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May Issue 2003
Wilkes Art Gallery in North Wilkesboro, NC, Features Works by Parks Reece
On May 2, the Wilkes Art Gallery in North Wilkesboro, NC, will openthe exhibit, Call of the Wild: The Art of Parks Reece. The opening will also feature a book signing for the nationally recognized artist from 6-8pm. Over 35 of his original paintings and lithographs will be on display through May 24, 2003.
At age six, Parks Reece began his art career under the tutelage of his mother, Betty Gwen Reece, a nationally recognized painter and Ruth Shaw, the originator of the finger painting medium. Also in the early 1960s, Reece witnessed first hand the creation of the first fine art gallery in Wilkes County. His mother and arts activist aunt, Annie Winkler, were instrumental in the creation of the Wilkes Art Gallery in 1962. The Gallery was originally housed in Winkler's home on E Street, North Wilkesboro.
After his early beginnings in Wilkes County, Reece studied art at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. After two years, he left to study Pan American and Pre-Columbian Art at the Universidad National in Costa Rica. Reece earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Printmaking in 1977 from the San Francisco Art Institute.
After years of traveling the country and experiencing countless adventures working on odd jobs ranging from muralist to farm hand, Reece settled in Livingston, MT. He resides there today with his wife. In 1992, they established the Parks Reece Gallery in Livingston. It is the primary source for original paintings by Parks Reece.
Reece has exhibited his works in a wide variety of museums and galleries, he has been featured in numerous publications and his works are found in hundreds of private collections around the nation and world.
"There's definitely something wrong with artist Parks Reece. I mean, just look at his work. Here's training and talent shackled to an altogether peculiar perception of our natural world. The result is a bizarre amalgam of Charley Russell's subject matter and Salvadore Dali's pragmatism. Livingston residents feel it is good that Parks Reece should create such work. He enriches us; he amuses us; he walks among us every day and doesn't create much trouble at all," writes Tim Cahill, author and contributing editor to Outside Rolling Stone and Esquire magazines of his friend Parks Reece.
Of Reece, actor and director Peter Fonda said, "Parks Reece is a painter with poetic wit who we can never have enough of. He is a surefooted nonconformist whose individuality of thought is as unmistakable as a fingerprint."
For more information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the gallery
at 336/667-2841 or on the web at (www.wilkesartgallery.net). Also
check out images from Parks Reece's book,
Call of the Wild,
on our web site at (www.CarolinaArts.com) under Special Features.
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