I always use a trip home to visit family, as an excuse to pick. On one trip to western North Carolina to visit my then 100 year-old grandmother, I stopped into one of my favorite antique malls located in an old five-and-dime store. I made the rounds, but didn’t find anything, and was about to leave, when I saw an apple crate full of ephemera near the front door. Since I was not ready to head back up the mountain, I started to flip through the stuff and almost immediately came upon a small binder with 22 color photographs of astronauts on the moon. I didn’t know for sure what mission it was, but it ended up being Apollo 11, the first NASA mission for a human to step foot on the moon. The photos weren’t signed, but they were on vintage Kodak paper and had a nice patina, so I knew from my experience as a photographer that they were old. The label said $22, and I figured $22 for each was more than fair. The nice lady at the register rang it up and as I got ready to hand her the cash, she said, “That will be twenty-three dollars and five cents.” Meanwhile, I was about to hand her five crisp hundred dollar bills. I asked, “Are you sure?” “No, hun, that’s for all of them. I know the dealer!” Thus, began my interest in hunting out NASA photographs, especially those with the early ‘A Kodak Paper’ stamp.
Our paths first crossed, unknown until many years later, at an intimate yet bustling wedding reception in a south Chicago apartment. This was probably 30 years ago, perhaps even the same year a new gallery, Torno Wright, opened at the end of my street to a fanfare of Eames, heralding new changes to come. Criss-crossing breezes of chance encounters, meandering spirits, hazy focus of time and space, of enthusiasm and knowledge sought, now united again in the same city.
That same serendipity, prompting impulse and discovery, guided welcome reward in the crucible of that great industrial city, still littered with the artefacts of the American mid-century. It was within this uneven yet fertile terrain, hidden slightly below surface, that Patrick’s intuitive talent—honed first as photographer then embellished as artist—would treasure the valuable neglected as passionate collector, and then as the inspirational dealer that I was to meet again, years later in New York City.
If asked to select one word to describe Patrick, I would resist and pick two. The first would be curiosity—a fundamental essential, to stimulate inquiry and rigour in all things, both great and small, of any era or region, type or surface. Even the most fleeting survey of this selection for sale is a celebration of innovation and of inspiration—an unerring eye for the unusually exceptional, or perhaps the exceptionally unusual. The chances are, that these are indeed discoveries that you have not yet realized that you needed to make.
Mentor, would be my second word. If artefacts and objects articulate visual, cultural and historic language, then the fluency of skillful mentorship—to guide, nurture, describe and explain—releases the eloquence of murmuring histories. In this capacity Patrick is that most earnest and sincere of excellent narrators. If ever I had friends, clients or colleagues visiting New York looking for unusual inspiration, there was always the certainty that Patrick’s gallery would offer them a glimpse of the hitherto unseen or the unusually seductive, always with the reassurance of the most fascinating story waiting to be told.
Mentorship and curiosity, when balanced in equal measure, reveal the precious alchemy of a curator. And it is the duty of the mature curator to discern and detect, to cultivate change, and from there to pioneer, and to share. Innovation is never static, and the Present is already the Future. Fresh dialogs evolve, energies to be nurtured, opportunities to be guided. Renewed and re-orientated, Patrick now faces fully forward—as benefactor, interlocutor and mentor to a new, inquisitive generation of talented creators, and the quest for discovery rejuvenates.
— Simon Andrews
andrewsartadvisory.com
