David Fairbanks Ford, April, 1994

April, 1994: For Immediate Release:

The Main Street Museum Of Art 42 South Main Street, White River Junction, Vermont; 05001; 802.296.7955

The Main Street Museum Of Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of the paintings and drawings of David Fairbanks Ford from the fifteenth of June til the first weeks of August; with a piss-elegant opening reception: Sunday, 19 June, 1994 from Three to Seven o’clock In Our Unpretending-ly Shabby Whitewashed Rooms.

Having begun our artistic endeavors in Nineteen Ninety-Three with an exhibition of our Brothers work (nepotism) we commence our Ninety-Four season with a display of Monstrous Self-Indulgence, for the artist is none other than the Director of The Museum. We have no apologies for this conceit other than the excuse habitually offered for artistic offensiveness: well, you dont have to look at it if you dont want to. Unless of course, you happen to be luckless enough to live on South Main Street; for we are more and more a real presence in The Neighborhood, and our Summer production can scarcely be missed.

We are a centrally located, storefront venue, and we display a shocking variety of Paintings In Egg-Tempera and less exotic mediums, Drawings In Ball-Point Pen, for instance; all handsomely framed and programmatically arranged. All of Mr. Fords pictures are narrative works, traditional in technique, and are calculated to appeal to the widest variety of audience. From novices to the academics of the community, all will enjoy the diverse visual tour that greets one from the cheerful rooms of The Main Street Museum Of Art.

Originally from the Green Mountain State, ten years ago Mr. Ford found his way to Manhattan where he was taken off the street by a colony of monks and put to work painting the interior of their magnificent edifice with Images Of Christ Crucified. Later misfortune and lack of spleen conspired to reduce our protagonists fortunes considerably and for several years he labored in the bowels of some of New Yorks largest Chemical Plants as a kind of Human Guinea-Pig; serving as a lackey to cruel taskmasters, emptying buckets of organic chemicals from vat to bubbling vat in blatant violation of Occupational Health And Safety Administration regulations.

At length he escaped from these tyrants and made his way home to Vermont, on foot, sleeping at night in bins of oats and haystacks of kindly disposed farmers. The only guides the artist encountered for this voyage were Packs Of Coyotes, who also fed him scraps of food.

The mental journeys taken by our artist are represented on our walls. He has moved from almost Pure Abstraction to Figurative Works; from “Pop/Cynicism” to “Social Realism” a kind of transformation he equates quite seriously with a transformation from Schizophrenia to a more stable, or at least socially functional, Mental State.

This Long Days Journey Into Realism has taken Ten Years and is chronologically arranged about Our Little Rooms. An informal written program for the exhibit will lead viewers through the products of this most original painter, decorator, and draftsman. The moral of this little show, if any such tenuous precept exists, is a kind of not fully baked homily in defense of narration in art—in defense of art in life. There is far to much sarcastic bullshit out there making believe it is high-toned. Perhaps if we were to consider that we all have the ability to create meaningful, beautiful things we would spot the “emperors new clothes” strutting their finery around our Galleries & Museums and go home, in quiet, and create our own art, for our own Museums.

With this homiletic advice in mind, gaze upon our walls; and now you see not just assorted pieces of line and color but our location itself. It is hoped that everyone visiting our little gallery will not be able to forget that we are in White River Junction, Vermont. It is our considered opinion that there isnt a small town in America that couldnt get up artistic displays the equal of or surpassing our own, if they would only nurture the talent that lies in their midst. But thats just our opinion.

may it please you at the Main Street Museum Of Art.