Tea, Dalí & Me: A Birthday Celebration

By Margo Hammond

I went to a Victorian tea party at the Dalí earlier this month with my friend Anthea Penrose. Born just a month apart on two different continents (Anthea is from England), we were celebrating our upcoming birthdays in May and June.

We sat at a small table in the Raymond James Room where we could see the museum’s new Dalí Alive 360° dome through triangular glass windows.

A woman in a floral hooped skirt and a black bolero jacket offered us a choice of teas from a tray – Earl Grey Lavender, Florida Orange Blossom and Carrot Cake. I chose Orange Blossom and plopped the oversized tea bag into a porcelain cup.

A man in a top hat and suspenders poured steaming water into my cup and then returned continuously to top it off as I ate from a three-tiered serving stand set in the middle of the table. The top tier was filled with petits-fours, the middle, with flaky triangle pastries, the lower with classic English tea sandwiches – egg salad and, of course, cucumber sandwiches with smoked salmon.

In addition to the tea and edibles, the museum’s Zodiac Membership Committee, the all-volunteer group that organized the members-only event, set up a display of Victorian objects (a Victorian mesh bag reminded me of one my mother collected) and a corsage-making booth.

We also were treated to a talk by Curator of Education Peter Tush on the museum’s current special exhibit Dali & the Impressionists and were invited to view that exhibit after hours.

At first a Victorian tea party and an exhibit on Impressionism seemed like an odd pairing. The Impressionist painters, after all, had famously rebelled against the stuffy world of tea and crumpets in the 19th century, rejecting the rigid rules of the Academy that great art was filled with stylized religious or mythological figures.

They opted instead for the great outdoors where they painted “en plein air.” They wanted to lose themselves, as Dalí put it “in the mystery of light, color and life.”

But as Tush’s talk demonstrated, the exhibit — and our afternoon at the Dalí — was all about surprising pairings.

Take our table companions, for example. They were a couple whom neither of us had ever met. He was a professor of journalism at USFSP. She was a psychotherapist. But as we chatted over tea snacks, I realized that I had not only read the professor’s book on scrub jays, I  had written about his book twice for this magazine (see Reading My Age: 73 Books in 2022 and Writing About Things With Feathers).

It was a pair-up that would have delighted the Surrealists’ love of chance encounters.

The exhibit Dali & the Impressionists: Monet, Renoir, Degas & More (which is on view until April 28) itself is a study in juxtaposition, placing the early work of Dalí next to the works of his older mentors. It celebrates Dalí’s initial love affair with the Impressionists, who inspired him to become a painter – but it also tells the story of his eventual rebellion against those early influencers.

The show reminds us that every generation first tries to imitate their predecessors but inevitably rejects them to forge their own style. Or as Picasso was said to advise, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

To illustrate this point, Peter Tush first showed us slides of paintings by an impossibly young Dalí side by side with the likes of Renior and Alfred Sisley. Port Alguer from Riba d’en Pitxot (1918), painted by Dalí when he was 14 — 14 years old! — is juxtaposed with Renior’s Rocky Crags at L’Estaque (1882).

The Lane to Port Lligat with View of Cap Creus (1922), painted by an 18-year-old Dalí is set alongside Sisley’s The Loing at Saint-Mammès (1882). Amazingly, both Dalí paintings hold their own. You would never guess they were painted by a teenager.

Then Tush clicked on a slide of Dalí’s 1923 painting, Cadaques, paired with a quintessentially Impressionist view of another port city by Claude Monet – Antibes: Afternoon Effect (1888). In Dalí’s painting, blocky shapes and geometric forms invade the landscape. At 19, embracing Cubism, Dalí is already moving away from his early Impressionist mentors.

The final pairings Tush’ showed us are two works from 1924 – Dalí’s Bouquet (L’lmportant c‘est la rose) and Henri Matisse’s Vase of Flowers. Here Dalí is no longer competing with the Impressionists of the 19th century. He’s being compared to a contemporary. Matisse was in his mid-50s in 1924. Dalí was only 20, one year away from his first solo show in Paris.

As I toured the exhibit to see the actual paintings Peter Tush had showed us in his PowerPoint presentation, age (and my upcoming 75th birthday) was on my mind.

I stopped a while before a pair of self-portraits and took a long, hard look – one by a brash, emerging artist (Dalí’s Self-Portrait, Figueres) and another by a well-established, celebrated master (Paul Cézanne’s Self-Portrait with a Beret).

Peter had pointed out that both are wearing hats, but Dali’s is clearly an affectation (as is the pipe he sports, which he never lit). Dalí is 17, with his whole career ahead of him. He is inventing himself.

Cézanne is 61 and the weariness of his long life marks his face. He has only six more years to live, but he doesn’t know that. So he continues to do what he does best – he paints.

It occurred to me that this pairing of self-portraits is an inspiration to both the young and the old artist. The young can see their future. The old, their past. They are tributes to the beginnings and ends of creative lives, each with its own drawbacks and joys, each with its own powers.

At the end of the Impressionist show, there was a chance to create our own self-portraits. You sat in front of a machine to have your photo taken and then, by the wizardry of AI, your image was transformed into a “one-of-a-kind Impressionist work of art.”

The museum had offered something similar in 2022 during the Picasso and the Allure of the South exhibit. My self-portrait back then — a Cubist version of myself — gave me a surprising glimpse into the future. . . I looked like my mother.

This time the opposite occurred. Although I would hardly call the Impressionist self-portrait I created via AI a “work of art,” this time I found myself peering into the past. The AI machine had time traveled, offering up a younger version of myself.

Note: A version of this article was originally posted on April 5 in Arts Coast Magazine, the online publication of Creative Pinellas.

 

Marie and Rusty Hammer: Creating a Shared Artistic Life

Story and Photos by Margo Hammond

Walking through the front door of Marie and Rusty Hammer’s house is like falling out of the wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia into a magical world of artistic imagination.

Even before you cross the threshold, you get a hint of what awaits you. At the front door, I am greeted by a bear who looks like he is delivering the mail. A strange dog in the front picture window waves at me.

“We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I whisper to myself, as I leave the neighborhood of ordinary houses lining a street in west St. Petersburg behind me and am ushered by visual artists Rusty and Marie into their wonderland of a home.

That bear at the door, I soon learn, was painted by Marie who also painted two even larger (and equally friendly) bears on the foyer wall. Why bears? “I just like bears,” she says. Marie currently specializes in wooden wall sculptures — faces of lions, horses, rhinoceros and human — made from scraps of oak, dry branches and driftwood.

The dog in the window is Rusty’s creation. He calls him Bow to the Wow. Rusty is known for his whimsical canine assemblages that have equally playful names – the female Trophy Woof, King Pup in an Egyptian headdress, Queen of Barks, Day of the Dead Dog and Fiddler on the Woof.

Everywhere I look in the Hammers’ house, I am treated to a burst of creativity. Marie’s paintings of reindeers leap across the back of dining chairs. On the wall I spot an abstract painting of reds, blues, yellows, purples and greens. “It’s called Crocodile in the Nile,” says Marie. “I’ve never been to Egypt but when I finished the painting, I saw a pyramid and crocodile tears.”

When the Hammers first got together, Rusty began rearranging Marie’s furniture — several times. “I liked it. It looked better,” says Marie. When she needed a lamp, Rusty made her one — a mermaid with a cooling system CPU computer on its head. Now he has arranged their house as its own work of art.

Rusty's dog sculptures pop up all over the living room: a dog made of tiny pieces of tile glass, a dog in the shape of a bench (with another dog sitting atop), a dog holding up a lamp and a dog made up of Mardi Gras beads playing a beaded drum that says Bone Temps Rouler.

A bird-shaped whistle the Hammers found during a trip to Denmark sits on the snout of another dog who has clocks for ears and holds the old-fashioned red clock they found in the house’s kitchen when they moved in. Rusty calls him Cuckoo.

While the rest of us may collect shells and throw them into a box, Rusty built a series of long narrow glass shelves — or ‘shellves’ as the pun-loving Rusty might spell it — for his collection, lining the shells up in ascending order of size to create an artful wall display, set next to two of Marie's wooden wall sculptures.

Even the Hammers’ refrigerator is graced with artwork — portraits by artists from Creative Clay, a St. Petersburg arts center for people with disabilities, who go only by their first names. Grace P. has drawn Marie, capturing perfectly her sweet smile and kind eyes. Ali’s more abstract portrait of Rusty has caught his peripatetic spirit. “Creative Clay is one of our favorite places,” says Marie. “When we go there, the people and the art always make us smile.”

The Hammers know something about making people smile. Rusty made his first quirky dog by mistake, he tells me. “They didn’t start out being dogs.” He just had a lot of lumber left over from the Center for Art Lovers float he helped build for a University of Florida parade in Gainesville where the Hammers were living at the time. Rudy called his first dog, which had nubby wooden spikes on its back, a Dog-a-saurus (it is now in their foyer). He went on to make Barkson Pollack (full of splatters) and Salvador Doggie (with a mustache).

The “Center for Art Lovers,” by the way, never existed. It was an invention by Rusty to convince a group of Gainesville artists, including his wife, to produce football-themed paintings for that float. His friend Lennie Kesl painted footballer Tim Tebow. Marie did a portrait of Albert the Alligator, the UF mascot. Also contributing was Fred "Rootman" Woods (who now lives in St. Petersburg). “Lennie was the only one who had to sit down on the float,” Rudy remembers. Kesl, a beloved Gainesville artist, died in 2012 at the age of 86.

After living 25 years in Gainesville, the Hammers decided to move to the Tampa Bay Area. Rusty’s parents had lived in Coquina Key in St. Petersburg, so they knew the area well. They first moved into a Town Shores condo in Gulfport. But they soon realized they needed a house with a workshop for Rusty, more space for all their artwork and a garden.

The Hammers met in a Pennsylvania garden, introduced by a friend. Marie is from Philly, Rusty from Massachusetts. Their first date was at a Phillies game. Marie was doing commercial art at the time, soft sculptures. She was also promoting rock and roll.

Although Marie’s mother and grandmother were both artists — their painted ceramic lamps are displayed in the bedroom — and Marie had gone to art school in photography, she didn’t start to seriously paint until after she met Rusty who recognized her talent and urged her to pick up a brush.

The first thing that Marie painted were those old straight-back chairs that Rusty had inherited from his grandmother. Marie soon graduated to canvases — large paintings of horses, often in multiple colors, and smaller portraits of her cats. Once when she didn’t feel like painting, Rusty told her to “just paint what you feel.”

She started a painting with slashes of the bold colors she favored. “I liked it but it wasn’t enough.” Suddenly she had an idea and before she knew it a black panther entered the canvas, slithering across her abstract background.

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Rusty doesn’t consider himself an artist. “A folk artist, maybe.” He has worked in the arts, however, all his life. He was event co-ordinator for the Richmond Arts County and also worked for the symphony there. He has also written two books: P.S. Gilmore: The Authorized Biography of America’s First Superstar, telling the story of pioneering Irish American bandleader Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, known for his post-Civil War World Peace Jubilee featuring a 20,000-voice chorus and 2,000-piece orchestra, and, why not? "The Guide to Inner Tubing."

Music has been part of his life since he started on the piano in the third grade. “Yeah, my mother was one of those.” In 4th grade he moved on to the clarinet and in 4th grade the violin. “I hated practicing,” he admits.

He ended up playing the tuba, participating in children’s concerts in Richmond to benefit UNICEF. He still loves playing the tuba, most recently for the South Pasadena Community Band.

As we tour the living room, I spot a side table, topped by a box laid on its side with an open end facing outward. Inside dozens of objects are artfully displayed, including marbles, a hammer, piano keys and a door knob. The piano keys are from Rusty’s childhood piano.

“Its provenance was never established, but it dates from the time of Louisa May Alcott,” says Rusty. Alcott, like Rusty was from Foxborough, Massachusetts. “It was a two string piano, with a creaky soundboard.” The legs of the table are from that same piano. “All the things here mean something to me.”

This cabinet of curiosities, I discover, is only the tip of the iceberg. “Would you like to see the Box Room?” Rusty asks. Down the hall, the Box Room is dominated by more marvels — an entire wall, in fact, of what Rusty calls 3D collages, boxes made into art using personal mementos as the media.

He makes these collages out of cigar boxes, his mother’s old cheese boxes, tomato crates, roasting pans, and a crate that was used for baking deliveries in Portland, Maine. That latter one is filled with “bells, beads and balls.” 

"I like the alliteration," says Rusty. While I am gaping at Rusty’s dazzling concoctions, Rusty brings out several more boxes — tiny ones, including old sample cases, a Kiwi shoe polish can, vintage cigarette cases, Celestial Seasonings tea cans, a Dunhill pipe tobacco tin, even an old pocket watch. All are exquisitely filled with souvenirs from his life.

He started creating the boxes just before the lockdown and worked on them throughout the pandemic. “They are not for sale. I sold one of them and then decided that I wouldn’t sell anymore. I like them too much,” Rusty says quickly.  “Doing this, I feel like an artist. I can’t explain it and that feels right.”

Lying in the corner of the Box Room is Rusty’s tuba. On the door is a paper bag – Lennie Kesl drew a hammer with the name Rusty on it. Was he always called Rusty? “My mom named me Hilary. But soon after an uncle started calling me Rusty.” On the wall is a face sculpture by Marie. It was an anniversary present for Rusty; it is adorned with Xs and Os.

Both have their own spaces to do art here. In Marie’s studio she shows me a triptych she is working on. Looking at the swaths of blue paint, I can’t help but wonder – will a panther invade this one, too? “I don’t enjoy painting,” she admits. “I like it when it’s done.”

She feels freer doing the face sculptures. “Those are fun.” When she points out her mother’s sewing machine, I ask, “Do you sew?” Of course she does. She made the dress she is wearing from fabric she brought back from their trip to China – one of many stops in their global explorations. The blue sleeveless smock with white and red swirls looks like a Miró painting.

Rusty’s spacious garage workshop is one of the reasons the Hammers bought the house. There another dog, Mona Lassie, overlooks one of two large worktables.

Rusty says he’s non-plussed when something doesn’t work out. He tried to do the Artful Doggie, for example, and it didn’t work. Same with Sherlock Hound — “although Marie liked it.”

Rusty has hung a series of bells there. “Do you play them?” I ask.

Of course he does. “Sometimes I just have to wail away.”

* * *

NOTE: A version of this story originally appeared online at Creative Pinellas' Arts Coast Magazine on November 6, 2023.