- April 25, 2024
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The upcoming exhibit of the works by the late Fred Messersmith, West Volusia-based watercolorist, who died in 2009, and his son, Harry, sculptor and painter, will be displayed in the largest joint exhibit by the father and son duo ever, starting Feb. 13 at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum.
“We are so excited to be able to put Harry and Fred’s work together,” said Museum Director Susan Richmond. “The Messersmith family has been so important to the cultural arts in Volusia County.”
The Messersmiths moved to DeLand in 1959, after Fred Messersmith was invited to head the Stetson University art department. During his 30-year career there, he taught a range of art classes that included watercolor painting, art history, calligraphy and interior design. Over the years, his fame as a watercolorist grew. When Apollo 1 was launched in 1969, he was among the artists asked by NASA to document the launch.
Harry Messersmith grew up visiting Stetson and attending art openings and said art got in his blood.
“Along the way, I discovered that art is more complex,” he said, adding that he has had several different jobs related to art over the years.
Harry Messersmith’s interest in the human race and its relationship to the earth is the main inspiration for his sculptures. He is influenced by the Italian futurists and their forward-thinking use of geometry.
“The work communicates a struggle for the balance of power between the evolution of human spirituality and the advance of technology,’’ Messersmith said of his sculptures that fuse geometric form with human form.
In his work, the triangle represents hard science and geometry and the figure represents spirit, soul, love of life and the will to survive.
Harry Messersmith’s first sculpture, “Galaxy Rose,” which he built when he was 19 out of automobile exhaust pipes, civil defense water storage cans and nails, will be part of the display in Ormond Beach and is for sale. The sculpture, which took 300 hours to build, made a splash in the art world in 1979, when an Associated Press photographer captured it and the image circulated around the world. The piece attracted the attention of Canada’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, which wanted to buy it to display at the museum. He never sold the piece because it was his launching point.
“In a way, it’s hard to make something so fascinating ever again,” Messersmith said.
The name of the show, “The Messersmiths: Explorers of Art,” was chosen because both father and son take chances in exploring new techniques. Fred Messersmith working with rice paper and casein paint, and Harry Messersmith now working with cast glass and cast bronze.
“I think that’s the joy of any artist — innovating and exploring and experimenting; those are some of your best days as an artist,” Harry Messersmith said.
About 30 of Fred Messersmith’s pieces will be on display alongside 25 of his son’s at the Ormond Beach show, which is an opportunity for Fred Messersmith’s work to move from flat file storage to frames.
“It’s an honor to be invited to show at the museum,” Harry Messersmith said. “Artists have to fight hard for this opportunity. I know Dad would be pleased.”
IF YOU GO
When: Opening 6-8 p.m. Feb. 13. The show will close March 22. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily and noon to 4 p.m. on the weekends.
Where: Ormond Beach Memorial Art Museum, 78 E. Granada Blvd.,
Ormond Beach
Info: The exhibit is sponsored by Hyatt and Cici Brown, of Ormond Beach, longtime art supporters, and curated by Sherrill Schoening.
