February 23, 2015An exhibition of photographs by Felicia M. Gordon is now on display at the 1stdibs showroom at the New York Design Center through March 9 (photo by Darren Ornitz). Top: Gordon’s subject, performance artist Wendell Headley, joins two bemused strangers in Bench Warmers, 2012.
With its rotating program of exhibitions, the gallery at the 1stdibs showroom, on the 10th floor of the New York Design Center (200 Lexington Avenue), is a natural home for creative spirits in all types of visual media. Through March 9, the show on view is “Where’s Wendell? A Photo Fashion Love Story by Felicia M. Gordon,” a collaboration between Gordon, a multidisciplinary artist and photographer; her subject, Wendell Headley, whose exuberant work lies somewhere between fashion design and performance art; and Sasha Bikoff, the Manhattan-based interior designer who styled the romantic, lighthearted exhibition using the wares of 1stdibs showroom dealers.
The project began in 2011, when New York-native Gordon — the daughter of former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton — spotted Headley, dressed in his usual candy-colored regalia, in Grand Central Station. She immediately remembered him from a childhood encounter in Washington Square Park. Headley, a self-taught artist, lives in the Bronx, doesn’t have a phone and works outdoors when weather permits. “I was six or seven when I first saw him, doing what he does — behaving as a moving piece of art,” she recalls. “He was as amazing to me then as he is now.” Gordon, who attended the prestigious Brearley School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, then studied art at Parsons School of Design and photography and watercolor at various ateliers in Paris while attending Harvard College and NYU Law School, was then “pretty miserable” in her career as a lawyer, she says. “I hadn’t used my cameras for a long time but felt I needed to photograph him.”
“I was six or seven when I first saw him, doing what he does — behaving as a moving piece of art. He was as amazing to me then as he is now.”
Gordon first encountered Headley, whom she describes as “a moving piece of art,” as a child in Washington Square Park; the next encounter was in 2011 at Grand Central Station. He also often frequents Union Square and Times Square. Photo by Darren Ornitz
Meeting in public parks — “Wendell’s natural habitat,” as she puts it — Gordon photographed Headley garbed in his expressive couture. Usually, she’d use a 35mm camera, resorting to point-and-shoot digital for times when Headley, who, she says, “doesn’t stay still more than a couple of seconds,” created a scene she wanted to capture on the fly. One example: the time he suddenly plopped down on a bench next to an elderly couple in Central Park. “I didn’t know if they would swat him away or freak out,” Gordon says. They did neither, and the charming result is on display, along with a score of other works with titles like Maxed and Relaxed, All Smile and Harlem Garbage. The film works are printed on large-scale canvases; the digitals are C-prints or have been printed on watercolor paper.
Mannequins dressed in Wendell’s meticulously crafted costumes (which always include elaborate headdresses) are placed among furnishings selected by Bikoff to reflect the “Paris apartment” context Gordon envisioned as a backdrop for the show. These include such confections as a 1940s Art Moderne console and 1960s Maison Jansen desk from Karl Kemp; Louis XVI–style blue-velvet bergères from Elizabeth Pash Antiques; a Swedish gilt settee from Laserow Antiques; and such contemporary pieces as a faceted mirror nightstand from Quotient as well as a white-mohair Drome ottoman and sensational blue-velvet chaise, both from Bourgeois Boheme.
For Gordon, who in 2006 founded the Harlem-based art collective Sugar Hill Culture Club, which undertakes urban-inspired collaborative art projects, “Where’s Wendell?” feels like a logical extension of that venture’s collaborative approach. “He helped me find myself as an artist,” she says, “and I helped him know there would be someone documenting his work.”
