Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993 TAG: 9307250202
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARK VOSBURGH ORLANDO SENTINEL
DATELINE: MELBOURNE, FLA. LENGTH: Long
So, to begin, the wart supposedly was removed circa 1957 from the wrist of a guy named Elvis Aron Presley, and preserved by Presley's doctor for posterity, profit or both.
Fortunately for the doctor, Presley went on to become a king or something before he died, and the wart, enshrined in a test tube half filled with formaldehyde, became a museum piece.
Sickly white and resembling a nub of cauliflower, the royal relic is on display in a cigar box lined with red silk at the Brevard Art Center & Museum.
Now for the tacky part.
The wart and a toenail clipping presumably from Presley's post-wart period are surrounded by the gaudiest exhibit of Elvis paraphernalia you ever did see.
Elvis ashtrays, Elvis bubblegum, Elvis clocks.
Elvis decanters, Elvis earrings, Elvis flying saucers.
Thirty thousand Elvis artifacts in all, and that's counting a clump of Presley's black hairs, procured from a Los Angeles hairdresser.
The exhibit is called - among less flattering things - the "Joni Mabe's World Famous Traveling Panoramic Encyclopedia of Everything Elvis."
It's called that mostly by Joni Mabe. That's because Mabe, an artist from Athens, Ga., is responsible for the exhibit's tacky existence and the fact that it doesn't stay in Athens.
Elvis pillows, Elvis playing cards, Elvis pocketknives.
Elvis shaving lotion, Elvis shirts, Elvis shoelaces.
The Original Elvis Presley King of Rock Game.
"Every day I see something different," says Wayne Powless. Powless is a museum guard, so he is paid to look at this stuff every day, including Saturday and Sunday.
This story actually began the day of Presley's alleged death, Aug. 16, 1977, when Mabe, a 19-year-old art student and Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, happened to hear an Elvis tribute on the radio.
"It hit me what a great voice he had," Mabe says.
Next thing you know, images of Presley began appearing in Mabe's artwork, and Mabe was trading her Elvis prints for other Elvis treasures.
"I sort of got wrapped up in the whole Elvis thing," she says.
Mabe's first swap netted her a 1956 paperback containing a rare photograph of Presley with his hair still a natural shade of brown.
Twenty-nine thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine swaps and purchases later, Mabe was giving the Athens garden club and other art patrons guided tours of the home she shared with her Elvis collection.
Then it occurred to Mabe that the Elvis exhibit might be equally well received by big-city art critics, as in "Da-h-ling, that black velvet portrait is simply ma-h-velous."
If not, at least Elvis fans would pay to see the toenail.
So she loaded up the whole kit and caboodle and moved it to museums in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Oxford, Miss.; New York, N.Y.; and Memphis, Tenn.
If she could make it in Memphis, she could make it anywhere.
"It went real well," Mabe recalls.
"Did you know Elvis dyed his hair black because he just adored Tony Curtis?" says Kaye Gilmartin, a museum docent.
For those who stop by the museum just to see the wart and toenail clipping, a docent is just an artsy word for tour guide.
"Look at this crap," says Randall Hayes as he surveys 1,600 square feet of wall plastered from floor to ceiling with Elvis headlines, Elvis images and assorted Elvis body parts.
Hayes, executive director of the Brevard Art Center & Museum, is partly responsible for bringing the Elvis exhibit to town. He's also willing to admit it.
"The black velvet and scalloped frame, it can't get any worse than that," he says. "But it fits. It's done with a lot of whimsy, but it is serious art."
Hayes and curator Amy Vigilante booked the exhibit along with Atlanta photojournalist Jay Leviton's black and whites from a Presley tour of Florida in the late '50s.
To get the art crowd all shook up, they opened "50 Days of Elvis" with a June 11 sock hop and persuaded the King Center for the Performing Arts to bring in a bunch of Elvis impersonators.
The plan worked.
"I've taken flak from some of my members and serious art people," Hayes says. "I say, `Lighten up.' "
ELVIS LIVES ON AS A WOMAN: June 14, 1988, headline from the Sun tabloid.
"I still can't believe he's gone," Janette Wolfe, of Columbus, Ohio, writes in the museum guest book. Wolfe is either a die-hard Elvis fan or a Sun editor.
The wart cost Mabe the most.
She won't say exactly how much, but a whole lot more than she paid for the toenail clipping, which is her other show stopper.
"The toenail and the wart are the two big draws," she says.
As previously alluded to, Mabe bought the wart from the estate of a Memphis doctor named Parnell in 1990. The widow claimed Parnell had removed the wart from Presley in 1957.
Mabe never inquired as to why the doctor had the good sense, and bad taste, to keep the wart for 33 years. Nor did she ask for a letter attesting to the wart's authenticity.
The toenail clipping, on the other hand, came straight from the green shag rug in the Jungle Room at Graceland, Presley's very own Memphis home.
Mabe can attest to that herself. She inadvertently found the tiny sliver while crawling about in the Jungle Room during a tour in 1983 - six years after Presley's death.
"I wanted to touch where Elvis had walked," she says.
ELVIS' GHOST TALKS TO ME: Aug. 4, 1987, headline from the National Enquirer.
"I heard Richard Nixon and Elvis were having a gay love affair and Dick had the FBI kill Elvis. Is this true?" Guest book entry from Richard Tuggle, an inquiring mind from Santa Monica, Calif.
One of Jay Leviton's photos, circa 1956, shows Presley and two companions seated in a crescent-shaped booth at some restaurant or a pretentious diner with linen table coverings.
A cigar is wedged between the fingers of Presley's left hand. With his right hand, he is shoveling a spoonful of muskmelon into his mouth.
Elvis fans will marvel at Leviton's masterful use of the documentary style to capture his young subject's soon-to-be lost innocence.
Discerning artists, on the other hand, will no doubt gawk at Presley's right wrist, for there, in perfect focus and for the many skeptics to see, is the wart.
Joni Mabe's World Famous Traveling Panoramic Encyclopedia of Everything Elvis.
\ Where: Brevard Art Center & Museum, 1463 Highland Ave., Melbourne, Fla.
\ When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m., today, through Aug. 1.
\ Admission: $3 per adult, $2 per child. Free to museum members.
\ For more information: (407) 242-0737.
by CNB