Tag: In memoriam

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Arts Culture

Artist Nym Pedersen’s small-scale works leave a big impact

A celebration of Nym Pederson’s life and work begins on his birthday, August 17, and continues through the rest of the year at different venues. Find more info at nymaroundtown.com. Supplied photo.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, artist Nym Pedersen could often be found on the Downtown Mall, peddling his small paintings, drawings, and collages, which he dubbed “art snacks.” Much like Steve Keene, Nym felt that art should be within everyone’s reach and priced his work accordingly. Nym died on March 9 at the age of 64 after a brief bout with cancer.

Nym came to Charlottesville in 1997 from Portland, Oregon, to join his sister, theater maven Boomie Pedersen. Nym (his nickname a combination of Norman and “him,” thanks to Boomie) grew up in New York City, where he attended the Collegiate School and Columbia University. The Pedersens lived on Central Park West just across the street from the park that became their playground and sanctuary.

It was not an easy childhood. The Pedersens’ father was the director of education at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Heeding the 1960s’ call to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” he abandoned his young family for points west, creating years of financial insecurity for those he left behind. 

The burden created feelings of low self-worth; in Nym’s case, they helped mold him into someone who was self-effacing and introverted. The trauma showed up in his work, where he expressed the angst of the abandoned child. “I think my brother painted to resolve his relationship with our father,” says Boomie. “That’s where he worked out the torments going on inside him.” This is not to say Nym’s was an unhappy existence. In addition to his family, he had a close circle of friends he valued and who cherished him.

Remarkably prolific, Nym focused on the human form and, in particular, faces. Some of these, generally his pen-and-ink works, are delicate figures in repose, while others, paintings or collage, are grotesques with wild eyes and scar-like grimaces. Nym could also be scathingly funny and much of his art occupies the same absurdist world as Paul Klee’s work. 

Nym took studio classes at Columbia and The Art Students League of New York and worked in different media—drawing, painting, collaging, sculpting. Drawn to collage for its ability to suggest layers of meaning, in some works he assembled bits of paper narratively to create startling portraits and in others he employed it as a visual device to provide texture and spatial ambiguity. In several pieces, he even mimicked the effect of collage with paint.

In addition to his artistic practice, which remained a constant throughout his life, Nym worked as a copy editor for McGraw Hill in New York. In Charlottesville, he was employed at Harvest Moon Catering and also as a relief copy editor at C-VILLE Weekly.

Through his marriage to Allegra von Studnitz, whom he adored, Nym became a devoted stepfather and step-grandfather to her biological daughter, two adopted sons, and grandson. The couple would go on to adopt two more boys, and Nym loved being a father and living a pastoral existence in the country surrounded by a large and varied menagerie. 

It was this happiness that helped resolve his demons. Allegra describes the sea change: “Some years back Nym reached a breaking point. He felt deep despair about life, his past, the art world,” she says. “He made the decision that his outlook on life would become an introspection on life. He became the kindest, most loving human being, filled with humility. … And with that, he departed.”

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Arts Culture

Joys and sorrows

“silent dialogues” drawings, monotypes, and paintings by Polly Rebecca Breckenridge is at McGuffey Art Center through August 14. Supplied photo.

“Polly came into this world an artist,” says Carol Grant, speaking about her daughter Polly Breckenridge. “It was apparent from a very young age that she loved creating things out of whatever was available to her. That was her joy.” 

Breckenridge, who died unexpectedly on April 22, 2022, is the subject of a memorial show at the McGuffey Art Center.

Deborah McLeod, director of Chroma Projects Art Lab, says of Breckenridge, “Polly’s work came from an honest and personal place deep within her psyche. She was a bright and perceptive figurative artist who painted the truths of her own life; her struggle as a deeply sensitive young woman constantly coming to terms with what that meant. She depicted the release of joy as often as she painted the confinement of sorrow. She knew both and she gave them to us delicately and with beauty.”

Born on May 4, 1975, in Towson, Maryland, Breckenridge was a graduate of VCU’s art education program. She was a resident artist at McGuffey Art Center and exhibited her work frequently. In addition to her own art practice, Breckenridge was a beloved art teacher at Village School and Walton Middle School, where she taught for nine years.

She incorporated a wide variety of materials and techniques into her work—acrylics, watercolor, inks, and printmaking, or gold leaf, mirror, and glitter for added zing. “She reached for whatever she felt would do the job,” says Grant.

The McGuffey show consists of paintings, drawings, monotypes, artist’s books, and an assortment of journals, doodles, and notes positioned on a kind of altar. “Monotype Play” comprises a light box and cut-out images that Breckenridge used to create her monotypes. Visitors are invited to make their own arrangements. 

“The Collector”

Breckenridge was concerned with the human condition. Her many subjects seem to be grappling with an enigmatic situation or force beyond their control. There’s alienation, but also connection. Though obviously human, her curious, attenuated figures are featureless, without faces, gender, or even race. Breckenridge wanted to eliminate these distinguishing factors, so that anyone could identify with them. 

This inclusiveness and connectivity are underscored by the recurring mesh or bubble-like motif that skims across figures and surfaces in numerous works—most obvious in “Catch and Release” and “Stretch.”  Composed of many circles (individual circles also appear often in Breckenridge’s work), the mesh suggests energy, or aura, magnified by repletion. It emanates from and encompasses the figures like a net connecting all living things. 

Despite her figures’ stylized appearance, Breckenridge’s compositions reveal a deep understanding of how the human body works. This is apparent in “The Collector,” where the eye is drawn to the legs, knees, and wonderfully individualized feet rendered with ease. A striking painting, Breckenridge relaxes her perspective so the figure seems about to be dumped out from the splayed chair, and pairs a deep carmine background at the bottom with acid green and white stripes up top. These elements strike notes of discord that set the emotional tone of the piece. The subject, whose head is disproportionately small, is holding what appears to be a gold-filled purse in the right hand and a figurine in the left, perhaps weighing one against the other. 

Another figurine lies discarded on the floor, and three others—two standing and one about to fall—are positioned on a blue-draped table. It’s unclear whether these are objects, or meant to represent people, or, perhaps, souls.

At the bottom of the piece, Breckenridge’s distinctive mesh appears to emanate from the head of the figurine on the floor, traversing up the central figure and continuing to the upper edge of the painting. It’s as if this figurine’s gilded disc has burst, leaving behind a trail of golden effervescence.

Breckenridge wrote prolifically. Only a small number of the many journals and sketchbooks she produced are on view, but they provide a fascinating window into the creative process and Breckenridge’s outlook and state of mind. She wrote freely, not expecting others to read what she wrote. “It’s the way she processed, the way she thought,” says Grant. “In her sketchbooks, her writing overlaps her drawings; they move together.”

In one striking passage Breckenridge writes: “We are temporary vessels for the containment of pure energy and spirit. Things happen through us.” It provides insight into Breckenridge’s perspective, and is also an apt descriptor of her art, where her figures could be interpreted as vessels and the actual subject matter deals with intangible forces that exist beyond the physical. 

According to Grant, the printmaking process, which Breckenridge took up a few years ago, really resonated with her. “I think she was just at the start of something truly satisfying to her and her followers; a way of working that could bring together her love of the visual and her love of the written word.” 

A celebration of Breckenridge’s life will take place on Sunday, August 14, at noon at McGuffey Art Center. Cellist Catherine Monnes will perform, and the ceremony will conclude with Breckenridge’s signature gesture of giant bubbles—her own kind of effervescence—released to the sky from the front lawn of McGuffey.

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Arts Culture

All the joys of life

Art historian Lyn Bolen Warren founded Les Yeux du Monde gallery and made immeasurable contributions to Charlottesville’s contemporary art scene. Supplied photo

The Charlottesville arts community lost one of its greatest champions and brightest stars in Carolyn “Lyn” Bolen Warren, who died on Sunday, November 21, at the age of 60 after a valiant battle with cancer.

Warren’s art gallery, Les Yeux du Monde, has been a cherished Charlottesville institution for more than two decades, featuring beautifully curated and thought-provoking shows with work by both established and emerging artists.

Warren opened the gallery in 1995, after receiving her Ph.D. in art history from UVA. In those days, Charlottesville’s arts scene looked very different than it does now—Second Street Gallery, McGuffey and UVA were the only public venues to view art. At first, Warren operated out of her stylish contemporary home just north of town on Wolf Trap Road. Though she moved the gallery into Charlottesville, first to West Main Street and then to The Terraces, just off the Downtown Mall, LYdM eventually returned to its original Wolf Trap setting in 2009, this time situated in a striking building designed by esteemed architect WG Clark. Like all of Warren’s choices, the building is both structure and sculpture, reflecting her imagination and vision.

Whether you were an important client, an artist, or a casual visitor, Warren was equally welcoming. Her passion was art, and her life’s work was sharing that passion. She reveled in the world of ideas and devoted enormous amounts of energy to community outreach, with artists’ talks and trips to studios and museums. She was also generous with her time and resources, supporting artists and collaborating with other organizations like UVA and Second Street Gallery.

“She was a beloved member of the arts community, who is now a kind of icon,” says artist and UVA studio art professor Dean Dass. “What she accomplished here is almost unbelievable.”

Among her many accomplishments, “Hindsight/Fore-site: Art for the New Millennium,” was perhaps the most ambitious. Warren conceived and curated the NEA- funded show and the accompanying publication, “Siting Jefferson,” for the UVA museum in 2000. The exhibition featured over 20 artists including luminaries such as Ann Hamilton, Michael Mercil, Dennis Oppen­heim, and Agnes Denes, whose site-specific work was presented around Charlottesville.

Always gracious and accommodating, Warren moved through the world with an innate elegance. She was full of good cheer and enthusiasm, and was exceedingly kind. She was also uncompromising in terms of the high standards and strong convictions she held, and she helped make contemporary art an active public discourse in Charlottesville.

“We came up in the department together,” says Dass, who joined the UVA faculty at about the same time as Warren began working on her degree. “My wife Patsy put it so well—‘Lyn was not an art historian, she was an art history maker. She affected the careers of many artists and brought Charlottesville to a better place in understanding how to make art a part of life.’”

Warren and Victoria Beck Newman co-directed the Lydia Csato Gasman Archives for Picasso and Modernist Studies. “Lyn and I wrote our dissertations under the legendary Picasso scholar, Lydia Gasman, who maintained that modern art should often be viewed as a quest for a new sacred that was relevant to contemporary existence,” says Newman. “As a brilliant art historian and gallerist, Lyn endorsed that idea by exhibiting and writing about art that had a transformational impact on both viewers and culture. Her deep understanding of art history underlay the authoritative and serious choices she made as a curator.”

Deftly balancing her career with family life, Warren raised two children, Hagan and Ray, by her first husband, Eugene Ray Rushton, who died in 2004. She wed artist Russ Warren in 2005; theirs was a true marriage of the minds. Warren’s warmth and passion brought dozens of others into her fold.

UVA art professor David Summers, who likens Warren to a daughter, sums up her beautiful, enduring spirit. “Lyn completed her art-historical studies with the conviction that art is an unmixed good, not just a reminder of the woes of life, and not just an illusion that makes life bearable,” he says, “but something more like love, spring, and sunshine, all the joys of life, to which we might reasonably think we have a right, and by which she seemed herself to be carried along and sustained.”