William King and Connie Fox were friends of Judith and Gus Leiber, and King’s sculpture “Four Philosophers” has been in the Leiber Collection in Springs for 20 years. Ann Fristoe Stewart, the collection’s director and curator, was thinking about launching a new series of exhibitions featuring artists in the collection, and King came to mind. And when King comes to mind, Fox comes with him.
“Ann reached out toward the end of last year,” said Levin Chaskey, one of Fox’s grandchildren, in a Zoom conversation. “She wanted to do something inspired by place and multigenerational creativity, and she knew Connie had asked me to steward her legacy near the end of her life, to take over her career.”
“Levin jumped in full force, and suggested Connie’s ‘Sammy’s Beach’ series,” said Ms. Stewart. “He has taught me so much about his grandparents and their extraordinary lives.”
“Connie Fox and William King — Entangled” will open Saturday at 4 p.m. with a talk and film screening with Levin, and continue through Aug. 21.
“No place was more important than Sammy’s Beach as a place of inspiration for Connie,” said Levin. “And that series is to me her seminal series, what she was working her way up to through all of her eras.”
Levin inherited Fox’s work, and his parents, Megan and Scott Chaskey, inherited King’s. Ms. Fristoe expressed great appreciation of the Chaskeys as well, “for our many hours of conversations about William and Connie. Their experiences and memories have been invaluable to the exhibition.” They have loaned several of King’s sculptures for the show.
Other lenders include April Gornik and Eric Fischl, for Fox’s “Sammy’s Beach III”; Guild Hall for King’s “The Swimmer,” and Joyce Beckenstein, an art critic, for Fox’s “Sammy’s Beach X.”
The exhibition also includes works by King made to honor Fox and their time on Sammy’s Beach, the shoreline of a tidal bay close to their home and studios in Northwest Woods. The couple went there almost daily for decades, walking, swimming, talking, socializing, “finding their bliss,” said Ms. Stewart. “The impact of ‘place’ on Connie and Bill is undeniable in this body of work.”
“Fox and King’s stylistic differences consistently bow to one another,” Ms. Beckenstein has written. “The figurative elements she embeds within her energized brushwork attest to her own grip on representation. King’s proportions, simplicity of line, and play of negative and positive space affirm his keen eye for the abstract structure of things as underpinnings to character.”
The two artists worked independently of each other. In 2014, King told The Star, with typically dry wit, that “Connie might ask me to look at something, and I’ll look because I want to. As far as aesthetics are concerned, it might be more worthwhile for her to talk to other painters. All the time they’re talking about painting, I’m thinking about pieces of wood.”
While Sammy’s Beach answers Ms. Fristoe’s desire for the show to be about place, the multigenerational aspect is exemplified by Megan and Scott Chaskey, both of whom are writers, and Levin, a filmmaker based in Charlotte, N.C.
Levin’s film draws from interviews he conducted with Fox and King, studio visits, “and just being candidly part of their life.” He is also using footage from the archives of LTV, of which King was a founder, and archival material from other sources.
The name of the show came to Levin because of “how we are multigenerationally entangled in this story that’s continuing with her passing her legacy to me and my parents.”
Megan Chaskey will read from her book of poetry, “Birdsong Under the Wisdom Tree, Collected Poems, A Book of Hours in the Life of a Poet,” on July 28. The book has a painting by Fox on its cover.
On Aug. 11 Scott Chaskey will read from his recent book “Soil and Spirit, Cultivation and Kinship in the Web of Life.”
