|
|
A self-portrait of Harvey Dodd from 1976. |
|
|
“Commercial Street with Trolley,” pastel by Harvey Dodd. |
|
Dodd’s universal take on art
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
For 50 seasons Harvey Dodd has been a creative fixture on the streets of Provincetown, first painting portraits then moving on to landscapes and finally conceptual art. His work will be recalled in a show at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St., from May 16 through July 13. There will be an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. next Friday, May 23.
Dodd not only operates a gallery, paints, draws and rides his motorcycle, he somehow has found the time to enter the 9/11 memorial competition, designed a prototype world flag, made a scroll for the Russian people that 1,000 people signed, and entered the genre of conceptual art with his world citizenship exhibit, artist’s vision for the millennium show and his creation of a scale model of the universe using Cape Cod as a reference point. He’s been called a Renaissance man and, certainly, is a visionary with a world view and a down-home sense of humor.
It’s fitting that the show opens Memorial Day weekend since that coincides with his arrival in Provincetown in 1959. A cousin had opened a photo business in Orleans, and Dodd’s parents bought an acre nearby and built a house on it. Dodd, who was attending Pratt at the time, had been making money selling sketches on the streets of New York.
“I would tell them, any scene you wish, $5,” he says.
They wanted everything from Paris to bar mitzvah scenes and he sat there on Sixth Avenue by Eighth Street and turned out pen-and-ink drawings by the score.
The cousin suggested he try his luck in Provincetown, get out of the city for the summer. But random sketches were not the draw here as they were in New York. He moved into doing charcoal profiles and quickly into full portraits.
He set up a portrait stand outside of Snelling’s garage (now Marine Specialties) for $20 a week, payable on Friday. Then he moved in front of Café Poyant (now the complex housing Euro Café and Ben & Jerry’s).
He opened his own Harvey Dodd Gallery in 1971 and added watercolor landscapes to supplement his portrait work. Over the years he turned out more than 5,000 likenesses. When a gallery assistant noted that he sold plenty of his watercolors and pastels and suggested he put his time into those more lucrative sales, it was like a light went off, he says. He let her to run the gallery and began to spend his days in the studio, painting landscapes and street scenes. Having that uninterrupted time gave him freedom to refine his paintings and immerse himself in the work.
Today, he says, his gallery is the oldest continually operating privately owned gallery in town.
And his mind never slows. He always seems to be looking at the big picture, as if the universe makes sense to him in a way different from how others see it.
In 1996 friend Berta Walker gave him a show at her gallery. It’s far too complex to describe in detail here but, simply put, he took the five things he believes constitutes the universe — space, matter, time, change and energy — and assigned colors to them. Amazingly when you mix the colors you get an equivalent concept evolving.
He also took a room and made a “Drop Something in the Universe” exhibit. He took a map of the universe and put it in the bottom of a shallow pool. On pedestals around the room he put colored glass “asteroids,” which gallery-goers were invited to select and drop into the universe pool.
He had asteroids for love (red), imagination (yellow), peace (blue), beauty (orange), plenty (green) and justice (purple).
“The idea is when you drop something in it makes ripples that go out into the universe forever,” he says. “Just think, when you mix love (red) with imagination (yellow) you get beauty (orange). Mix peace (blue) and love (red) and you get justice (purple).”
Sometimes, he says, the artist just has to put the ideas out there even if there is no chance of them making money.
Dodd also made a scale model of the universe that centers on an 18-inch globe of the Earth located in Provincetown. Using that scale, he says you won’t find Mars until you have gone 18 miles down Route 6. He hopes to plot the location of all the planets and fly 10-foot helium balloons at their locations next Memorial Day.
For this coming show at PAAM he will feature works on paper, watercolor and pastels along with a slideshow of his pen and ink drawings. And, for old times’ sake, there will be a few portraits.
For now, Dodd is moving into working with oils almost exclusively but who knows what else his creative brain will come up for the future?
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
|
Olympia Dukakis joins festival lineup
Outer Cape Gallery Listings
|
|
|
|
|
May 15th, 2008