THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 6, 1995 TAG: 9506060257
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WEST JEFFERSON LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
When fresco master Ben Long IV finished ``The Last Supper'' in 1980, his disciples - who had gathered at Glendale Springs to learn his Renaissance painting form - packed up their supplies and went home.
They left their work behind on the walls of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, assured that their frescoes would remain.
Instead, the frescoes - steel-framed slabs of concrete and plaster more than 4 feet high and bearing religious scenes - ended up as dusty relics in a farmer's barn.
On Saturday, they were auctioned by truck driver Kenneth Weaver, who was once the church's maintenance worker.
The fruits of the ``Great Blue Ridge Fresco Experience'' - long, hot days of jazz, home-cooked food and the exacting work of mixing Italian lime, water and sand into plaster - sold in less than a half hour.
They are headed for antique stores and private homes across the state, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Cleo and Bill Williams rushed down from Canton, Ohio, towing a trailer, to save their daughter Beki's fresco, ``Jesus Washing the Feet of Peter.''
Bill Williams paced the auction floor, incensed.
``These belong to my daughter and the individual artists. Now, I have to bid on my own daughter's work. We're outraged,'' he said.
Their hopes were dashed in 90 seconds of furious bidding, which started at $3,500. Getting no takers, auctioneer Elbert Graybeal ratcheted the price down to $900. The Williamses grimaced and nodded to signal the bid - but their chance was quickly gone.
Mitchell and Karen Price, collecting art for their medieval-style home in Valle Crucis, quickly outbid them at $1,300.
The Williamses seemed to accept their loss.
``Maybe it's better that it's in someone's home, rather than a storage shed,'' Cleo Williams said.
The Prices also bought two other frescoes, including a rendering of Jesus healing Barnabas, by one of Long's more renowned students, D. Jeffrey Mims, that sold for $3,800.
``It'll be worth it,'' Mitchell Price said. ``Go to New York and see what four thousand dollars buys.''
Weaver wound up with the frescoes after he recognized one at an auction house in Mountain City, Tenn., where it was labeled as a ``cement picture.''
It was Norma Murphy's ``Madonna and Child,'' painted long before Murphy became an established artist whose works are exhibited in Washington, D.C., galleries.
Weaver snapped it up for $45. He traced it back to the farmer who had the others in his barn, bought the rest and decided to auction them, despite Murphy's protests.
Murphy considered trying to get a court order to stop the sale or buying the fresco herself, if only to keep others from seeing her unpolished work.
``I decided I did not want to buy it. Or if I could, to destroy it, because it was not a good example of what I aspire to in art,'' she said.
That fresco sold Saturday for $900.
Some spectators were put off by the fast-paced commercialization of the frescoes, viewed at once as local artifacts and the artistic descendants of one of the county's greatest tourist attractions.
``This is a farce. It's just sort of sad to see it broken up and leave the church's jurisdiction,'' said Dwane Martin, a member of the Holy Trinity congregation.
Clay Church, a local dentist who came to know some of Long's students during the summer of 1980, bought two for his home in Idlewild.
``I watched them materialize,'' he said. ``It's a piece of art history, a piece of Ashe County history, too.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS color photo
Kenneth Weaver stands beside Norma Murphy's ``Madonna and Child,''
one of a number of frescoes that Weaver bought from a farmer and
auctioned off Saturday, despite Murphy's protests.
by CNB