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alumni/ae page |
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February 2008
by Jeffrey Stanley John H. Leo ’92 started BFS in 3rd grade, making him nearly a lifer. “I think what appealed to my parents was the small class size and the student to teacher ratio,” recalled John, now a sometimes controversial Williamsburg gallery owner. “It was very helpful because I got to know all of my teachers very well.” John was born in Greenwich Village and grew up in Staten Island. “St. George, the neighborhood I grew up in, is bordered by the Jersey Street projects. Although the neighborhood was beautiful there was always an air of danger about it.” He lived in a 19th century home, a renovation project for his artistically inclined parents. “My fondest memories are definitely of the artistic and creative people my parents always surrounded themselves with. It was these people that led me to art.” Where some kids today are seemingly raised by a television set, John was similarly raised by art. “My parents couldn’t afford a babysitter for awhile and they would take my brother and me to the Cloisters Museum and drop us off for the day. Art always played a huge role in my life.” Although the trip every day from Staten Island to BFS was a hike, John says the trip was well worth it. “I loved meeting—the thought of sitting in silence and allowing thoughts to come to you with the option to voice them. That part of the Quaker belief was one of the most magical.” His interest in art was nurtured by teachers like Martin Norregaard, Larry DeLuca, Lawrence Gibson, Norma Gordon and Linda Trachtman. “The one who influenced me the most was Jack Ramey,” he said. “He was one of the most influential professors in my life. He was one of the most educated people I had ever met, and it was his guidance that led me to study foreign languages and art history in college. What an amazing person.” After BFS he attended Bard College but never completed his course of study, taking “a year off” after his junior year. “It’s been twelve years since I took that year off,” he quipped. At 21 he got a job as a shipping clerk for Axelle Fine Arts, a publisher. Within a year he had begun working as a sales consultant in an art gallery Axelle opened in SoHo, then still the epicenter of New York’s contemporary art scene. After several years he was promoted to Assistant Director. In 2001 he married fashion designer, painter and writer Shawn Bishop-Leo and settled in Staten Island. “She is the one I have always sought.” A few years later John and Shawn relocated to New Orleans’ French Quarter to open an Axelle gallery there. But they soon returned to Manhattan, where John took a shot at striking out on his own. He produced several shows in his family’s second West Village home, which they had purchased while John was in college. In 2005 a new opportunity, or more to the point, two friends, came knocking. “Capla Kesting Fine Art had been founded in 2003 by my dear friends Lincoln Capla and David Kesting,” explains John. “I took a trip to Miami with them to take in Art Basel Miami Beach.” While at this major international art exhibition they came up with and idea for their own annual fair, and the Fountain Art Fair was born. Now in its second year the unjuried, avant garde Fountain celebrates its status as an outsider to the mainstream art world, described on its website as “a guerilla style art fair” focusing on Brooklyn-based galleries which showcase their work without official booth spaces or selection committees. The latest Fountain show was held earlier this month in Miami. Just as Fountain was taking off, a personal tragedy struck the trio of art entrepreneurs. “In April of 2006 we found out that Lincoln had been diagnosed with cancer and he passed a mere six weeks later.” Since then, John has become an integral part of their daily operations and expansion, including the recently opened Leo Kesting Gallery in Manhattan’s trendy meatpacking district. They opted for this neighborhood over Manhattan’s hottest art spot, Chelsea, because “Chelsea, I feel, is overrun,” he says. “It’s exceedingly difficult to navigate, and many times one gets a feeling of being OA’ed (over arted). There is too much.” But John won’t be straying far from Williamsburg. “The scene there has truly come into its own over the past few years,” he says. “Now there are roughly forty to fifty galleries there. Many of them have banded together and formed the Williamsburg Gallery Association. We hold events the second Friday of every month.” John and his cohorts have hosted some pretty racy exhibits over the past few years, especially works by controversial sculptor Daniel Edwards, including a life-size depiction of an imagined autopsy of Paris Hilton, and another of Britney Spears giving birth. Such works have drawn hundreds of visitors, plenty of media attention and sometimes revulsion. “There were two times that we caught heat for the work,” recalls John. “The first is when Daniel created a five foot tall head of Fidel Castro and planned to unveil it in front of the Jose Marti statue in Central Park.” Once the Cuban-American community caught wind of the project a slew of death threats ensued. In Miami the artist was confronted by many who had suffered under Fidel’s rule. “After he heard their stories he decided to hand the sculpture over for public destruction.” They also heard directly from a seething member of Britain’s royal family when they took Edwards’ sculpture Iraq War Memorial Featuring the Death of Prince Harry to London. The sculpture features a dead Prince Harry laid out as though for a state funeral, the sculptor’s reaction to Prince Harry’s thwarted desire to be placed in combat situations in Iraq after joining the Royal armed forces. “We had set up a blog immediately after the work was announced and the British population had a field day,” says John. They also received a threat from a “royal” who claimed that the exhibitors had better have good security “because he was going to come down and show us what a real martyr is.” Are such pieces merely for shock value? Partly, John concedes. “In American culture if it isn’t shocking nobody pays it any mind.” But he insists there is a message behind these works. “Take the Paris Hilton Autopsy for example. This was a statement about drunk driving, and using a pop icon like Paris Hilton whom many young women idolize helped drive the message home. Paris was frivolous in her drinking and in her I am above the law attitude.” It didn’t hurt their publicity when coincidentally Paris’ was thrown briefly into jail two days after the exhibit opened. As for his career choice to be an art dealer on the cutting edge John sees it from both sides. For the buyer, “art is an investment in the soul. People work very hard in life and when you find something that reflects a part of you, you wish to own it.” As a seller he hopes to represent new and deserving talent, and to appeal to a broader audience of potential art consumers than most galleries. “We tend to showcase street and emerging artists, and we also appeal to younger collectors,” he said, adding that some of their pieces go for only $50. His advice to the current generation of BFS students: “Make the most of it and enjoy it while you can. The personal touch of BFS will stay with you forever.” Leo Kesting Gallery www.leokesting.com |
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