from the KEY WEST ART & HISTORICAL SOCIETY 281 FRONT STREET, KEY WEST, FL 33040 295-6616 Fax: 295-6649
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Artist Dale Dapkins, who had been creating acrylic canvases for about a dozen years during the late 1980s and 1990s, finally knew he had arrived when Steven Gluckstern, bought 12 of them for his corporate offices in New York's Chase Manhattan Plaza. Gluckstern, the CEO of Zurich Global Asset Business Division and the then owner of the New York Islanders hockey team, had been searching for the right kind of art when he settled on Dapkins' large works for Zurich's facilities. A Dapkins painting entitled "Grand Canyon, Northern Lights" now hangs in the Zurich Centre boardroom. An exhibition of Dapkins' art, entitled About to Break opens Feb. 3 in the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House. Two years after the Gluckstern purchase for Zurich, he bought 22 more of Dapkins' works for his compound in St. Croix, V.I. "That was fortunate because I had just completed them and was running out of storage space," Dapkins declares with a grin. It's that kind of sly positive humor that shows up frequently in his artworks as well as his conversation. "I try to keep it out, but it just sneaks in," he says. Some Dapkins paintings are huge. "The big image is powerful," he says. "A nine foot by nine foot painting has five times the impact of a three by three!" Dapkins-among his other manifestations throughout his 59 years-has been and still is, an Oriental rug merchant who deals in valuable antique Turkish and Egyptian weavings. In fact, the paintings themselves-though far from appearing antique-often have a raised, nappy, carpet-like texture because he paints with a thick acrylic gel, applied in three-dimensional daubs using a pastry gun. Dapkins picked up his appreciation for oriental rugs while serving in the Peace Corps during the late 1960s in Turkey, where he also learned the language and acquired an interest in making pottery. "I started with ceramics and had pieces in the American Craft Museum in New York and the Treadwell Museum of Fine Art in the Catskills," he explains. "Then about 1985 someone suggested painting with acrylics, which allowed me to work much larger, because canvas isn't as heavy as clay. Of course when you lay on a couple gallons of paint, a large canvas can get pretty weighty too." As a painter Dapkins is self-taught. He majored in psychology at the University of Rochester, where he also was a wrestler. After college he spent time in Hawaii, hung out with Harvard professor and LSD guru Timothy Leary in the mid 1960s and hitchhiked across the states before landing in the Peace Corps. Later Dapkins was an artist in residence in the L'Ecole De Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence where he learned French, worked as a day trader where he "made and lost a fortune" and managed to raise two sons, one a pediatrician, the other a filmmaker. Dapkins, who is also a writer, was the first person to ever win Key West's annual Lorian Hemingway short story contest two years in a row (1999 and 2000). For the past six years, he says, he's been trying complete a novel. "I'd love to finish it," he chortles, "but when I start reading back over what I've written; sometimes it seems that a monkey got loose on my word processor." Writing is different from painting, he points out. "I'm pretty expressive with words, but in writing you have to be exact or you could be misinterpreted. In art, your mistakes often have positive results and can work for you. Art is more conceptual. Yes, I think 'concept' is the word. In painting you can use pure imagination." "I don't make many preliminary sketches. I get up in the morning, lay out a piece of canvas and say, 'This is what I'll do today.' I think my work is pretty self-explanatory. People have told me it grows on them. One person called ten years later to ask if a painting was still available. It took him ten years to realize how much he liked it. Then, of course, it was too late." Dapkins, who spends summers in Maine, moved to Key West five years ago. "My father always wanted to buy a house here, but wasn't able to get it done before he died of cancer. He left me with enough for a down payment. Buying a house was the smartest thing I ever did," he says. His father's ashes now occupy a small alcove in the rear wall of his Rose street home. The 30 artworks in the Custom House exhibit range from tapestry-size canvases to some of more manageable proportions. No photo realist, Dapkins' subject matter often is recognizable, but cast in an imaginative, other worldly light that sometimes borders on cartooning-strange fruits, flowers that look like flugel horns or squid, exaggerated faces and particularly curly topped tidal waves. There is one painting of the Custom House, an homage to a famous Mario Sanchez intaglio, and another, in which Dapkins "melts" his style with that of fellow Key West artist Lon Michaels. Perhaps his greatest artistic fascination is with the work of the 18th century Japanese woodcarver Katsushika Hokusai, whose classic rendition of a froth-fingered tsunami probably has defined the powerful phenomenon for all time. Thus the exhibit's title: "About to Break". One of Dapkins' paintings entitled "Postcards to Hokusai" explores several visions of the wave. Since they are created with acrylic gel Dapkins' waves are almost bas- relief. "It's the color of the water! It's the timeless rolling enchantment of a beautiful but indifferent sea," he says. Because his paintings have a definite tactile dimension, Dapkins is working with the Key West Art & Historical Society to make them available to visually impaired children who will be able to use touch to help them "see the art." In addition, 20 percent of any sales of his paintings generated by the exhibition will be donated to the Bahama Village Music Program, he says. The exhibition, part of the Art & Historical Society's Artists-In Season series, runs though March 25. It will open with an artist's reception Feb. 3 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Custom House with a cash bar, and complimentary wine, soft drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Following the reception attendees who show their invitation or KWAHS membership cards at Antonia's Regional Italian Cuisine, Flagler's at the Casa Marina Resort, Michaels Restaurant, or Nicola Seafood at the Hyatt Resort & Marina will have 15 percent of their restaurant bill donated to the Society's education programs, as part of the Society's Dining for the Arts program.
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Postcards to Hokusaiby Dale Dapkins