“I think people are always thrilled when they see something like this and then they realize it’s a local artist they don’t know about.”

On that recent weekday, Liggins had already worked up a sweat by 11 a.m. He was a couple of days away from a showcase at Surratts-Clinton Branch Library as part of the system’s Festival of Cultures and mulling what figurative arts paintings he wanted to display at that branch.

His exhibit at Oxon Hill will stay up at least another month. Liggins was thinking about putting up some of his science fiction-inspired art of pop culture monsters such as Freddy Krueger and Predator.

But the clock was ticking and Liggins had to freshen up and grab a bite.

He had to clock in by 2 p.m. to guard the library and his work.

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