Artist Tabitha Vevers on Bananaman as a Sexy Superhero

By Marni Elyse Katz
September 22, 2011

Artist Tabitha Vevers calls Cape Cod home in summertime; always has. But you won’t catch her standing on the dunes, palette in hand, attempting to capture the mythical Cape light. Her childhood playground manifests itself in her work in other ways, though. For instance, Vevers’ Shell Series, inspired by a 12th century Japanese tradition of shell painting, are painstakingly executed in oil and gold leaf on clam shells she found on the Outer Cape. They feature motifs that often draw references from the sea.

Tabitha Vevers

Tabitha Vevers: Air + Water show at DNA Gallery, Provincetown, MA

Gold features prominently in much of Vevers’ art work. As such, she has been invited to exhibit four works, including her recent Bananaman, at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna this spring. The show, entitled GOLD, traces artists’ use of gold, from Gothic icons to Gustave Klimt (The Kiss is in the Muesum's permanent collection) to modern and contemporary artists like Warhol, Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, and Anish Kapoor.

Vevers and her husband, artist Daniel Ranalli, will attend the March opening fresh from Barcelona, where Ranalli teaches each year. Vevers also has a solo art show closer to home at the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Massachusetts this October: The Art of Survival: New works by Tabitha Vevers,

Tabitha Vevers

SEEANDBESEEN I-X, 2011 Photographed by TIS at DNA Gallery, Provincetown MA

We caught up with Vevers in Wellfleet, where she works out of a small post and beam shed that was built in three days using big windows she salvaged from the local dump.

The Inside Source: Both your parents were artists. Did you always know art was your calling? Was it expected?

Tabitha Vevers: In my family art was our religion — a way of connecting to something timeless, deep, and true. My parents were pretty Bohemian in those days, and I grew up surrounded by New York artists and writers who came to Provincetown for the summer. I think my parents just assumed that my sister and I would be creative, but they didn’t push any specific expectations on me. They would have been perfectly happy if I’d been a writer—on the other hand, they might have had me stoned in the public square if I’d become a stockbroker.

The Inside Source: Has either of their art works ever influenced your style or specific pieces? Have you ever collaborated with them?

Tabitha Vevers: My mother [Elspeth Halvorsen] was always doing art projects with us, but I’ve never collaborated with my parents. Just growing up amidst their work and the work of their artist friends was an influence. My dad’s [the late Tony Vevers] figurative paintings and my mom’s resourceful use of materials both have a presence in my work. When I was in college and asked my father what he thought of my work, he said, “What do you think this is, art by consensus?” I was taken aback, but it also freed me to be true to my own vision, which I think can be hard for the children of artists.

Tabitha Vevers

left: LIONESS (Dehibernation) Courtesy of Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA. right: BANANAMAN (To the Rescue) Courtesy of DNA Gallery, Provincetown MA

left: SHELL SERIES: Big Fish Eat Little Fish (A Parable for our Times) Private Collection. right: SHELL SERIES (Rapture) Private Collection

The Inside Source: What’s the first piece of art you remember creating? Do you still have it?

Tabitha Vevers: One of the earliest pieces that seemed more than just child’s play, was a small diorama of a woman in a bikini sitting on at the end of the town pier—I was probably 13 when I made it. It’s basically a painting on paper that I cut up and glued into a box so it is 3-D. My Mom has it—somehow it turned out to be archival and has lasted all these years. I still contemplate doing dioramas. Who knows—I painted on shells as a child and ended up painting on them again 30 years later.

The Inside Source: If you could hang a piece of work from any artist in your home, whose would it be?

Tabitha Vevers: Well, if I could peel Masaccio’s Expulsion fresco off the wall of the Brancacci Chapel, I’d probably go with that. I stood inches from it on scaffolding while it was being restored—the fig leaves had been removed—and it took my breath away. It’s very sexy, but also filled with the complexity and pathos of life.

Tabitha Vevers

OBJECT TO BE DESTROYED (Marilyn, Princess Diana, Monica) Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York, NY

The Inside Source: You often create art within a series, which seems very thought out. Do you sometimes make one-offs, just for the fun of it?

Tabitha Vevers: Interesting that you should ask that at this time. Most of my work has been done in series with some sort of conceptual underpinning, with one series evolving on the heels of the previous one. And at least one series—the Lover’s Eyes [interpretations of women's eyes from well-known paintings]—is ongoing.

After my mid-career retrospective in 2009, looking back at 20 years of work, I’ve been doing more one-off paintings to see what comes of it. I’ve done a couple of paintings of the adventures of Bananaman—kind of a woman’s idea of a superhero—sexy and earnest and goofy all at the same time, and definitely slower than a speeding bullet. I’m not sure yet whether it will become a series.

Tabitha Vevers

LOVER’S EYE: Judith (after Lucas Cranach) Courtesy of Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA

The Inside Source: You were trained at Yale, where I imagine you absorbed your intellectual approach, yet you grew up summering in Provincetown in Cape Cod, where the reigning style is seascapes. How do you reconcile those influences?

Tabitha Vevers: I don’t think I ever anticipated how large an influence art history would have on my work. I took as many courses as I could in college, but it was also already in my blood. My dad taught art history as well as studio art, and I used to tag along to his university classes while I was in high school.

As far as seascapes, tourist art and local vernacular painting aren’t even on my radar. That said, references to the sea often appear in my work—it’s part of my DNA. But my work is about a human narrative and reckoning with social and environmental issues, not about Cape light or anything like that.

The Inside Source: Your Flying Dreams series is based on over 200 people’s dreams about flying. Have you played around with other types of dreams to depict?

Tabitha Vevers: No! I really had to keep it narrow. As it was, people would start telling me their dreams about everything under the sun. But I’m toying with the idea of doing a series of international flying dreams in many languages.

I have done a few, including one from a woman I met in Havana who flew over Cuba with the freedom and playfulness of Peter Pan. I think it could be especially interesting to see what kind of flight people manage in countries that have fewer freedoms. I think of Afghani or Palestinian children with their kites, and wonder what sort of flying dreams they might have.

Tabitha Vevers

FLYING DREAM (The Bakery) Private Collection

The Inside Source: Do you sketch/paint when you travel?

Tabitha Vevers: I do little thumbnail doodles to remind me of what I’ve seen as well as scribbling notes. We spend a lot of time in museums—looking at art is really at the center of most of our trips. In recent years I’ve tried to keep a journal of each trip, adding photographs and scraps of things I come across.

The Inside Source: If your work could hang anywhere, where would you choose?

Tabitha Vevers: I’ve seen my work hanging in some very beautiful bedrooms and bathrooms and that’s okay; I think of them as private devotional spaces. I like the idea of the work taking on a life of its own in other people’s homes, but if it could hang anywhere, the Whitney, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and in Boston, the MFA or the ICA would all be nice…

Tabitha Vevers

TALISMAN (Luck); EGGSHELL; TALISMAN (One) Private Collection

The Inside Source: Are you an eBay user? Have you bought anything for your artwork on eBay?

Tabitha Vevers: Yes, we’ve been using eBay since its beginning in the mid-1990s—there were some real bargains around in those days!

I’ve bought a number of metronomes for a series of pieces playing off Man Ray’s Object to Be Destroyed, replacing Lee Miller’s eye with that of other notorious lovers who were “destroyed” within the political arena—Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky. And one with the addition of Man Ray’s eye on the head of a hammer, which was purchased for the permanent collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.

I’ve purchased recycled piano keys for the Unicorn Series, and also for some of my Lover’s Eye paintings, which were inspired by Georgian eye portraits. I wanted the frames for the Lover’s Eyes to be varied and old looking, so I bought collections of small, funky frames on eBay.

Also, for inspiration, I bought a couple of pairs of Kai-awase painted shells, though they were reproductions, as the centuries-old originals are out of my league.