THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 13, 1994 TAG: 9408130302
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Richard Biffle went back to the garden.
The Virginia Beach illustrator is an official Woodstock '94 artist - one among dozens. He arrived in Saugerties, N.Y., on Thursday for the 25th-anniversary concert.
His mixed-media rendering of a pastoral flower child adorns one of a handful of official Woodstock T-shirts. Biffle also was among an estimated 60 artists, Peter Max included, who were commissioned to create a 10-foot-high painting for the festival site. On Tuesday, Biffle's half-finished canvas was propped on its side against a staircase at the artist's Virginia Beach studio. With a late-day sun striking the fluorescent palette, the canvas assaulted with brightness. It was hot, and Biffle was frustrated. The 30-year-old artist was accustomed to working in mixed media on illustration board. He had never painted on canvas, or on such a large scale.
``I know, it's kind of ugly now,'' he said, humbly. ``But it'll look all right.''
Pause. ``I was really hating it yesterday.''
Though he has drawn all his life, Biffle took up painting only three years ago. He found immediate success selling his poster and T-shirt designs. In the last year, the Grateful Dead's marketeers have used his designs on five of the band's T-shirts. ``The people in the Grateful Dead approval process saw his work and liked it a lot,'' said Gary Lambert, a Dead publicist. ``In fact, I'm told his sunflower shirt was one of our best sellers.''
Lambert was referring to Biffle's design of a skeleton with a watering can in a sunflower garden, sold during the Dead's '94 summer tour. That shirt was reprinted several times, said Christopher Horner, Biffle's partner in Artists of Rivendell, a Beach-based catalog firm that sells psychedelic art by Biffle and others.
Biffle said he had an ``in'' with Woodstock because one of the firms that handles the Dead's merchandise had ties to the festival.
He described his Woodstock T-shirt design as ``psychedelic nuevo. It's a lady playing guitar in the daytime. On the back of the shirt, it's her dancing in the moonlight.''
He was asked, however, to remove the lady's purple dress and present her in her birthday suit. Tastefully, that is, with deftly placed greenery. The tie-dyed shirts bearing his design would sell for $25 to $30, he estimated.
For Biffle, the prestige was bigger than the pay, he noted. He'll receive royalties on each printed shirt, but declined to peg his cut.
He estimated the first printing at 10,000 shirts, though he wasn't sure. He was hoping some shirts would be mailed to him before the festival, but none arrived this week. ``I've been deep into this for three months, and I still haven't figured out what's going on. Everything's so iffy.''
As payment for the painting, he was given two tickets to the festival. Susan McNelly, who markets Biffle's work through the Virginia Beach catalog store, said Biffle and his friends called Friday from Woodstock.
``They worked it out so Richard's painting is going to be on the main stage,'' she said. ``So I imagine every picture of the stage is going to have his artwork in it.''
News service photographs taken Friday of the stage at Woodstock, however, did not show Biffle's art.
After the festival, the paintings will tour the nation, then be auctioned. Eighty percent of the proceeds will go to environmental charities and 20 percent to the artists. Financially, Biffle is not counting on much. ``If the festival's a success, I might do all right.''
As for Woodstock '94, ``we were planning on going anyway, just to have a good time. I have no expectations, really. Just being with my friends, listening to a lot of music I like. Camping out.''
Biffle grew up in Hampton Roads but studied commercial art in Atlanta. In 1988, he set up his One Tin Soldier art studio in Virginia Beach. Soon after, he made his first full-color poster, called ``Dream Oracle.'' As many as 30,000 copies have been purchased by stores nationwide, he said. ``It's a fantasy collage - eclectic, psychedelic stuff,'' he said.
``Dream Oracle'' and other Biffle pictures resemble the sort of densely packed '60s imagery that was sometimes linked to drug use. ``But I don't do drugs. I am very anti-drugs,'' he said.
The success of his designs has allowed him to quit his day job - manicuring nails at his mother's Virginia Beach salon. Darlene Biffle isn't surprised her son is doing so well at art. ``When Richard was in the first grade,'' she recalled, ``he drew a Christmas card for us with a camel and the three wise men. Yeah, and it was very well painted. He used to sit and draw the pictures off the cereal box.''
Biffle, a clear-eyed, sweet-natured artist, seems quite content to make peace-hugging pictures for a wary world. Because that's what his Woodstock painting is all about.
``Big, fatty sunflowers. A psychedelic sky, and doves flying through the air. Sunflowers respect the nurturing of the earth. They're like little individuals,'' he rhapsodized.
``It's just heaven and earth, really. That's what it is.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Virginia Beach illustrator Richard Biffle with the painting he did
for the Woodstock '94 festival. Biffle was among about 60 artists
who were commissioned to create paintings for the concert.
MORE INFO
Computer users can find updates and a complete guide to Woodstock
'94 on the News page of the Pilot Online, a service of The
Virginian-Pilot offered through InfiNet. For details, call
622-4289.
KEYWORDS: WOODSTOCK '94 ARTIST by CNB