heads up Newcastle Yes fans
Paul Goodwin
http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100local/page.cfm?objectid=1234
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Trip into a world of fantasy Nov 6 2002
By David Whetstone, The Journal
It isn't every day that an exhibition by one of the world's most popular
artists drops into your lap - but that's what happened to gallery owner Anne
Collier.
Her lucky break came after a 20-year-old North-East university student
called Daniel Earnshaw came into her Dean Street, Newcastle, gallery last
May.
The first time he came in, she hadn't been there so staff told him to come
back. Fortunately for Anne, he did.
"He said, `I've got this friend who paints'," recalled Anne yesterday. "I
asked what he did and he said, `Fantasy'.
"I thought: `Oh, no. Usually we can't sell fantasy art. When I asked what
the friend's name was, he said: `Roger Dean'.
"I said that would be handy because there was a famous artist in the 1970s
called Roger Dean. `Yes,' he said, `that's him'."
Daniel, who has relatives in the North-East, is a fan of Dean's work.
Meeting him at a computer event, he had asked if he would consider having an
exhibition in the North. Dean had replied: "If you can find me a gallery,
I'll consider it."
The resulting exhibition is a psychedelic trip down memory lane for fans of
Yes, Uriah Heep, Asia, Rick Wakeman and others. The work recalls pre-punk
days when concept albums gave the likes of Roger Dean licence to indulge
their visual fantasies.
The show of 40 paintings, drawings and prints by Dean, has had passers-by
doing a `double take' as they spot the poster and then realise that the show
displays the real McCoy.
Once inside the gallery, price tags of Ł210,000 blow away any remaining
doubts.
A delighted Anne said yesterday that Dean had never exhibited in the North.
"This is his second UK exhibition since 1976. The last one was in 2001 in
Cork Street (London's gallery quarter) but the press conference was
scheduled for September 11 so it didn't get much publicity.
"At his last show in New York, 800 people queued for five hours in the rain
just for the preview."
Visitors to the exhibition will see a screenprint of the original Yes logo
(the drawing for the original is in the Victoria and Albert Museum) and
fantastic images of blended moonscapes and seascapes, dragons and floating
islands.
One of Dean's favourite paintings, Centre of the Earth, shows a shimmering
blue honeycomb of caves with two pterodactyls flying across it. Acrylic on
board, it could be yours for a couple of hundred grand.
Several prints, valued at hundreds of pounds, have already been sold,
including two of the limited edition run of Tales From Topographic Oceans
which graced the sleeve of Yes's symphonic concept album of 1973.
"Roger said it took him four times longer to do the print as it took to do
the original painting," said Anne.
"This year it was voted best album cover ever by readers of Rolling Stone
Magazine in the United States."
Concept albums may be a thing of the past but Roger Dean, who lives in
Sussex, is busier than ever, designing for albums, computer games and
conjuring up amazing interiors, harking back to his studies in the furniture
school at the Royal College of Art which he attended in the mid-1960s.
The exhibition has been extended until November 30. Roger Dean will be in
the gallery on the 20th, from 4-6pm, and the 21st, from 9-10am, to sign
album sleeves.