THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604270049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: TRAVEL: THE OUTER BANKS
SOURCE: BY DAVE McCARTER, SPECIAL TO THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
LENGTH: Long : 154 lines
JOHN DE LA VEGA uses bright colors and broad strokes to paint his visual picture of springtime on the Outer Banks.
``I'm telling you, this time of year is unbelievable,'' says de la Vega, a Kitty Hawk resident who plies the tools of the artistic trade at the popular gallery that bears his name in Corolla Village.
``When you cross the Wright Brothers Bridge (the southbound connector from the mainland to the Outer Banks), it's like you've just cut your ties with the hustle and bustle.
``It's like you cross that bridge and you're in another dimension of reality,'' says the animated de la Vega, a nationally recognized portrait painter. ``And that's what I do here. I offer food for the soul, and a focus on the beauty and harmony of our world.''
Heady stuff, to be sure. After all, at first glance the concepts of ``soul food'' and the Outer Banks seem about as likely a combination as crab legs and collard greens.
But spring is a time of renewal and regeneration on the barrier islands. You'll find fresh paint, flowers and trees again in bloom, and ready smiles on faces old and new. And while the Outer Banks community rubs its well-rested eyes and stretches in preparation for the season to come, the weeks between Spring Break and Memorial Day offer a terrific window of opportunity to see the beach at its less-congested best and, perhaps, to get back in touch with the spiritual side of life.
There are no fewer than two dozen art galleries scattered along the islands from Corolla to Ocracoke.
De la Vega's gallery is one of the farthest north, and the proprietor insists that spring is the best time to nurture your spirit by improving your metaphysical fitness.
``As artists, we absorb the beauty of nature in a different way than most people,'' he says. ``Part of what we do is help people connect with beauty and harmony.''
De la Vega displays much of his own work at his shop. Along with portraits, he concentrates on local scenery, including the famous wild horses that wander in his neck of the woods. Seven other popular regional artists are featured at the de la Vega Gallery, including Laurie Kersey, Tidewater's Skip Lawrence, and the late Lee Knotts.
``I've lived in Washington,'' de la Vega says, ``and it's very important to get away from that big-city environment every now and then.''
Another transplant in the same community, Dolphin Watch Gallery owner Mary Kay Umberger, turned her favorite vacation destination into her home - at least from Easter through Thanksgiving. ``I'm still waiting for my husband to retire, so we can stay out here year-round,'' says Umberger, who winters in her native East Tennessee mountains.
Just because her Corolla gallery wasn't open over the winter, don't think that Umberger wasn't busy. Much of what is new for gallery customers this spring on the Outer Banks was visualized and created during the winter.
Umberger's specialty is etching, in which an image is created on a plate and reproduced on paper for a very limited number of prints. Copper, she says, is durable enough to sometimes produce more than 100 prints of a scene, yet she insists that no two etchings are identical.
For some of her etchings, Umberger makes her own paper, with the aid of a kitchen appliance. ``I mix the pulp for my handmade paper in a big blender,'' she says.
Wildlife, ducks, dolphins and lighthouses show up in Umberger's art, and she says that spring is a good time for visitors to the Outer Banks to actually see some of the real-life images that have been captured in the works at her gallery.
``Lots of the animals and birds that you can see now, like the sanderlings and terns, you just won't see them that often in six weeks when the crowds get here,'' Umberger says. ``You sure won't be able to see deer like we can some days now.''
At the cusp of another April evening, farther south where time moves a little quicker and distance is measured by mileposts, a handful of comfortably dressed people chat as they trickle into the Ghost Fleet Gallery of Fine Art in Nags Head for a poetry reading.
Glenn Eure and his wife, Pat, on this Saturday night have transformed the main gallery area into a bohemian coffee house, complete with candles and an aloof pet cat wandering from shin to shin.
The lights go out at 7:30, and the three dozen or so people in attendance listen as the words fall from the mouths of three out-of-town poets like wax onto the imported beer bottles serving as candleholders.
``We have shows continuously this time of year,'' says Glenn Eure, an active advocate for the artistic and literary community of the Outer Banks. His is one of several shops in the Gallery Row neighborhood between the Beach Road and the Bypass just south of Milepost 10. Other galleries congested in the area include Morales Art Gallery, the Yellowhouse Gallery, the Lighthouse, Greenleaf, Nostalgia, Anna Gartrell's Gallery by the Sea, and the Seaside Art Gallery.
On the Ghost Fleet agenda for May are an Artists' Self-Portrait showcase, a photography show that opens on the 5th, and a Mother's Day Paint-In, for ladies only, on May 12 from 1 to 3 p.m.
``I've got a copy of a newspaper article that says `Where artists come, the people will follow,' '' says Pat Eure. ``That's from an article about the Outer Banks published on July 10, 1937, in the Elizabeth City paper.''
She says she firmly believes that artists serve their societies by helping define that most vexing of life's pronouns. ``They can help us all figure out what it's all about,'' she says.
``From the beginning, the artists have been translating life onto canvas or stone or whatever medium they are using,'' she says. ``Art of all types is an invitation toward transformation.''
A three-dimensional oil-and-canvas face - one of the dozens of Glenn Eure pieces on display - gapes happily over the crowd of listeners, and Jill Palaez Baumgaertner, a Cuban-American writer from the Chicago area, reads a poem about Adam and Eve, and how the buried bulbs of jonquils resemble the tiny fists of babies. No one, Glenn Eure says, will leave his gallery hungry.
As you head south on N.C. 12 after exploring the ``not so beachy'' galleries on Roanoke Island, such as Island Gallery, the pace again slows down.
As Hatteras Island curves into a slightly parenthetical arc cradling the eastern part of the state, there's the Gaskins Gallery in Avon, which features the work of owner Denise Gaskins and her octogenarian grandmother, who took up painting only this decade. Linda Browning's Buxton shop, Browning Artworks, features a wide variety of items, from tribal weavings to blown glass to porcelains, pottery and photographs.
Across the Hatteras Inlet on Ocracoke Island, Kathleen O'Neal says she has seen the arts community on the Outer Banks grow from fledgling to full-fledged. ``Much more so than 20 years ago when I came here, there's an enclave of working artists here,'' says O'Neal, who laughingly says the locals still won't consider her a matron in the arts community, despite her creation of an art cooperative in 1982 that has helped lead to the opening of several new galleries. ``In order to be a matron, I would have had to originally be from here.''
O'Neal says she was an emotional shambles with a soul in desperate need of nourishment when she arrived on the island.
``I came to Ocracoke to recover,'' she says flatly. ``I lost both my parents, two of my grandparents, and I went through a divorce, all within a year.
``When I was a little kid, I had read a story in National Geographic about Ocracoke,'' she said. ``It had black-and-white photos with it, if that says how long ago it was. . . . I swear it always stuck with me.''
O'Neal's Island Artworks, on British Cemetery Road behind the Anchorage Inn, was one of the first year-round galleries in Ocracoke. She heartily encourages spring travelers to beat the crush of summer, going so far as to say, ``I'd really prefer to go to the mountains myself between June and August.''
O'Neal works with various metal and bead combinations to create art jewelry, and says that the ocean itself contributes to her work.
``It coughs stuff up for you,'' she says. ``All kinds of stuff I've found has made a direct contribution to my art - bones, feathers, driftwood, shells.''
For the true explorers who visit her shop, O'Neal suggests they take a day trip to tiny Portsmouth Island, where she says a village deserted in the mid-'60s is being overgrown with vegetation.
``There's a guy here in town who takes people over to Portsmouth, and you can wander around where the people used to live not too long ago, and find old wine bottles and things from the 1800s,'' she says. ``It's fascinating.''
But without people, she says, it's not ideal.
``I love the people, really. But I do hope we will all always have a place to run to.''
Many of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Outer Banks consider the area's art galleries their place to run to. by CNB