THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 8, 1996 TAG: 9609050181
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: COVER STORY
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 168 lines
ALTHOUGH HE IS REVERED as a sort of art patriarch in Hampton Roads, Charles K. Sibley keeps a low profile, living quietly in Portsmouth and painting for both love and money.
Coming up to his 75th birthday in December, Sibley says he has slowed down.
``Time was, I painted a picture a day,'' he said. ``Now I do four pictures a month for sale.''
About half his work is ``conventional and calculated for sale.''
The top price in Hampton Roads is about $5,000, he said.
The rest of it is Sibley.
In an upcoming show at the Visual Arts Center of Tidewater Community College in Downtown Portsmouth, viewers will see Sibley's work of the past year.
``What's coming off the griddle is what you'll see,'' he said. ``Basically, they are a comment on the times.''
People dominate Sibley's serious work - people in bars, people on the beach, people growing old. Sibley's reflections on the times include horror scenes of Sarajevo and a large series on AIDS.
The AIDS paintings are graphic, human figures with symptoms of the disease. Death is visible in every piece - death for men, women and children.
``I bought a medical book (`Color Atlas of AIDS') and painted them from a clinical standpoint,'' he said. ``There is no other way to present it. You can't be personal about AIDS. It can't be abstracted or it looses its horror.''
Sibley's last major show was in 1990 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center; however, he has mounted shows at commercial galleries in the area, including one last year at Norfolk's Art Works Gallery.
The Visual Arts Center show will be shared with Marlene Jack, a teacher at the College of William and Mary who will exhibit five clay pieces, and Ken Daley, a professor at Old Dominion who will exhibit five neon creations.
The show will feature 25 of Sibley's paintings.
In a preface for the show's catalog, Visual Arts Center Director Anne Iott said the three artists/professors have worked ``intelligently, persistently and with great integrity at both teaching and making art.''
``I want to show I'm still active and still alive,'' Sibley said. ``There are no landscapes in this show.''
However, in his comfortable studio at his secluded home in Simonsdale, Sibley was working on a landscape for a client.
``People want what they want, and I'm lucky to be able to do what I do,'' he said. ``No teacher makes enough to do much. You have to make money with your craft. To do that, you have to paint what people in Tidewater want and that isn't always what is good. Most people don't know anything about art.''
The top price around Hampton Roads is about $5,000, he said, but that doesn't mean he gets five figures for all of his work.
Sibley is ever the teacher. As he mixed paint and put some touches on the landscape, he explained every step of what he was doing.
He also is quick to defend paintings of beauty.
``But you have to go beyond a representation of beauty,'' he said. ``The function of an artists is to provide something more.''
Already a nationally recognized artist when he came to this area in 1955, Sibley came to establish the art department at what is now Old Dominion University. He made his mark on the art life of the community. Artists he hired to teach stayed around and became important in the region's artistic life. Many of his students did the same.
By 1970, he had had enough of the university job and retired.
``I'm a person in retirement who has continued his craft,'' Sibley said modestly.
Born in Huntington, W.Va., Sibley comes from a family that is very old and established in the Northeast. A cousin documented it all in ``The Sibley Family in America,'' a three-volume set to be found among hundreds of books in the artist's studio.
He has degrees from Ohio State, Columbia and the State University of Iowa, studied at Chicago Art Institute and received two grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. He taught at Duke University and the University of Texas before coming to Hampton Roads.
His biography tells the story of a promising young painter. In 1949, he was in the Pittsburgh International exhibit with artists whose names are now famous: Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, William de Kooning and Hans Hoffmann.
Even after he moved to Norfolk to teach, he was in the 1956 National Institute of Arts and Letters exhibit in New York, and his work hung with that of artists now deemed the great painters of our time.
``I participated in all the major shows in the 1950s and '60s,'' he said. ``They are musty souvenirs from my youth.''
Over the years he has been part of many prestigious exhibitions in places like the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Corcoran Museum in Washington. His work is part of many museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
He has been listed in ``Who's Who in America'' and ``The Blue Book: Leaders in the English-speaking World,'' as well as ``Who's Who in American Art.''
For many years he was represented by top New York galleries but says it has been at least 20 years since he has had any work in New York.
``I did shows in New York, but the critics never gave me much,'' he said. ``But I never thought I was earmarked for the history books.''
Despite his successes, Sibley claims he has ``never been a famous artist.''
``I'm a local artist, and that's all there is to it,'' he said with more resignation than bitterness.
However, he does admit that teaching and administrative duties did take ``a significant amount of time from my painting development.''
Sibley's style, like that of any good artist, has changed over the years, but he never has been interested in fads to make his reputation. His work reflects innovation but within the confines of paint and canvas.
``There was a time when I was totally abstract, living in Virginia Beach and showing in New York, but that was then,'' he said. ``Now I hope my work can still grow and look forward.''
Sibley shares the secluded estate with another painter, Robert Vick. He moved there after selling the historic 1835 home he restored in Olde Towne and constructed a new studio with 17th century mantles, doors and chair rail from an old house on the Eastern Shore. The studio is comfortable, furnished with some fine pieces of old furniture.
The walls are solid with shelves, many holding his pre-Columbian art collection. Much of the collection he personally brought back from Colombia, where he regularly visits old friends. Sibley also collects African art.
He also shares his studio with Pee Wee, a dog he found injured and dehydrated out on a nearby street eight years ago.
The studio that forms an ell off the original country home has gardens front and back.
Fountains and flowers, a windmill palm two stories high and shade trees create an ambience of beauty and tranquility.
``I sit on the porch and watch the sun go down,'' Sibley said. ``That's a peaceful way to spend an evening.''
Retirement from teaching does not mean he has retired from thinking about students.
``The schools aren't demanding,'' Sibley said. ``That people in college can't read is a comment on our times.''
He lamented the instability of the times and added, ``No wonder the art of today is so confused.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color cover photo by MARK MITCHELL
Portsmouth resident Charles K. Sibley, nationally known for his
work, will be featured in an upcoming show at the Visual Arts Center
of Tidewater Community college.
Staff color photos by MARK MITCHELL
``Swimming Yesterday''
``I want to show I'm still active and alive. There are no landscapes
in this show,'' Charles K. Sibley says of the show ``First Class:
Sibley-Jack-Daley.''
The artist's palette and his tools. ``You have to make money with
your craft. To do that, you have to paint what people in Tidewater
want,'' Sibley says.
``Sarajevo''
Sibley's bottle collection fills the window and adds a splash of
color to the light coming into the kitchen of his home.
B\W photo
Charles Sibley works in his studio at his home in Simonsdale.
Although there are no landscapes in the TCC show, he still does them
at the request of clients.
Graphic
What: Work by Charles Sibey, Marlene Jack and Ken Daley
When: Opens sept 23 and continues through Nov. 8
Where: Belle Goodman Gallery, Visual Arts Center, Tidewater
Community College, corner of High and Court streets in downtown
Portsmouth
Other info: Sponsored by Cenit Bank. Public reception for
artists: 7-10 p.m. Oct. 5. Gallery hours: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday
through Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. by CNB