VISUAL SYMPHONY

Joseph Dermody has an unusual admission for an award-winning visual artist who still maintains what he calls a “bread-and-butter” day job. Dermody, who is 40 years old and lives in Greenwich, supports himself mainly as a piano teacher. During the pandemic shutdown he’s been carrying on by Zoom. But that isn’t the admission. Unlike many artists with other careers, Dermody doesn’t claim to have always done art or even seen himself as one. “My life was 100% musician. I was a little bit crafty, a little bit artistic. But I wouldn’t say I called myself an artist,” says Dermody. “Even during many years when I was showing myself as an artist, I felt very odd calling myself an artist.” Even now, Dermody performs with the ’Scape Trio, a string ensemble. His instrument is the viola and his repertory is mostly classical. His musical resume includes regular appearances with the Greenwich, Norwalk and Ridgefield symphonies, among others. His first solo exhibition as an artist also had a musical component. It was in 2013 at the Greenwich Art Council’s Bendheim Gallery. Titled “Reclaimed Perspective,” it amounted to a premature retrospective, Dermody says, since it included so much of his work up to that point: furniture made from recycled materials and 80 abstract paintings done in acrylic. For 10 of the paintings, he created QR codes that allowed gallery goers to listen to snippets of his accompanying music. At the closing reception, he gave an hour-long recital, playing the pieces in full from Bach, Chopin and Schubert, with his paintings displayed on easels. The Bendheim exhibit occurred too soon, though, for what Dermody says has become the “staple” of his diverse portfolio. These are sculptures woven onto framed canvases that hang on the wall like 3-D paintings. Sometimes, he enters them in juried shows as mixed media. He’s made dozens and they regularly win awards. The most recent is for “Unrestricted,” a framed sculpture which took first place in its category at the Photography and Sculpture show that runs at the Rowayton Art Center to Sept. 6. In late winter, a mixed media sculpture titled “Imminent” won Best in Show at the RAC’s Abstraction show. Both were innovations because Dermody was experimenting weaving with metals. “Imminent” was a double departure. It had no frame and its “railway” of twisted copper wires was strung between a pair of carpenter’s clamps. The black clamps had red pincers. Hung vertically, it suggests a giant insect climbing the gallery wall. Dermody says he sees “Imminent” as more “aggressive” than “Unrestricted.” Its metal component was the kind of perforated strip a plumber might use to suspend pipes from a basement ceiling. But the overall design of “Unrestricted” was like others in the series: looping, flowing, open. Strands balloon several inches above the background canvas — which he sometimes paints — and are fastened to its edges. Early on, he mostly used strips of wood veneer, then began to add complexity and color with strips of melamine, a moldable resin also used in dishware. In in photos, either material can look like ribbon frozen in motion. “The woods and the melamine have a mind of their own,” Dermody says. “Though I can sculpt them, they can droop this way and that way. The metal ones I have more control over.” He began doing art almost as a lark, when a fellow musician dared him to enter the Greenwich Art Council’s “Art to the Avenue” show. He recalls making a 3-D sculpture from glazed newspaper that looked like porcelain. “I had no idea what I was doing,” he says. But the next year he got invited back and displayed a collection of computer innards he found and framed. When many he sold, he took chance at entering a juried Darien Arts Center show, this time with his acrylic abstracts. “They called me the next week and said, ‘Congratulations, you got into the show and we’re having a reception … Make sure you stay until 9, so you can accept your award.’ I said, ‘Award?’ They said, ‘We give out awards. You got first place.’ I was like, ‘Holy cow.’ I’d only been doing art for two years.” That was in 2012. Encouraged, Dermody says he resolved to enter a show a year. Soon he was up to half a dozen. He says he likes to work on deadline, producing works for a specific show. He created a series of abstract acrylic paintings for the Tesla showroom in New York. One in the series won Best in Show at the RAC’s “Under 40” exhibit in 2018. The same year a mixed-media graffiti painting, with figurative elements, won Best in Show at another RAC exhibit. The Tesla paintings are whirlwinds of what looks like unspooled thread. The more figurative graffiti painting also had curlicue components. Dermody says he was flattered when a woman viewing one of his paintings told him, “ ‘Oh, it looks like a symphony on canvas.’ She didn’t know me at all. She didn’t know I was a trained classical musician.” But Dermody says that if there is one word to describe his work it is movement. “All my art comes from a sense of movement, whether it is physical movement, or internal movement, like emotional or psychological.” The prize-winning graffiti painting, titled “1995,” marked the beginning of a memory board series he sees as documenting specific years of his life. During the COVID-19 shutdown, he began another project, searching the internet for images of dancers to pair with his ribbon sculptures. Viewable on his website, the matches he found are uncanny. “You would think I sculpt from what I see in the dancers, but I don’t,” he says. He has not yet exhibited the dance duos, concerned about use rights of the photos. Dermody considers himself an interdisciplinary artist. He believes his art has made his music stronger. Two years ago, he converted the garage in the multi-unit building where he lives into a combination workspace and performance space he calls the Harold Avenue Studios. It also functions as an online collective of artists, musicians and designers. Another recent award Dermody has won is for an interactive puzzle he created for an innovation contest sponsored by the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County. The puzzle consists of 55 canvas tiles that he arranged in a rectangle and pour painted as a single cohesive piece. Its swirling composition is similar to his Tesla paintings. He originally showed it in a physical gallery, inviting people to take away individual tiles. No one dared to, however. So he repurposed it for the Alliance contest, which required entries to have a profit element. Dermody offered individual tiles for sale online and mailed physical pieces to the buyers. Once all are sold, he plans to a Zoom meeting where the buyers, who are scattered across the country, will gather to put the puzzle back together. Dermody already has submitted work for two upcoming exhibits: the Carriage Barn Arts Center’s annual members show scheduled to open Sept. 8 and the Stamford Art Association’s Faber Birren Color exhibit, set to open Sept. 26.

Joel Lang is a freelance writer.