More than underwear at heart of art discussions

Painted Steel sculpture called "leaves of grass" located in the planter at the Salisbury City Hall Parking lot off East Bank Street. Artist Pattie Porter Firestone from Chevy Chase, Md. created the art. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

"Bear" and metal sculpture by Doug Makemson, from Commerce Ga. located on the corner on the Corner of Bank Street and South Main Street in Salisbury. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Jeannette Brossart's "We are the problem, we are the solution" in front of the Rowan Public Library. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

"Saw Horse," a Clyde creation, stands near his home on East Bank Street.

Cheryl Goins, owner of Pottery 101, says the artist's intention in important to consider when determining what constitutes art. Photo by Emily Ford

Clyde often uses found objects in his creations. Salisbury artists are debating what qualifies as art after Clyde taped underwear to his store window and the executive director of the Rowan Arts Council took it. Photo by Emily Ford

By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

Salisbury, a city known for historic preservation and Cheerwine, has a new identity this summer.

Underwear.

Underdrawers have drawn national attention to Salisbury since the executive director of the Rowan Arts Council removed a pair of 2X men’s briefs from the outside of artist Clyde’s antique shop.

Anne Cave said she found the undergarment inappropriate.

Clyde, who dropped his last name Overcash, had Cave charged with larceny. In a July 29 criminal summons, Clyde called the installation “art.”

And the story took off from there.

The incident and Cave’s photo ended up in the “Slammer,” a tabloid that publishes mugshots and crime news. The story made its way to several news websites like fark.com.

While many find the escapade a humorous relief during a hot summer, some in Salisbury hope the underwear debacle will launch a serious conversation.

“This is such an opportunity to open up a discussion about what is art,” said Jenn Selby, who teaches art appreciation at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College.

A seminar series taught by local artists and art historians could illuminate the issue and explore opinions about how someone defines art, Selby said.

“Maybe it will be a catalyst,” said Cheryl Goins, owner of Pottery 101. “Let’s move beyond underwear.”

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Some say the incident has fueled a deeply rooted division that already existed in Salisbury’s art community — a division not between fine art and folk art or artists and hobbyists, but between those who support Clyde and those who don’t.

Clyde, 64, regularly and loudly expresses disdain for the Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Rowan Arts Council and the Salisbury Sculpture Show, among other art institutions and projects.

He often does battle with the city, which notified him Wednesday that his newest display of more than a dozen pairs of underwear hanging from a flagpole and running alongside his building at 114 E. Council St. violates code and requires a permit.

“To find Clyde at the center of controversy is not unexpected,” said Dr. James Haymaker, an art professor retired from Pfeiffer University who taught Clyde in the mid-1960s.

Haymaker counts himself a supporter of Clyde, who has drawn or painted nearly every historic structure in Rowan County and creates art from found objects like wheelbarrows and saws, displayed at his East Bank Street home.

“I have some of his early work,” Haymaker said. “It is absolutely wonderful and beautiful.”

Haymaker also speaks highly of Robert Crum, the artist who allegedly was the target of Clyde’s original underwear installation.

Both men are “very significant and important artists,” Haymaker said.

Clyde won’t say what he intended by duct-taping the briefs to his store window, where they stuck until Cave took them two days later.

“That will come out in a court of law,” he said.

But according to a Charlotte TV station, Clyde said he did it because he didn’t like his neighbor.

Crum operates Robert Crum Fine Art next door to Clyde’s Off Main Antiques. A photo on Facebook of the original underwear prompted Cave to comment, “someone should spank that person.”

Cave and Crum declined to comment for this story.

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Debate over the underwear debacle has become nasty at times. Online, people have called Clyde an “emotional toddler” and the “village idiot.” Cave has been labeled a “snoot” and “stuck-up prude.”

Both are dubbed an “embarrassment.”

“What’s next in art dispute, pitchforks and torches?” artist Annette Hall wrote in a letter to the editor.

While some complain the escapade makes Salisbury look bad, Critters gift shop co-owner Bob Lambrecht disagrees.

“It’s got people talking, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

When Cave took the underwear, she removed what offended her but also raised the profile of the Rowan Arts Council.

Previously, many people weren’t aware the organization even existed, said Sarah Hall, executive director for the Center for Faith & the Arts.

“I do think, overall, it’s good publicity for Clyde, the Rowan Arts Council, and the art scene in Salisbury,” local playwright Sam Post wrote on his blog.

“It could be stimulus for the arts,” artist Carol Dunkley said.

Some have wondered if Cave and Clyde planned the underwear heist as a publicity stunt.

Clyde scoffed at the suggestion.

He apologized for using public resources and court time to resolve a dispute over $5 briefs but said he will pursue a conviction, as well as an apology.

“That’s the only way she’s going to say it,” Clyde said. “It was stolen property and she refused to bring it back.”

Cave previously told the Post she decorated the underwear and returned it, but Clyde said the briefs never reappeared.

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Clyde now claims he never called the underwear “art,” despite his statement to law enforcement.

Regardless, the incident has generated a discussion about just what qualifies as you-know-what.

This age-old question has found new life with a reality TV show on Bravo called “Work of Art,” where contestants create artwork according to a weekly theme.

Defining art for Jerry Saltz, New York magazine’s Pulitzer Prize–nominated art critic and a judge on the show, comes down to the artist’s intent.

“It’s art if the artist says it’s art,” Saltz told Time magazine.

Others say it’s not that simple.

“That’s a question that probably has about a thousand or a million or 10 million answers,” said Haymaker, the retired art professor.

On their first day of art appreciation class, Selby’s students see an image of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 work, “Fountain,” a urinal now considered one of the most important pieces of art in the 20th century.

“The students laugh and joke and say ‘How can that be art?’ ” Selby said. “But at end of the semester, they understand that it is art, even though they don’t have to like it.”

Selby said she sees parallels between Clyde and Duchamp and would place Clyde’s underwear installations somewhere between shock art and Dada, an anti-bourgeois cultural movement that included Duchamp.

For Goins, the potter, art is a form of communication.

“It’s the artist trying to express something,” she said.

The best art evokes emotion and makes a connection with the viewer.

“Not all work, not all intent, is successful,” she said.

Intent is important when defining art. If Clyde didn’t intend for the underwear to be art, then it wasn’t, Goins said.

But others say that nearly any object hung by prolific Clyde on his store window qualifies as art.

“If it’s a pair of my underwear hanging from a tree in front of my house, then it’s just underwear. I’m not that kind of artist,” said Post, the playwright. “Clyde Overcash, on the other hand, consistently produces visual art ... His underwear, hanging in front of his gallery, is certainly a work of art.

“It may stink, but it’s still a work of art.”

While Clyde’s identity as a well-known and pedigreed artist helped determine that the underwear was art, Cave’s title as leader of the Rowan Arts Council also helped turn the incident into a news story, Sarah Hall said.

“If another person had taken it, it wouldn’t be perceived as a judgement on art,” Hall said.

Conflict between artists and among supporters of the arts is not unusual, Haymaker said.

Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci had a significant confrontation when they were commissioned to do work at the Florence city hall, which was never completed, he said.

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The great underwear caper has inspired creativity in others.

And entrepreneurism.

Critters, located at 125 S. Main St., has a window full of all types of underwear, from the “world’s largest” briefs to tiny skivvies for squirrels.

Co-owner Lambrecht has carried the undergarments since opening Critters three years ago but arranged them in the window after the underwear story hit the July 31 front page of the Post and multiple other media outlets the next day.

His ode to underwear was not intended as a statement of support for Clyde but as a timely response to an event in the news, Lambrecht said.

He counts both Clyde and Cave as friends and is simply taking advantage of the community’s intense interest in the story to drum up some business, he said.

Even his former customers in California have heard about the case of the purloined underpants, Lambrecht said.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” he said.

Clyde and Cave’s court date is Aug. 26.

Contact Emily Ford at 704-797-4264.

Click here to participate in an ongoing conversation about what defines art in our community conversation forum.