WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Over the last few years, one of the pleasures of shopping at the Upper Valley Food Co-op has been seeing what Denver Ferguson is working on.
With his long frame folded into the space behind the express checkout line, Ferguson is usually bent over a small drawing of a symmetrical figure, some in black ink, others in colored pen. His low-key practice of drawing between ringing up customers has made him one of the Upper Valley’s more public artists, always on display, but not really for sale.
That has changed over the past couple of years, and seems likely to change more rapidly, after Ferguson’s work goes on display at the Outsider Art Fair next month in New York.
“It’s exciting,” Ferguson, 37, said in an interview at the UVFC. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had my work go to a bigger venue like that.”
The art fair is less a culmination for Ferguson than a milepost in a life that has been enriched by his steady growth as an artist.
Born and raised mainly on Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia, Ferguson first started making art in high school, encouraged both by an uncle who made paintings of boats at anchor and by a teacher. His mother remarried when Ferguson was still young. and the family moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands. He became a U.S. citizen in 1999.
Making visual art fell by the wayside for a time, though Ferguson pursued a musical career. He started drawing again more than a decade ago, but it took a while to shake the rust off.
“I started drawing again because I was having a few dreams and visions,” Ferguson said.
At first, he thought he’d try to find an illustrator to work with, but realized he was the illustrator he was looking for.
“I’m like, ‘You can draw, dude,’ ” he said.
Ferguson came to Vermont at the end of 2017, after Hurricane Irma devastated the Caribbean. Life there had been hard before, with few jobs that offered a living wage. He started working at the Co-op not long after his arrival. He struggled for a time, living in the White River Valley and feeling isolated. He now lives in West Lebanon, close to work, with his girlfriend, who encourages him to keep making art.
At first, he drew mainly in black and white, on scrap paper cut up for the cashiers to use to make notes. The drawings are painstakingly precise and richly detailed and patterned. Most of them consist of double portraits, two characters staring, often fiercely, back at the viewer.
The characters he draws populate a mythical future, a story he calls The Ripple, named for the main character, Ripp Valor, and set in the year 2933, when life as we know takes place in floating biodomes.
If that description makes you wonder how to categorize Ferguson’s work, give up now. Are there elements of cartoon art, of Afro-futurism, of psychedelia, of science fiction, of progressive rock album cover art? I think so. But the only category it fits in is “art made by Denver Ferguson.”
Ben Finer, the artist who runs Kishka Gallery in White River Junction, first encountered Ferguson and his work at the Co-op.
“I got excited, sort of like I’d just discovered plutonium or something,” he said in a phone interview.
After making sure Finer was someone he could trust, Ferguson brought him some of the small black-and-white drawings he’d been making. Finer and Bevan Dunbar, his wife and Kishka collaborator, made the drawings into a book.
But Ferguson was already at work on more fully realized work, which he later brought to the gallery. “For us, it was clear that he was interested in developing these projects into something more,” Finer said.
While some of Ferguson’s work has found its way to collectors through Kishka, the Outsider Art Fair, held from March 2-5 at New York’s Metropolitan Pavilion, will expose his work to many more people.
I’m not a big fan of the term “outsider art,” except insofar as it tacitly acknowledges that there’s such a thing as “insider art,” which wittingly or not shuts out many viewers with its technical specificity and its grasping for intellectual heft. Is outsider art about where an artist is coming from or whether an artist is a member of the club? A bit of both, I think.
“There’s something about the Outsider Art Fair that’s really about the artist and the need to make,” Finer said. The hope is that Ferguson draws enough interest and sales to enable him to spend more time making art. He currently works two jobs, full-time at the Tea House, the White River Junction cannabis dispensary, and part time at the Co-op.
And he has a larger vision. He and his younger brother, Valentine, who also works at the UVFC, plan to make comics based on the characters Denver draws, with Valentine doing the writing.
Ultimately, Ferguson is like anyone trying to make a go of it as an artist. He sees the fair as a step toward a career.
“Eventually, I want to work for myself and just create,” he said.
Kishka Gallery has work by Denver Ferguson in its files.
Whether they mean to or not, a group of people in the Bradford area is resurrecting a storied Upper Valley name.
The Music Matters Concert Series starts Friday evening with a performance by Mal Maiz, a Costa Rican, Afro-Latin orchestra, at East Coast Van Builds in Bradford.
Remember Music Matters, the late, great West Lebanon record store? I do, and I miss when I could go flip through bins full of records and CDs.
The concert series takes its name not only from this history, but from the beneficiary: Admission is by donation, and the gate supports the music programs at Waits River Valley School in East Corinth.
There are six shows, running at irregular intervals through June 2. The remaining shows will be held at Fairlee Town Hall. The series is the work of Rooted Entertainment, a collective “devoted to enhancing local musical culture.” There’s no website yet, but for more information, send an email to tychapin@gmail.com or jpendak@gmail.com.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews. or 603-727-3207.
