Howard Finster hung onto the window of Rick Berman’s old Volvo as the Atlanta gallery owner started slowly rolling away from his first visit to the folk artist’s idiosyncratic roadside attraction, Paradise Garden.
Still rising in the art firmament when Berman made this initial stop in the early 1980s, Finster went on to produce 46,991 numbered works, not to mention all the creations great and small that filled his 4-acre folk art environment in the Northwest Georgia town of Summerville. But at this initial meeting, Berman didn’t know that the preacher-turned-painter, who never stopped ministering to a world that he believed needed straightening out, talked in torrents. It felt like 46,991 words per minute.
Credit: Howard Pousner
Credit: Howard Pousner
“He leaned on my open window and was talking, talking, preaching, preaching,” Berman recalls with a fond smile. “And after at least eight hours [of touring and talking], I couldn’t take it anymore, so I started the car, and began going very slow, and Howard was still walking down by the car. And, eventually, he just let go, and [Berman imitates the whirring of rapidly accelerating wheels] I took off. I’d had it.”
Ha! As it turned out Berman had just begun a fruitful friendship that extended to 2001, when arguably the 20th century’s best-known folk artist took wing from this mixed-up mortal coil. For nearly 15 years, it was Berman, while representing his buddy’s art at the Little 5 Points gallery he co-owned and operated with wife Jennie Ashcraft Berman, who hung on for Finster’s carnival ride of remarkable accomplishment and rocketing fame.
Now, those heady days are being recalled with “Howard Finster: A Feeling Come Over Me,” an intimate exhibition drawn from the Bermans’ collection, that opens Wednesday at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center.
Credit: Amelia Pousner
Credit: Amelia Pousner
Instead of a museum-scaled blockbuster, Callanwolde Gallery director Adam P. Faust promises that guests “will get a glimpse of the man behind the magic and see Howard Finster not only as a reverend and esteemed folk artist, but as a close friend” to the Bermans. The pieces on view speak to “a long familial friendship,” Faust adds, and feel “like sweet notes of gratitude.”
Relaxing in the couple’s cozy art- and pottery-filled Candler Park bungalow, Rick Berman doesn’t dwell on the museum-worthy Finster works that they sold to help support their family, such as a life-sized wooden cutout of Marilyn Monroe or the 4-foot-square, politically astute painting “Two Superpowers.” Instead, he shows off more personal pieces, such as a touching framed poem that Finster penned in 1989 to the Bermans’ infant son Seth after the artist and Rick flew to New York for what would become a breakthrough exhibition.
“The first time I seen you, you smiled in my face. You lit up my soul like amazing grace,” is just one line in the full-page poem Finster scrawled in his signature all-capital-letters after he and Berman checked into to their shared Big Apple hotel room.
The New York Times review that followed the opening of “The Road to Heaven Is Paved by Good Works,” the 100-piece survey that the Museum of American Folk Art presented at the gleaming Paine Webber tower gallery, likely lit up his soul, as well. “Finster’s presence in our midst,” critic Roberta Smith wrote, “is an indication of how the art scene has opened to work from beyond its borders.”
From a pop culture standpoint at least, Finster’s popularity had been soaring since his 1983 appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” where the banjo-plucking artist charmed the initially dubious host and audience, essentially commandeering the program’s final 12 minutes. The New York exhibit also followed Finster’s biggest pop breakthrough, his cover painting for the Talking Heads’ hit album “Little Creatures,” which was named Rolling Stone magazine’s Album Cover of the Year for 1985.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Rick Berman believes the Talking Heads painting was a career tipping point. “That did the trick,” he said. “In the early ‘80s, there was nobody more famous than the Talking Heads. Even more famous than ‘the R.E.M.s.,’” the art dealer notes, mimicking how Finster referred to the Athens band with which he also enjoyed attention-grabbing collaborations.
But Berman recounts that when singer David Byrne laid eyes on the painting, he noticed that the artist had painted the band’s name as Peeping Heads. New York art dealer Phyllis Kind, who had brokered the commission, shipped the 36-inch-square painting back to Summerville, and Finster corrected it. “They should’ve left it,” Berman protests. “So idiosyncratic!”
A native of Wilmington, North Carolina, where he says he consorted with more than a few “serious rednecks,” Berman credits his quickly blooming bond with Finster to the fact that they both could speak Southern. “I was just kind of country,” Berman says, which may strike those who have followed his sophisticated pottery-making as surprising, “kind of homey.”
Berman himself was surprised at how opened-minded Finster was for an Appalachia-born preacher who presided over a succession of small pulpits where many, if not most, congregants were born-again Christians.
“But he also had that cosmic facet,” Berman says of Finster, who often referred to himself as a “man of visions.” “I would say, definitely, he was a visionary. You could say the same thing about David Byrne. You could say the same thing about Picasso. I mean, what else are you going to call them? They open a door and go through it that one out of a billion people go through. Howard was one of those people.”
That pretty much explains “A Feeling Come Over Me” as the title of the Callanwolde exhibit, which will be enhanced by a video interview that the Paradise Garden Foundation recently taped with Berman. “When people would ask, ‘Where do you get all of these ideas?’ Howard would say, ‘A feeling come over me and I know exactly what to do,’” Berman recalls in his Exhibition Statement. “And he did!”
Credit: Howard Pousner
Credit: Howard Pousner
Jennie Ashcraft Berman, who handled everything from finances to running the Bermans’ variously named art spaces (Claywork, Claywork Gallery, Berman Gallery) when her husband was teaching ceramics or visiting folk artists, acknowledges feeling sentimental about those “inspiring, unique” Finster times.
“Working on this exhibition has brought all those memories back, and it’s fun to celebrate Howard, and Rick’s close, sweet relationship with him,” she says, “and to share our collection with everyone.”
VISUAL ARTS PREVIEW
“Howard Finster: A Feeling Come Over Me”
Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Jan. 18. Gallery hours: 1-7 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, Jan. 19-20 and 26-27. Suggested donation of $25 to Callanwolde Fine Arts Center (“No one will be turned away for financial reasons,” according to the center). Callanwolde Gallery, 980 Briarcliff Road N.E., Atlanta. callanwolde.org/gallery.
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