Let it never be said that celebrated local art patron Flynn Pure is afraid to explore new frontiers.. Pure’s Ghostmonkey Gallery is home to dozens more traditional (read: sane) artists using familiar mediums such as watercolors, bronze, wood and beans. And he loves them all. Especially beans.
“We haven’t come close to exploring all the expressive possibilities of mosaic bean art, but even that form is limited to two dimensions, or maybe two-and-a-half since the beans don’t exactly sit flat on the canvass,” said Pure. “I’m interested in the third and fourth dimensions of art.”
To that end, Pure has hired world renowned actor Daniel Day Lewis to be his 2017 “Artist in Residence” at the Ghostmonkey Gallery. Lewis, long known as the premier method actor of his time, is retiring from the big screen and focusing his talents on performance art. His first foray into performance art came in 1991 when he drilled a hole in his skull while suspended from the third “O” in the “Hollywood” sign in Los Angeles. His performance was a protest against what he called the “most, mindlessness, worst movie of all time,” Highlander II: The Quickening. He claimed that only by self-trepanning was he able to expunge the memory of the movie.
Lewis and Pure knew each other from the early 80’s when both worked on a production of The Sound of Music for a touring theater company. They reconnected in New York two years ago when Pure attended Lewis’ one-man show “The Birth and Bludgeoning Death of a Baby Seal”. It was Lewis’ portrayal of the seal’s birth that intrigued Pure.
“It gave me an idea. I talked with Daniel about coming down to the beach then,” Pure said. “But he was still recovering from the head wound he suffered while filming Lincoln. The man is dedicated to his craft.”
Lewis said he was definitely ready to take a different career path after the “Lincoln” performance.
Lewis’ first performance piece for Pure will be called “Sea Turtle Boil.” He will recreate the life cycle of a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, beginning with emergence of an egg from the mother turtle’s cloaca through the hatching and desperate scurry to the ocean. He will then have to survive predators, gill nets and bad directions from a blue tang fish.
“The piece will be one of the most difficult Daniel has attempted,” said Pure. “He’s going to incubate during the show’s intermission, which will require him to stay in a fetal position under about six thousand pounds of sand. We haven’t quite worked out how he will breathe.”
“Sea Turtle Boil” will be performed Monday, Wednesday, Friday in front of the Loggerhead Public Beach Access in Nags Head at 12:30 p.m. beginning April 1st, 2017. The show will run approximately three hours. A special indoor performance will be held at the Ghostmonkey Gallery the second Sunday of each month for red headed persons and patrons suffering from agoraphobia.