I just heard about Norm Darwish passing on to that great, eternal art show in the sky.
He was Connie's husband. They were notables on the art circuit during the "Golden Age of Art Festivals."
I thought I would raise a great glass to him and write some kind remembrances.
I know a lot of you are relatively new to our game. I can't blame you because you don't know about some of the "notables" on the circuit back in the late 70's, thru the glorious 80's and even into the ending 90's.
So I thought I would give ya a little history lesson with some fond memories thrown in about them.
And Norm, and Connie, were solidly in that mix.
In 1978, I was just a brash new face on the circuit. Fresh back from Hawaii, where I was in the Army and also started doing my first art shows there.
So, from my naive perspective, I thought if you could smoke good Hawaiian pakalolo all day (Mary Jane), suck down Olympia beers and make $300 a day at a show--you were a hot shit.
So I came back to Florida and started doing my 36-shows-a-year thing. Basically, I was grinding it out, barely making a paycheck, and trying to get something cohesive going in my body of work.
In 1983, I got into my first big art show--Winter Park. It was a whole other world I had never been a part of.
I remember walking down the sidewalk and going by the fried dough booth. At 11 AM they already had dollar bills stacked sky-high in their booth.
A little further down I ran into this booth filled with hand-tinted black and white photos. Some were comical, some were almost obscene, some were very romantic. They were all entrancing.
There was this cohesive vision of soft, luminous light permeating through every figure in every image. It was a world I had never seen before.
And sitting on a chair was this enigmatic person with piercing silver eyes and he was wearing a headband, not like a hippie, but more like some mystical creature from the far east.
It was Norm Darwish.
Beside him was this bab-a-licious, comely blonde, his wife, Connie Mettler.
Right away I thought, "Lucky guy. Some day I want to grow up just like him and have a beauty like that beside me."
Norm did not suffer fools well. Maybe a better way of putting it, is that if he wasn't really interested in talking to you, he would ignore you. He would be almost pretending that he was deaf.
And that is how he reacted to me the first time I met him.
Hell, maybe it was because I was wearing hot pink Converse sneakers and wearing an Aloha shirt filled with pink flamingos. Maybe my eyes looked a little too happy, maybe stoned, and I had this big shit-eating grin on my face.
I was smitten--with his work.
I said to myself, "Now that is a cohesive body of work--and so is his wife."
I walked on and saw some of the other biggies of that era at this show. There were the Brunos, whose son Chris is now a biggie on the circuit. There were Jim and Robin Wallace, there was Bill Coleman and trusty sidekick, Carl. There was Emerson with his radiant smile. There was Alan Klug.
These guys all got into the big shows on a regular basis. They made mucho moola. It was the Golden Age of Art Shows and if you had a cohesive body of work and got into the big shows--you made serious money.
Back then, the Florida shows dominated the scene for top ten shows. You had the Grove, you had Las Olas Museum show, you had Winter Park, even Gasparilla.
You could catch a good buzz off the residue from hundred dollar bills back the. It was the Miami Vice era, and the vice was everywhere.
So, I first saw Norm there.
As years progressed, I would run into him three to fours times a year. Sometimes we were both grinding it out, trying to make a paycheck at the second tier shows.
I never was able to have long conversation with him. He would look right through me with those intense Lebanese eyes and say a few words and then be gone. He never smiled at me.
But I loved his work. he had a great command of symmetry and light with just the right colors thrown in. He was a maverick, like me, he went his own way and found a way to make it successful.
One of the funniest things I ever got to do to Norm happened at the Crosby Gardens show in Toledo.
At that time I was doing a humorous body of work that include penguins and flamingos.
I had bought four life-sized plastic penguins at Fast Buck Freddies in Key West. I even gave them names. Glen, Ben, Swen and Ed. I also had my flock of plastic flamingos.
So at the show, while Norm was off somewhere from his booth, I set up the penguins and flamingos all around the front of his booth, and took and old "Best of Show" ribbon I had and put it on the front of his booth.
When he came back to his booth and saw all this, he did not even crack a smile. He clearly was not amused by it. I loved it of course and laughed my ass off.
After that, he talked even less to me. If I got five words out of him, instead of ten, I was doing good.
I kept admiring him through the rest of years and got to be good friends with Connie.
So I am raising a toast to him now. There are not many more left on the circuit from that Golden era, but they should be remembered. They paved the way for a lot of the success that this business has provided.
Aloha, Norm.
Comments
Donna, I am just seeing this today, months later. Thank you so much for the stories and these memories. He was a good example of a person who was much more than "what meets the eye," and it took me several months to realize that myself when I first met him.
Wish you could have joined us for the memorial, we shared so much together.
Donna, thanks for sharing your stories. I appreciate it. I also never saw Norm smile. This may seem weird, but you could see the smile in Norm's eyes when he talked about his cats. I never saw a man love cats like Norm did. It was hard to get Norm to like you, but when you won him over he would do anything for you.
When I heard of Norm's passing I had to write. You see, I have known Norm longer than anyone including Connie, his wife and his children, from a previous marriage.
Norm and I grew up together on the same street in Detroit. The street was only one block long and bounded by the fair grounds. That one block produced 3 artists. Norm, Don Spurlin, photographer, who was taught by Norm, and me, a painter. There must have been something in the water.
Now this was a neighborhood to blond haired, blue-eyed children. There was also the Darwish family and they were dark. We called them "The Greeks". We had never heard of Lebanon, which is where they were really from.
My sister and I were terrified of Norm. We lived on a dead-end street and had to walk past his house to go to school. He was older and and he would say things to us, to scare us. Now he never did a thing to us. He didn't have to; we were close of dying of fright just walking past his house.
Over the years, I had lost contact with Norm and then one day, I saw him at an art show and LOVED his work. I picked up his card to see where he was from. I was shocked to see the name of our street. I then went to him and asked where the house was, thinking he had purchased a previous owners home. He said that his parents had passed away, and it was in his culture that the family home went to the oldest son.OMG! You are Norm Darwish, I said, which was already clearly on his card.
Sometime later, our paths crossed again at the Guild. My terror returned. I was again afraid of the dark sinister Lebanese man. (By this time I had heard of Lebanon). We were at a Guild meeting and Connie and Norm sat across the table from me. Norm was extremely upset with me and hollering at me. He then told me to stand up, which I did. I had no idea why. He came over to me, hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. The light bulb went on in my head. This man is not to be feared. This man said what was on his mind, but then let you know he still cared for you. I was to blind to see it.
As time passed I began to really see the softer side of Norm. Connie and I co-chaired the Greektown Art Fair, where I saw his compassion with the homeless. His compassion and charm with all his old Detroit cronies, who made their annual visit to Greektown to see Norm.
I heard from an artists who wanted to learn how to use colored pencils and contacted Norm. Some artists would have been very evasive about sharing any information. Not Norm. Norm shared all his information. Told him what to use and what not to use and gave him all kinds of useful advise.
Yes, Norm was a man of few words, and I am not sure I ever saw gun smile, but I know that inside that gruff exterior there were smiles and much love for those around him.
Norm will be surely missed. And so farewell my friend, I will see you on the other side, at the great art show in the sky. I hear the show is rated #1 by all the big guys.
"I never was able to have long conversation with him. He would look right through me with those intense Lebanese eyes and say a few words and then be gone. He never smiled at me."
Nels, truer words were never spoken. But don't feel bad, he didn't smile at me much either, but he heard everything. By the way, I heard about the Flamingos. From my Dad.
You did good.
Nels, you nailed it. Yes, Norm was like that. I thought he didn't like me much when I first started working for him. I had to work for him for several years before I really felt comfortable around him. That was just Norm. If you could see his dark room you would be amazed. It was huge. He had so much knowledge in that head of his and he took it all with him. I will miss him so much.
Nice memoir. It's nice to know that I wasn't the only one he treated this way. Funny, it made me admire him even more. Maybe he could read my mind because those pictures with Connie as the model were amazing. I wish I had one now. I always went into his booth to see his new images. He was the best of the best in photography.