SELDOM SEEN – My Non-Natural-History, “other” art
A note on the availability for purchase of works from my Seldom Seen exhibition, as well as from my broader history in this “other” oeuvre. I have reserved a number of these for my personal collection (“Carroll’s Carrolls”), and held back a number of others for potential inclusion in a purchase of my core archive, or substantial subset thereof.
But I have also established this virtual gallery by way of which individual objects from my work in these trajectories are available for purchase. You are invited to visit this exhibition to view paintings and drawings, many of which are offered for sale.
I anticipate making additions to this collection from time to time. Feel free to contact me for more information or discussion regarding any of the objects on view.
With appreciation for your interest, and best wishes,
David
In early March, 2019, my wife Laurette happened to encounter Jon Keenan at an exhibition in the Ivy Art Center at Colby Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire. She knew Jon, professor of art history, pottery teacher, and Asian scholar, by way of seeing exhibitions of his own ceramic art (which she admired greatly), and attending his lectures on the subject.
Jon works in and taught pottery using traditional Japanese techniques. He also was the Director of the art gallery in the college’s new Davidow Center for Art + Design.
In the course of their conversation a discussion of the possibility of my having an exhibition in the Center’s gallery arose. Jon immediately took interest in the idea and invited Laurette to have me contact him.
I emailed him, expressing my own interest in having a show of my work, and sketching out my background as an artist. I covered the range of my drawing and painting from works I produced for my published books to my most recent trajectory of non-objective pieces inspired by the Russian Avant-Garde, in particular the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich.
Jon replied at once: “Dear David, thank you so much for your kind email and proposal to exhibit your work at the William H. Davidow and Sonja Carlson ’56 Fine Art gallery at Colby-Sawyer College. It is ‘spring break’ for the college… I look forward to contacting you upon my return.”
Soon after the break Jon emailed me. We set a date and I met with him in the conference room of the splendid new Art Center. It was a welcoming setting for a first in-person connection between artists.
It turned out that he was very familiar with my work, and he did not hesitate to express his highest admiration for it. He had been to see my “Beyond Words…” exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art, and was familiar with the other avenues of my work.
Jon and I became good friends upon meeting. It was as though we were old friends. The moment Laurette told me of her talking with him about the possibility of my having an exhibition at the new art center – which I had not yet seen – I began to harbor hopes of showing of my “other” work. These hopes were intensified by my seeing the outstanding venue the Davidow gallery would provide, so suited to my in fact very seldom seen drawings and paintings.
Additionally, there was the compelling factor that such an exhibition would not be a re-run of the Currier show. Jon immediately and enthusiastically committed to the idea.
The gallery is not large in scale, but the space is simply and beautifully designed, as is the building itself. It had something of the feel of the architecture of the Bauhaus, but its structure in broad areas of glass and granite was more inviting, in both Laurette’s and my impressions.
The entire far wall of the gallery is glass, with a panoramic view of open fields and an apple orchard on the campus grounds, extending to Mount Kearsarge in the distance. The show on view at the time was a display of pottery vessels by the late, renowned ceramic artists, Otto and Vivian Heino. The large sculptural works were placed on pedestals in a masterful installation. It was Jon’s vision.
Jon and I began a constant exchange of emails. Among other considerations he set the dates for the show. There would be an opening on the 27th of February 2020 and the exhibition would run through the 9th of May, which coincided with the college’s graduation ceremony. We calculated that there would be room for thirty to forty objects.
It was a deeply gratifying and exciting thought for me to be having a second exhibition of my art, consisting of the unknown branches of it, within two years of the show at the Currier Museum.
Untitled. Acrylic on panel.
I set about the task of going through my drawings and paintings from over the decades, conferring with Laurette in making selections of drawings and paintings that were to be shown. None of my works are of a truly large scale, most being in fact quite small by the prevailing standards of the day. I kept to my rounds of the turtle season along with these initial preparations.
As autumn deepened Laurette and I began the daily, months-long process of making selections and framing them. She took care of all of the matting and framing, doing the smaller pieces herself, and working with framers on the larger ones. I did the paperwork – my resumé; brief biography; and recording dimensions, medium, and dates for each object. I also was welcome to draw up a price list. I included titles where appropriate.
A substantial number of the pieces were abstract, and I did not assign titles to most of these. This was especially true of the non-objective works inspired by the Russian Avant-Garde. I did not want to impose a definition, or any specific meaning, on the viewers for these and the “magic square” paintings. They were free to come to their own interpretations, perceptions, another kind of “beyond words”.
Untitled “Magic Square” painting. Oil in panel.
As the time drew near to hang the show, Jon told me that the Davidows and others had asked if there would be any examples of my watercolors of turtles. The feeling was that with this “other” collection people might not know who the artist was. An image or two with a spotted turtle would bring immediate recognition (such is my fame). I selected two watercolors with spotted turtles, and a large pencil drawing with touches of watercolor, on stamped gold block-print ink on paper. My unmistakable signature locally, and far beyond.
Spotted Turtle. Pencil and watercolor on stamped gold ink.
Two days before the opening Laurette and I delivered my work. A collector who had purchased my “Night” and “Day” large “Woman Space” watercolors brought them, on loan, to be centerpieces in the atrium before the entrance to the gallery. These stood also to represent watercolors in this surrealist manner, in which I adapted figure drawings of women to silhouettes inside of which I painted something, such as a lily, or in this case, night (with stars and a shooting star) and day skies.
“Night” and “Day”. Watercolor.
We began to place pieces along the walls of the gallery, and along a hallway opposite its entrance. We had seen Jon’s installations of the Ottos’ ceramic art, and then a faculty show, both exquisitely arranged. We were completely content with having him hang this show.
I could in fact see him rearranging things in his mind as we set the objects down. He invited us to participate, but I knew he needed to be alone with the collection, and that the installation should be in his hands alone.
The following day Jon emailed that he had completed the installation and invited us to see it. It was, as we fully expected, spectacular. I saw my own work as I had never been able to see it before. Laurette, who had lived with it for years as I completed individual pieces, was struck in the same manner.
I was profoundly grateful for, and deeply moved by, this presentation. It was as though each object had been honored, and then the collection as a whole. As I looked it over, I said to Jon, “This is MOMA North”. He was really taken with this designation, and began using it in his conversations.
Section of a wall in the gallery.
On the night of the opening Laurette and I arrived early, to have a talk with Jon and look at the exhibition again. Jon and I had discussed having a break at some point, in order for me to give a brief introductory talk.
Outside of the college’s immediate circle and towns in the vicinity there had been no advertising. It was cold and windy, there had been a light snowfall – I had doubts about attendance.
But as five o’clock approached people began coming in, and they kept coming. The outside hall – lined with seven small works in the Suprematist tradition – and the gallery, soon became crowded.
“Pages From My Russian Notebook”
The assembled immediately became engaged, taking time in front of each piece. Discussions were in progress throughout the gallery. I was surrounded by people wanting to talk with me. By half past five Jon came over to me and said he didn’t think we should try to signal a break in order for me to offer comments. I agreed. It would be hard to get attention, and it would be intrusive to interrupt what was going on.
In thinking about the forthcoming exhibition I was certain of two things: people would be completely surprised by this realm of my visual art; and they would think that it was a brand new departure for me.
But in fact all branches on view had deep roots in my decades-long art history, dating back to the 1960’s and my years at the School of Fine Arts Boston, with several more recent evolutions.
There were drawings of the female figure, a continuation from art school to a period of concentration in the 1970s. These ranged from naturalistic life drawings to cubist interpretations and on to a recent series of pencil drawings of nudes in a Renaissance-like realism executed on paper stamped with rectangles of gold block print ink.
[There is a separate page dedicated to works from this “Nudes onGold” epoch in my archive documentation.]
Nude on Gold. Pencil drawing on stamped gold ink.
Other paths were drawings, watercolors, and oils in Cubist and Surrealist manners. A major thread consisted of images inspired by and extending from the “magic square” paintings of Paul Klee, directions dating back to my earliest work as an artist.
These were my only abstract works until a far more recent departure arising from an immersion in the non-objective art of the Russian Avant-Garde, in particular the Suprematist strain originated by Kazimir Malevich. I began my work in this manner ca. 2017.
Untitled. Acrylic, white chalk, cut paper, on brown paper
The exhibition also featured several display cases with a wide range of works in hand-bound books, from my first watercolor in my first hand-bound book (an alder swamp done in high school, ca. 1955) to another hand-bound book in which I combined writing with abstract pen and ink drawings, completed in 1965 as a part of my final Museum School project. There were also “pages from my Russian notebook”, a theme in continuation. And on a pedestal there was an example of my painting in underglazes on pottery, a peony motif in black and white.
Museum School book, open
Perhaps what became my most intriguing interest in observing during the opening was the reaction of viewers to those Russian-Avant-Garde-inspired objects. All were done in mixed media: pencil and collage, charcoal, touches of watercolor, acrylic, and opaque white. They proved to be the hits of the show, in terms of time spent viewing and the discussions they elicited among viewers. A constant stream of comments and questions, along with many compliments, were brought to me. For some reason I was not completely surprised by this.
Given the historic reality of art shows in my region of New Hampshire, I was not anticipating sales. And I certainly would not have expected any to result from the “avant-garde” collection. But the three pieces that did sell were from this genre.
I have often thought of how my artist side might have fared if I had lived in a major gallery and museum center, say Manhattan or Berlin, Germany. But there has been the life-long need to be with the turtles, and live in as remote and wild and natural a wetland landscape as I could find. My bond with natural ecosystems and their ecologies has come before all else.
And although her work ranges to the abstract, the natural landscape, along with her gardens, is central to Laurette’s spirit and art as well. She always supported and encouraged whatever, wherever, my naturalist side called for, in my “being there.”
The gallery was crowded until closing. Deeply heartening enthusiasm, interest, and appreciation never waned. It was an absolutely stellar opening, and a deeply rewarding event for the artist, his artist wife, and the gallery director.
On Friday the gallery was open. It was closed on weekends. On Monday the college went on spring break. During that week Security opened the gallery at 9 A.M. and then locked it at 5:00, per the advertised hours. Laurette and I went to see the show again on Monday, and by more synchronicity than happenstance, a visitor came in while we there.
He was a friend who had collected our work over the years. He had been at the opening, and was one of those who lingered after its scheduled closing, looking all the more and discussing the work. He bought two works, one in my magic square mode, and one of the “Pages from my Russian Notebook”. This brought my sales total to five.
But the following Monday, at the end of spring break, the entire campus had been locked down as the Covid-19 Pandemic surged. For three months my collection hung in a locked-up gallery, without a single viewer, morphing from “Seldom Seen” to “Never Seen”.
Jon was finally given clearance to enter the gallery for one day. He handed the drawings and paintings out the back door, one-by-one, to Laurette and me, and two friends who had come to help us. We transported everything back home to our gallery, and the two “Arbeitszimmer” (“work rooms”) – the upstairs rooms in our 1790 house in which I do my art and writing.
Corner of the wall of my west Arbeitszimmer (studio room)
My Five Published Books
Trout Reflections
Following the Water
Year of the Turtle
Self-Portrait With Turtles, A Memoir
Swampwalker’s Journal
Hand Bound Books
A Book of a Number of Hours
A Book of Winter Buds
A Book of Winter Branches
Borradores
Landscapes – January 20, 1978 – April 1978
Variations: February 1, 1967 – August 1, 1968
Visions: Drawings and Paintings: 1976 – 1988
Exhibitions
“Seldom Seen” Exhibition at the Davidow Center
“Beyond Words” Exhibition at the Currier Museum
Galleries
“Seldom Seen” Gallery
David’s Wildlife Studies Sketchbook
Virtual Gallery of Art Produced for My Five Books
“Regarding Women Regarding…” Introduction
Sketchbook Gallery: 4/1/1985 – 10/14/1987
Swamp Sketchbook
The Swamp Dialogs
Drawings and Watercolors Produced to Illustrate my Published Books
CODIT – Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees