Mechanic finds art ‘worth millions’ in trash bin
In September of 2017, as a barn in Watertown was being cleared to be sold, a contractor found large canvases with car parts painted on them.
The space and its contents had been deemed “abandoned,” so he called his friend Jared Whipple, a Waterbury automobile mechanic, because he thought he might like them.
The next day, Whipple went to the trash bin where he said retrieved the hundreds of art pieces wrapped in plastic and covered in dirt. He later discovered the art was created by Francis Hines, a Washington, D.C.-born artist who lived in Connecticut and New York. According to an art curator, the pieces are collectively worth “millions” of dollars.
“I immediately started researching,” said Whipple, who spent the next four years doing research on Hines and contacting the artist’s friends and family.
Now, Whipple has collaborated with Hollis Taggart, which has galleries in Southport and New York City, to build a large exhibit of Hines’ work. The exhibit will showcase and offer for sale 35 to 40 pieces of the found art from May 5 to June 11 at both Hollis Taggart Southport and New York galleries.
Art curator and historian Peter Hastings Falk estimates that Hines’ “wrapped” paintings can be sold at around $22,000 and his drawings at around $4,500 — which would make the collection found by Whipple to be worth millions of dollars if sold in its entirety. Whipple did not disclose exactly how many pieces he retrieved from the trash but said there are some he will not sell.
The first person in the art field that became interested in Whipple’s findings was Muldoon Elger, a retired art dealer who owned the Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco. Elger, who had exhibited Hines’ work in the 1980s, connected Whipple to Hastings Falk.
“I was so intrigued. I went there to his garage to look at the paintings. I was just really surprised at what I saw,” said Hastings
Falk.
Comparing Hines’ work to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art, Hastings Falk was most intrigued by the artist’s wrapping art. Wrapping is an art technique in which fabric is tightly wrapped around an object. Christo and Jeanne-Claude are known for their wrapping installations across Europe — their most famous being the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In his career, Hines wrapped more than 10 buildings in New York, including the Washington Square Arch, JFK Airport and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
“Hines is really New York’s wrapper,” said Hastings Falk, who mentioned that while Christo and Jeanne-Claude are the most known wrappers, they never did work in the city. Hines is considered an abstract expressionist master and his style was uniquely innovative, according to Hastings Falk.
Hines developed his career in Greenwich Village and kept his life’s work stored in the Watertown barn where Whipple found it. The artist died in 2016 at age 96 and has two sons living in New York and Florida.
Late last year, Whipple showed some pieces at a retrospective exhibit for the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury titled “Discovering New York’s Wrapper: The Art of Francis Hines.”
A few months ago, Whipple decided to sell some of the art with the intention of getting Hines’ name recognized in the art world. He learned that artwork is taken seriously after it is sold for great sums of money, he said. After the exhibit at Hollis Taggart, Whipple hopes to get Hines’ work to major New York galleries, he said.
“I pulled it out of this dumpster and I fell in love with it. I made a connection with it,” said Whipple. “My purpose is to get Hines into the history books,” he said.