Dayton native presents quirky art collection
What do a well-known New York glass artist and hundreds of fledgling artists have in common?
John Drury and his wife, Joyce Yearwood, have built up a sizable collection of Outsider Art, which is nontraditional work created by self-taught artists. The collection includes 500 works by approximately 50 artists; a small portion is on display at the Burnell R. Roberts Gallery at Sinclair Community College.
The exhibit, Backyard Bounty, supports the annual REACH Across Dayton conference, where Drury will speak on “No Stone Unturned: Demanding Voice in t he Visual Arts.”
“The beauty of this genre (isthat) these artists are each unique, conforming to no particular thou ght,method or ‘-ism.’ A prolific maker myself, these artists I rec- ognized as my ‘kin,’ if you will,” said Drury, who lives in Brooklyn with Joyce and their two teenage children. “Feeling no commonality to my contemporaries, in graduate school … these creators worked as I do, intuitively and from the heart, to elucidate the American experience.”
T hosewholikearaw and undisciplined view of artists’ affections will enjoy this show. Drury does have a strong connection with some of these newbies to the art world. He’s showi ngtwounti tled Bertha Halozan works. The late artist was passionate about the Statue of Liberty, depicted in two paintings.
“Bertha was a dear friend of mine. She was an Austrian immigrant who lived alone in an S.R.O. (single-room occupancy hotel) in midtown Manhattan. For many days a fter a heart attack… Bertha would ride the ferry to lie beneath the statue,” said Drury. “For more than a decade before her death in 2004, I would visit her once or twice a year, always at Christmas time, to be sure she had a visitor, some fresh fruit and (conversation). She was a nothing if n otasurvivor, a fire-ball, and the pleasurewascerta inly shared.”
After receiving a fine-arts degree from the Columbus College of Art and Design, and a master of fine arts in sculpture and painting from Ohio State University in 1985, he participated in a modest gallery scene with associates William Hawkins, Elijah Pierce, Mary Merrill, Birdie Lusch and his buddy “Smoky” Brown.
Hawkins and Pierce have since received international acclaim; they both have works presented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. But Drury wanted to include their work in this exhibit along with the neophytes. There is a small painting of Christopher Columbus by Hawkins, who died in 1990. A small sculp- ture by Pierce is presented in the glass case outside of the gallery. He died in 1984.
“Knowing William Hawkins to be one of the most important painters of the last century, he remains a favorite painter of mine,” said Drury. “The carved wooden ‘loving cup‘ by Elijah Pierce, residue of the time that he and his wife traveled the country preaching in tent revivals.”
Other noted works in the show: a quirky large-scale rooster sculpture by Vollis Simpson, tiny furniture pieces by Willie Massey, and a colorful mix-media work by James Harold Jennings. An interesting aspect is that Drury and Yearwood visited almost all of the artists included in Backyard Bounty. Druryh imself uses recycled and common materials for his mixed-media glass art. Bes ides creat ing his own works, he is an instructor at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. For more information, visit urbanglass.org.