 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
|||||||||||||
|
New! See the |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
Carol Craven Gallery |
|||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||
|
 |
|
 |
||
|
|
Originally published in the Vineyard Gazette, July 1, 2005 Copyright 2005 Vineyard Gazette, Inc Some years ago, Carol Craven was climbing up filthy and well-worn stairs over a bodega in Queens, N.Y. to reach the studio of an unknown painter named Steven Assael. It was hot and the pungent cat urine mixed with the stale scent of mothballs might have discouraged another art dealer, but not Carol. She had heard a story about this young painter and she came to see if it was true. "When I finally made it into the studio, I was in heaven," she says gleefully as she stands by one of Mr. Assael's paintings now displayed in Carol Craven Gallery's new home off Holmes Hole Road in Vineyard Haven. His works now fetch up to $125,000, a happy middle of a story that still continues to develop in Carol's voluminous book of art experience. Now in its tenth year on Martha's Vineyard, the Carol Craven Gallery has walls of stories told through a variety of mediums with its substantial collection of first-rate artwork by local and nationally acclaimed artists. And this eclectic selection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics and photography are united by a singular narrative thread that is Carol Craven herself. "I have personally selected everything in here," she says. "I would never show anything that I wouldn't live with myself." This thread extends from her younger days as an actress in New York and her love of the stage to the present as her own producer and staging of fabulous works that perform wonders on the visual senses. "These works tell a story. Each and every one of them," Carol says. "And isn't that what we all look for in art, a good story that engages us fully, makes us feel, think, respond?" Carol likes to show works of art mixed together in the way they might hang in someone's home. She delights in hanging the work of a young unknown, although highly accomplished artist, next to a Benton, an Avery or a Porter. "Mixing generations is very exciting as the collector can often begin to see the references a young artist has used," she says. Her passion and devotion to art and artists is immediately evident when you walk into her space. Your eyes are taken on a journey of discovery and awe at once comforted and soothed by Carols' overall presentation that flows seamlessly from one space into the next. It is almost as if the works found their own place in the grand scheme of the collection, their own tempo within this larger orchestration of unlike instruments yet all harmonizing well together. Carol's radiant smile, the assured cadence in her voice and unmistakable and highly developed instinct of what makes art may put you at light ease, but underneath her relaxed manner is a no-nonsense, firm resolve to bring forth representational art. "This is a serious gallery with serious purpose," she says. You won't find tourist art here, not in a gallery that prides itself on a collection of over 500 pieces that span American Modernist works by such established names as Bellows, Benton, Calder, Davis, Demuth, Hartley, Marsh, Walkowitz to the works of well-known contemporary artists such as Wolf Kahn, Derek Buckner, Steven Assael, Marianna Cook, Nancy Ellison, Jules Feiffer, David Hollowell, and Susan Swartz. She represents more than 100 artists. Carol relishes in her capacity to mix and match such a variety of styles and sentiments, something that came as a breath of fresh air when she and her late husband, Richard Craven, decided to split their year between the Vineyard and New York. Carol began her art career as an assistant to a new gallery on the Upper West Side back in 1973. She quickly evolved through a number of other galleries as her skills and obviously good eye became recognized among gallery owners. "Working in a gallery wasn't something that I ever considered," she says, "but I had studied art history, my mother was a painter, and I was always interested in art. Working in galleries gave me a new unforeseen opportunity into this world, and I gladly moved in that direction." Cutting her teeth in perhaps the most fertile of art grounds in the country, Carol embraced the New York art scene and developed her senses to adjust to each gallery owner's particularly defined tastes. She was good at what she did and made invaluable connections to artists she never would have met otherwise. But as much as she directed what went up on the walls, hung prominently from the ceiling, or sat proudly on the floor, Carol was still subject to someone else's vision of what a gallery should be. Until she opened her own gallery on the Vineyard. "I was free to show my own personal and eclectic taste," she says. "You could never have a gallery like this in New York, but here, in this relaxed environment where there's everyone from serious corporate collectors looking for that one special piece to passerby's who just stop in, you can hang a hundred-year-old masterwork beside a contemporary work of ceramic." People seem to agree. Since her gallery opened 10 years ago, Carol has realized success, each year greater than the previous, and her recent opening on May 28 in her new space hosted the largest crowd she's ever had. "It was like a happening!" she says with a big smile. "Major clients as well as Island friends came. It was simply fabulous." Carol doesn't see the Vineyard as trendy. She's as relaxed as everyone else here who loves looking at art. "They've got time to look," she says, "not necessarily for who may be in or chic or the artist you've got to have, but at a variety of work from excellent artists here on the Island to nationally recognized artists. From the corporate client with his consultant to a local homeowner looking for that perfect painting to fit above their mantel, I strive to have something wonderful for them all." From 650 square feet at her old location next to Conroy's in West Tisbury, to this space over three times larger, Carol is thrilled to be here. "Art has been my life for most of my life," she says. "And now I'm in this funky location with trees and cars parked all over the lot with no particular organization, in a spot that may or may not attract other galleries. Isn't that the way things begin? I just love it, the openness of this space, and the light in here, I just love it." Tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m., Carol's wonderful light will undoubtedly share the space with many faces, known and unknown, new and old, as the Carol Craven Gallery hosts an opening for Cindy Kane and Benjamin Cabot. Go there. You just might find what you're looking for. Originally published in the Vineyard Gazette, July 1, 2005 |
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|