ART STORIES
Billy Joel
Paint Factory, Gloucester Harbor, oil, 14″ x 18″, collection of Billy Joel.
Some years ago at my gallery on Rocky Neck, at 7 PM, I was tired and ready to go home to my house on the other side of the city by the harbor, but I couldn’t stop painting. So, when a couple was by the door and a man asked, ” Are you open?” I didn’t look up, and said, “No, but you can come in.”
I recognized Billy Joel. I queried, “You are very famous, right?” He just shrugged. I was in one of my painting moods so I said, “Oh, no, you are a celebrity look alike.” he handed me his black American Express card, “William D. Joel”.
I said, “Billy, I was just busting your …” After I said that, he relaxed, and introduced me to his fiancee, Kate.
We drank some wine and negotiated the purchase of the Paint Factory painting. Then I took them to the Studio Restaurant, next door, famous for its piano bar. By the doorway, I was elbowing Billy to get him to play something, saying, “Come on, you are the Piano Man.” The woman playing, Lee Ann, recognized him and motioned to him. He sang four songs and electrified the place.
Kate said the painting was going to be hung in a particular spot in their Long Island house. Billy was lively, over flowing with physical energy (he had been a boxer),and fun.
I did the painting on Jeff Weaver’s lobster boat, the Kathleen. The wind was so strong that it kept pulling up the anchor and Jeff had to start the engine and go back to stay away from the rocks. Jeff made one of his typically brilliant paintings with all the windows and lettering on the building. When I got back to my studio, I took a big brush and lost those details in my painting, and simplified the architectonic grandeur of the iconic building.
I included meeting Billy in an article that was published in the Italian Insider Newspaper in Rome called, “Caravaggio and the Marilyn Elvis Syndrome”.
http://www.corneliussullivan.com/caravaggio_and_the_marilyn…
Stolen Marble Pieta Recovered
Stolen in Weymouth Massachusetts from a moving van in 1993. Recovered ten years later in 2003. There was a phone call because there was an offer for a reward on the artist’s website. The caller was the thief, and he hung up. The artist dialed *57 and got the caller’s number. The Police went to the address of the number and negotiated the return of the pieta.
There was no yard sale, the caller was the thief.
The Jimmy Fund Auction-
The Young Chess Prodigy, Eric Tracy Sigler, oil, 24″ x 30″, 1977, Private Collection, Miami, FL.
Eric studied with a Russian Chess Master and became a poet when he was quite young. He found a job writing for The Boston Center for the Arts and spent time hanging around in artist’s studios and began collecting art. He became part of a, vital for a time, group of Boston and Cambridge poets in the 70s and 80s.
Around that time we often visited poet, Vincent Ferrini, at his picture framing shop in Gloucester, which has now become the location of The Gloucester Writers Center.
Eric became known for standing on tables at the South End Irish bar Matt Talbot’s and doing Dylan Thomas perfectly with verve and volume. I convinced him to do it once at Thomas’ White Horse Tavern in New York.
Facebook 3/23/17 Eric Sigler I’d like to add that Ed gave me this portrait to give to my Mom as a Christmas Present in 1977. I ended up with it- Edmund flowed through this painting- painterly piece that I’m glad have with me ….
Eric Sigler Probably wondering how long I could hold the pose with the cig closing in on my knuckles … I’m sure Edmund had the NPR classical hour playing in the background … sometimes his brush became the baton…
The stream was in Carver, MA, early spring.
