Joe LoGuirato pays tribute to family and life
Unlike most art galleries, Christopher Stella at 456 Main St. in Beacon represents just one artist: Joe LoGuirato, who owns the building.
Yet his work is so varied by medium, material, subject matter and artistic approach that visitors always think there’s a group show going on, LoGuirato says. “I like to explore and experiment. One thing leads to another, and I never know where I’m going.”
A few weeks ago, LoGuirato emptied the gallery — which is named in memory of his son and wife — transferring its contents to his home in Kent and refilling the space with new works that will remain at least through the summer.
In the back garden, a more permanent install features his lanky blue man sculptures. The grotesque but beguiling works wear deadpan expressions and strike awkward poses.
One 5-footer, chained to the gallery along the sidewalk, palm extended, attracts plenty of attention. A few days ago, a girl held its hand, looked up and said, “You must make a lot of friends — what’s your name?”
Because people constantly rub the figure’s whiskers, made from paintbrush bristles, LoGuirato keeps refurbishing the chin. He once found the 75-pound thin man several storefronts down Main Street after someone attempted to steal it.
One example of his sense of humor is the gag he plays with an outdoor sign depicting Vincent Van Gogh: “I’m going into this art gallery. I think my ear is in there.” Indeed, there’s an artificial ear taken from the largest sculpture in the garden, a blob face that seems to melt into the landscape.
“He never listened to me, anyway,” he quips. One of the appendages, painted in the vivid style and colors of the Dutch master, hangs on a gallery wall.
Recurring abstract motifs include patterns that resemble veins, along with the roots of flowers and plants. One painting looks like an anatomical study superimposed on the body of his wife, Stella, who battled cancer for three years before her death in 2011 at age 58.
One portrait hangs above the gallery’s desk. On the diagonal wall, a drawing of the establishment’s other namesake depicts his son, Christopher, playing the flute. He died at age 13.
As Stella struggled with her illness, Joe created a visual journal of their final years, including paintings of the last restaurant they visited, the final Broadway show they attended and a detailed pencil drawing of a roller skate that references her running joke with the oncologist about getting ready for a roller derby.
In 2014, he aggregated these and other pieces into a show titled Stella: Homage to a Cancer Patient at the Urban Folk Art gallery in Brooklyn, donating the proceeds to the American Cancer Society.
Some of that exhibit’s works are now in the Beacon gallery, including a collection of used syringes titled “Lovenoxx,” for the anti-clotting medication Stella injected every day, and a bronze bust with a mirror blocking her face.
“The gallery pays tribute to my wife, my son and to life — it’s not sad,” LoGuirato says. “Life is full of transition; you never know where it’s going.”
