NC ARTISTS TAKE BITE OUT OF BIG APPLE
Back in the wild and wooly 1980s when paintings were big and hair-dos even bigger, I was lucky enough to be invited to New York City for a couple of weeks by David McDermott & Peter McGogh, a pair New York City artists who live their lives very much as performance art. They dressed in the fashions of 1885, lived in an old Victorian 1800s townhouse over on Avenue C and painted in the style typical of the end of the 19th century.
One of their grandmothers was a Raleigh girl and the duo would take the train down for a visit now and then. We spent our afternoons drinking champagne in my old 1968 250SE Mercedes sedan and touring the attics of abandoned houses for old mens shirt collars and scraps of wall-paper. When I visited them in NYC, I was lucky enough to be trotted around and introduced to such notables as Julian Schnable, who created those amazing paintings with the broken plates, and the inimitable Andy Warhol, he of the silver wig, who had been my idol since childhood.
I was so nervous at the thought of meeting him that I felt faint and needed double olives in my martini to bolster my strength, But David McDermott simply said, Think of Andy Warhol as someones Grandmother and you will be fine. Indeed Warhol was very gentle and sweet natured, with a voice that just barely rose above a whisper. Where are you from? Andy smiled over his vodka and ice. North Carolina I replied proudly and proceeded to inform him that one of his patrons had contacted my partner a few seasons earlier about the possibility of building a Warhol Temple dedicated to his artworks on a hilltop he owned just south of Chapel Hill. Oh yes, I heard about that, whatever happened to that project? he inquired. I explained that my partner thought the temple would be bad for neighborhood resale values and declined the offer, much to my protest and chagrin. Warhol and I had a good laugh over this strange connection between NC and NYC.
North Carolina Artists have always had their own connections to the Big Apple, and the work of NC natives shines there with the best in the world from the Target Paintings of Kenneth Noland to the stark Black Lemons of Donald Sultan. Some artists choose not to migrate, like the Late George Bireline, whose first solo show in New York sold out immediately. But he found his solace and inspiration on the shady oak walks of Raleigh and his masterworks can still be purchased there at the Lee Hansley Gallery.
But one fact remains. For any artist, a good New York connection speaks of accomplishment and prestige, and it is wonderful to be able to state that many of the artists in our midst are getting the recognition they deserve.
Jane Filer is an artist recently blessed with a solo New York exhibition whose work has been growing stronger and more confident now for several years. Her otherworldly paintings are a joy to witness and it is certainly no surprise that the folks up North are taking notice.
After a long and successful stint at Raleighs Gallery C, Jane is now represented by Tyndall Gallery where you can see the work of Beverly McIver, a local girl who has done so well that Art in America recently published rave reviews of her creations. The publication stated that McIver has a much better technical and conceptual command of her art than many better-known New York based painters. Beverly is now represented in New York by the prestigious Kent Gallery. If only I had purchased her works back when instead of that horrible Enron stock! But that's the way it goes.
Just last month I commented on the cool minimal electrified paintings of Raleighs Mia Yoon on display in Wilmington. Well, wouldn't you know it, Mia strutted her stuff right up to New York City on a single-minded mission to snag decent representation. After days of lugging her portfolio door to door without success in a horror story that most artists can empathize with, Mia breezed into Chelseas posh SPIKE gallery, and was accepted on the spot just as they were taking down the sold-out exhibition of diva Annie Lennox. Do North Carolina Artists rock or what?
The more you look for connections between NY and NC the more you find. Assemblage artist Amy Levine is a girl from the city living in NC who creates amazing three-dimensional cityscape tableaux that are offered by Gallery C. Photographer John Rosenthal lives in Chapel Hill but photographs and prints his images in the Big Apple. Somerhill Gallery is a great place to go pick up one of the stylized photos by NCs very own John Hall, a talented ex-model from itsy-bitsy Rural Hall just outside Winston-Salem, who has gone on to be one of the most in demand architectural photographers in the country. And David LaChapelle, a fellow NC School of the Arts expellee has turned the fashion photography world upside down with his vivid and hyper-glam images that have graced every magazine from Interview to Details to Rolling Stone etc. etc. etc. (I knew he was a genius when his senior project consisted of having a girl go-go dance while wearing a bikini made from cut up KFC chicken buckets!)
Im certain that I have left out dozens of artists with NYC connections. These are simply the individuals that first come to mind. It would take an abacus to keep a true tally. In this age of UPS and fax, Fed-ex and high-speed modems, artists can finally call anyplace home and work in any locale they see fit. In that light we can truly consider ourselves lucky that so many artists
are proud to have firm roots in North Carolina soil.