First you see the rack of brightly painted wooden clogs, direct from the Netherlands. Just one pair is still its original brown color.
A few steps away are old cans full of artist paint brushes, and half-squeezed tubes of paint piling out of a battered suitcase.
They sit below a pieced-together circa-1924 poster of former Boston mayor James Michael Curley. Beside that is a cardboard box full of dusty papers, with a 1729 deed from New Haven, Conn., on top. The surrounding walls are covered with paintings of disembodied people — mostly half-naked women — and much of the floor space is taken up with large wooden sculptures, also mainly of folks missing torsos and stomachs.
“I am not fond of fat people,” said Tom Stanford with a slight smile.
He is the creator of this wild collection of art, rare photography, and ephemera (printed material.)
Mr. Stanford, 61, recently opened his new Ladybird’s Gallery — named after his aging dog — at 78 Rigby Road, a wooded area on the Clinton line. His house is beside the gallery.
He got the idea after a trip to Taos, N.M., where he checked out numerous art galleries.
Shuffling around his gallery in a pair of orange clogs, Mr. Stanford, who previously operated a gallery of collectible documents and prints in Clinton, explains his unique style of painting,Museum Quality hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas. which he has dubbed “subtractionalism.”
“Basically, a portion of the anatomy, usually muscle and bones, is missing,” he said of his Picasso-meets-Warhol-like abstract oil paintings. “It did not start out that way, it just came upon me.”
His sculptures, which were carved from single trees cut down during nearby construction,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, (“I dragged them across the street”) are a world onto themselves.
One shows a Greek god entwined with a swan-woman. Another huge sculpture (the trunk is upside down) depicts a sailor, a mermaid and a serpent. Mr. Sanford said he worked 12 hours a day for seven months on that one.
When asked how he came up with the theme, he responded: “I just looked at this big piece of tree and said, ‘What the hell is that?’ ”
Its $25,000 price tag reflects the effort.
His oil painting prices range from $200 to $7,000, depending on size; and his prints average around $150 each.
The best selling print, he said, is “Lady Dancing with Death to the Tune of the Harmonica Player,” done in carved aqua Linoleum. As the title suggests, there is a harmonica player, a grim reaper-like figure, and a nude woman.
A former house painter who grew up in Wilmington, Del., Mr.Information on useful yeasts and moulds, Stanford, the father of two grown children, had an artist mother and a father who gave up a job with DuPont to start his own vineyard — in Delaware.
Mr. Stanford,We focus on solar panel products that function in the harshest environments, who has had a penchant for art since he was young, moved to Massachusetts in 1980, and soon after obtained his first cache of historical documents in Bolton while working as a house painter. He came upon a box of old railroad show memorabilia and asked the owner for it in lieu of payment for the paint job.
“I took that to a railroad show, and we blew people away. I got $10,000 for it, and I realized there was a better way to make a living than painting houses,” he said.
A collector by nature, he started his rounds of attending auctions and estate and yard sales, picking up old photographs, maps, posters, stamps, envelopes and letters — pretty much anything involving paper — although he managed to grab a few death masks, a bunch of pocket watches and a vial of kidney stones along the way.
He found a photograph of Mae West autographed to Anne Bancroft in a New York City trash container. It’s for sale for $500 in his gallery. He has all sorts of rock music-related items, including original Woodstock programs, autographed photographs of the original Rolling Stones, and photographs of the Grateful Dead on tour. There are wanted posters of Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.
His most valuable photograph, he says, is a full-plate 1852 picture of someone at Niagara Falls.
“It was very popular to get your photo taken by the falls,” Mr. Stanford said.
Also in stock are hundreds of original cartoon illustrations by noted artists such as Mischa Richter, who was with the New Yorker for years; and with New Masses Magazine in the 1930s and 1940s. Mr.Manufacturers and exporters of impact socket, Stanford, who was the winner of the 2004 Jacob Knight Award, said he became friends with Richter when they both lived on Cape Cod.
“He sold everything he had, about 1,500 pieces,” Mr. Stanford said.
A section of Mr. Stanford’s inventory is devoted to old “girlie” magazines and prints — not suited for a family newspaper. But to balance that off, he proudly shows off his large signed portrait of Mother Teresa.
A few steps away are old cans full of artist paint brushes, and half-squeezed tubes of paint piling out of a battered suitcase.
They sit below a pieced-together circa-1924 poster of former Boston mayor James Michael Curley. Beside that is a cardboard box full of dusty papers, with a 1729 deed from New Haven, Conn., on top. The surrounding walls are covered with paintings of disembodied people — mostly half-naked women — and much of the floor space is taken up with large wooden sculptures, also mainly of folks missing torsos and stomachs.
“I am not fond of fat people,” said Tom Stanford with a slight smile.
He is the creator of this wild collection of art, rare photography, and ephemera (printed material.)
Mr. Stanford, 61, recently opened his new Ladybird’s Gallery — named after his aging dog — at 78 Rigby Road, a wooded area on the Clinton line. His house is beside the gallery.
He got the idea after a trip to Taos, N.M., where he checked out numerous art galleries.
Shuffling around his gallery in a pair of orange clogs, Mr. Stanford, who previously operated a gallery of collectible documents and prints in Clinton, explains his unique style of painting,Museum Quality hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas. which he has dubbed “subtractionalism.”
“Basically, a portion of the anatomy, usually muscle and bones, is missing,” he said of his Picasso-meets-Warhol-like abstract oil paintings. “It did not start out that way, it just came upon me.”
His sculptures, which were carved from single trees cut down during nearby construction,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, (“I dragged them across the street”) are a world onto themselves.
One shows a Greek god entwined with a swan-woman. Another huge sculpture (the trunk is upside down) depicts a sailor, a mermaid and a serpent. Mr. Sanford said he worked 12 hours a day for seven months on that one.
When asked how he came up with the theme, he responded: “I just looked at this big piece of tree and said, ‘What the hell is that?’ ”
Its $25,000 price tag reflects the effort.
His oil painting prices range from $200 to $7,000, depending on size; and his prints average around $150 each.
The best selling print, he said, is “Lady Dancing with Death to the Tune of the Harmonica Player,” done in carved aqua Linoleum. As the title suggests, there is a harmonica player, a grim reaper-like figure, and a nude woman.
A former house painter who grew up in Wilmington, Del., Mr.Information on useful yeasts and moulds, Stanford, the father of two grown children, had an artist mother and a father who gave up a job with DuPont to start his own vineyard — in Delaware.
Mr. Stanford,We focus on solar panel products that function in the harshest environments, who has had a penchant for art since he was young, moved to Massachusetts in 1980, and soon after obtained his first cache of historical documents in Bolton while working as a house painter. He came upon a box of old railroad show memorabilia and asked the owner for it in lieu of payment for the paint job.
“I took that to a railroad show, and we blew people away. I got $10,000 for it, and I realized there was a better way to make a living than painting houses,” he said.
A collector by nature, he started his rounds of attending auctions and estate and yard sales, picking up old photographs, maps, posters, stamps, envelopes and letters — pretty much anything involving paper — although he managed to grab a few death masks, a bunch of pocket watches and a vial of kidney stones along the way.
He found a photograph of Mae West autographed to Anne Bancroft in a New York City trash container. It’s for sale for $500 in his gallery. He has all sorts of rock music-related items, including original Woodstock programs, autographed photographs of the original Rolling Stones, and photographs of the Grateful Dead on tour. There are wanted posters of Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.
His most valuable photograph, he says, is a full-plate 1852 picture of someone at Niagara Falls.
“It was very popular to get your photo taken by the falls,” Mr. Stanford said.
Also in stock are hundreds of original cartoon illustrations by noted artists such as Mischa Richter, who was with the New Yorker for years; and with New Masses Magazine in the 1930s and 1940s. Mr.Manufacturers and exporters of impact socket, Stanford, who was the winner of the 2004 Jacob Knight Award, said he became friends with Richter when they both lived on Cape Cod.
“He sold everything he had, about 1,500 pieces,” Mr. Stanford said.
A section of Mr. Stanford’s inventory is devoted to old “girlie” magazines and prints — not suited for a family newspaper. But to balance that off, he proudly shows off his large signed portrait of Mother Teresa.
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