Artist of the day: Howard Finster
What more needs to be said about this giant in American 20th century art? His contributions to the art world are well documented.
We love him, like everybody else, because he's first and foremost honest in his beliefs and in his art. But we also love the way his faith infused each and every one of the 14,000 pieces of art he created from the age of 45 until his death two years ago.
I once visited him when he was alive. I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend in Summerville, GA, at his home, during a hot summer in 1985. He was hospitable, but tired by that time and we only had brief conversations together. He was perhaps spelled by the unending line of celebrities and others who would come to his Paradise Garden on other weekends just to relax, enjoy his art and talk away the day with other devotees from around the country.
My close friend at the time, Andrew Van Sickle, took me there. He was a young art collector and dealer at the time who had acquired rights to sell Howard's work in several large cities along the east coast.
With his help, Howard sold me a signed A/P lithograph and with the change I had leftover, I bought a wood cut-out sculpture by his grandson. I remember feeling like I was in the center of some historically significant art universe on that weekend in Summerville. Yes, that students of American art would be sitting about their campuses 100 years from now wondering what it would have been like to meet him, to stay on his land and watch him work when he was alive, much as we fantasize today about actually meeting and watching Picasso in his heyday.
I still look at his paintings and drawings hanging in my house and think back on how lucky I was to have that moment and how I hope I left a little positive vibe behind in that garden when I left.
If he isn't an artist you know, it's never too late to take the journey; many thousands of people have been changed by it forever.