Longtime artist transforms wall near Fridman
Last month, a solo exhibition of paintings and textiles by Dindga McCannon opened at the Fridman Gallery in Manhattan. About the same time, the gallery’s owner, Iliya Fridman, asked McCannon if she would address an empty wall near the entrance of his gallery’s Beacon outlet at 475 Main St. that was crying out for a mural.
“I knew that Dindga had painted five or six murals in New York City that all have been erased or demolished,” he explained. (One of her murals, in East Harlem, survived for more than 40 years; the others were painted over when the buildings changed ownership.)
McCannon agreed to the request. After traveling to Beacon to see the wall, she decided on a painting with the title “Maybe If the Mothers of the World Unite We Could All Live in Peace.”
“My son, Harmarkhis, and I worked on it together,” she says. “The idea and title reflect the fact we seem to be living in hell right now — not that that has changed from one generation to another. Such turmoil led me to think what would happen if women ruled the world. Women feel the brunt of pain from the war going on in the streets. A child grows inside of women, so perhaps they’re a little more connected. If everybody united, perhaps we would slow the wars down a bit.
The solo show at the Fridman Gallery in Manhattan, In Plain Sight, is the most recent acknowledgement of the 74-year-old McCannon’s ascendance; it is the first major solo show in her five-decade career and was cemented by the sale of one of her oil paintings in April at Swann Gallery. The work, “The Last Farewell,” was expected to sell for up to $40,000 and realized $161,000.
