Wearing Jim Dine Woodstock

Dimensions:  32” x 45” / Image 27.5” x 41” for regular, 16” x 22” / Image 13” x 19” for parlor edition, 57" x 38" for exhibition edition

Medium:  Mixed Media Print on Deckled Edge Paper

Edition Size:  50 for regular, 75 for parlor edition, 9 for exhibition edition

Availability:  Regular edition sold out at publisher but still available at Peabody Gallery, parlor edition sold out, exhibition edition available

Year of Release:  2018

Like many others, I’ve always understood that there were more important reasons for making art than just art world approval. Nonetheless, from the beginning I couldn’t’ help but wonder how uncomfortable the fit was going to be in the very small art world’s established taste of what art was at the time. 

Would my robes of camouflage constructed through Sparky’s (Charles Schulz) abstracted cartoon forms ever be understood as something more then just cartoon translated into painterly process? 

By 2008, 20 years into my Schulz-influenced work, it began to feel like the fit was becoming more comfortable. But, I knew as well that there was still the necessary discomfort. So at this 20 year point I began a limited series based on a Schulz strip drawing featuring a large robe supporting a small floating Woodstock Head.

For me, it was speaking to Jim Dine’s robe paintings that were created around the same time period as the strip. The robe paintings made a dignity possible between a state of visual dress and undress. They related to my thinking of usual art and new un-art. Thus, the construction of my titles “Wearing Jim Dine.”

       ---  Tom Everhart