Creative work is a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” – Steven Pressfield
Which of these three people created the wood carving in this picture?
The answer is the person on the left: artist Syd Ginsberg.
The name of this amazing work is “Keene.” It’s a portrait of poet Keene Wallis.
For many years, “Keene” (the wood carving) lived in NYC. “Keene” then lived in Croton-on-Hudson, NY.
That’s where I met him. He stood around as my best friend and I whirled through our childhoods, dressing her long-suffering cat in doll clothes and setting up lemonade stands on a road where two or three cars might pass in a day!
And the last 3 decades, “Keene” has lived in a storage unit in North Carolina.
Today, artist Onicas Gaddis onicasart.com will be driving “Keene” to Asheville, NC, where he will grace Abacus Art Acquisitions. abacusartofasheville.com
I hope you will come visit “Keene.” Apparently he was a Greenwich Village character in his day, as well as a poet and, translator, notably of Dante’s “Inferno” with illustrations by Rockwell Kent.
And who knows where he will live next? It may be with you!
“The Poet: Keene Walis” sculpted by Syd Ginsberg in the ’50s….now lives at Abacus Art Acquisitions in Weaverville, NC READ MORE