Today we’d like to introduce you to Ed McGowin.
Hi Ed, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
In the past six decades has had over 80 one-person exhibitions nationally and internationally, and more than 300 group exhibitions. Twenty permanent, public, National, and International sculpture commissions. “Name Change” exhibition (catalog) toured ten venues in US and Europe, from 2006 thru 2010.
Awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Grants, The Governor’s Life Time Achievement award from MS, and other grants. Artist-in-residence grants in the U.S., France, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand, and China. Work is included in the collection of the Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, National Museum of American Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Mississippi Museum, among others.
Corporate collections include ATT, Chase Manhattan Bank, McKinsey and Co., American Medical Association, Prudential Life Insurance, and Goldman Sacks. Traveled to more than 100 countries so far. Daughters Jill McGowin, and Leah M Thomas. Three grandchildren, Peyton Yardley, Adam, and Alex Thomas. Lives with wife Claudia DeMonte in New York City and Miami Beach FL.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Remaining relevant as an American artist since 1964 has had many ups and downs. Important gallery owners of mine passed away. As I get older many colleagues, critics, collectors, museum directors, and curators, that have supported my art are gone.
Fortunately, there are younger people in the world who are interested and I will have a major exhibit at the Coral Gables Museum in 2024. My wife, Claudia DeMonte, of 46 years is by far the best thing that happened to me. Claudia is an internationally recognized artist and we share many goals and life’s pleasures.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
The “Name Change” project was critical to my work. To create the exhibition for “Name Change” I went to court and had my name changed LEGALY twelve times. I have continued to make art for each of the twelve names since 1969, each having its own conceptual point of departure. Below is a quote from a Carter Ratcliff essay. He has contributed to the leading journals of the United States and Europe, including Art in America, Art Forum, ArtNews, Arts, Tate, and Art Press, as well as Vogue, Elle, and New York magazine.
Most artists struggle to define an individual style and evolve beyond early beginnings to maturity and onward, to a late style. Development is linear, with a sort of logic guiding the artist from one step to the next. McGowin has been making it clear for decades that he did not want his art to follow this pattern; rather, he envisioned the shape of his oeuvre as “molecular,” with a range of disparate bodies of work developing concurrently.
Instead of an ever-lengthening line, his oeuvre is an ever-expanding sphere. This departure from the usual path is so extraordinary that neither art criticism nor art history has come to terms with it.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Grit.
Contact Info:
- Website: EDMCGOWIN.COM
Image Credits
Claudia DeMonte
