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SEPTEMBER 2004 . TODAY'S CHARLOTTE WOMAN

Home is Where the Art is
Larry and Janice Elder's Eclectic Collection Stirs the Soul

by Susan Rivers

WHEN LARRY ELDER DECIDED TO QUIT THE CORPORATE LIFE THREE YEARS AGO AND open an art gallery, his wife Janice had two words for him: "You're kidding."

The gallery opened in November of 2001, two months after the catastrophic events of 9/11 dealt the nation devastating blows. Despite the bruised economy, Larry Elder toughed out the dark times and prevailed. Elder Gallery, located in the design-oriented South End district of Charlotte, is now proving successful. And the passion for the visual arts that fueled the couple's business plan has accelerated growth of their own vibrant art collection, infusing their Dilworth home with color, character and intensity.

Seeking to simplify their lives, this art-loving couple moved four years ago from a large home on Berkeley Avenue to a more modest two bedroom dwelling. overlooking Latta Park. The couple downsized in all respects save one: their art. Not only did they keep their personal collection intact,but they planned renovations of the one-story home to accommodate art in every possible nook and cranny, including the garden. Walking through the door into the Elders' home, one is enveloped in a sensory experience that engages the emotions as well as the eyes.

Pots, Pans and Paintings

Larry and Janice chose their current home, built in 1962, because they felt its stripped-down style lent itself easily to renovation. Most of the changes were concentrated in the kitchen,which was converted to a sleek, light-filled space with a small library/sitting room at one end. Both of the Elders love to cook and Janice has won numerous awards for her cooking, most recently at an event in San Francisco, where she competed against some of the country's best amateur chefs. Larry promised his wife that the remodeled kitchen would be functional as well as beautiful, filled with natural light With plenty of room for art. The result is a bibliophile-gourmand-art collector's dream.

A work space consisting of butter-toned maple cabinets and black-granite countertops looks out on the back garden through a wall of windows that captures the view of the slate-edged pond and blooming borders like a frame around a picture. Built-in bookshelves and a pair of easy chairs help define the library portion of the room, inviting conversation with the chefs and providing easy access to cookbooks.

Art functions in the kitchen as an element of warmth, as essential to the inventory as the pots and pans. One painter in particular, South Carolinian Claire Miller Hopkins, is well represented in the kitchen, with a low-country landscape on one wall, a portrait of Larry as a young man hanging above the back door and a gleaming still-life of lemons propped against the backsplash like a little shrine to gustatory pleasure.

Old Meets Bold

The dining room borrows visual space from the garden just as the kitchen does, with glass doors opening on to a small terrace surrounded by evergreens. The screen of hollies and rhododendrons that masks Romany Road helps to make this space a very private enclave. In the dining room, the Elders tackle bold contrasts, combining the primitive texture of woven cane chairs and the down-at-heel beauty of a stripped antique sideboard with the stylish urbanity of a halogen chandelier. Two of Janice Elder's favorite paintings dominate this room. The large, dark oil by Edward Harrison May (1846) resonates with emotional intensity. TItled "Mary Magdalene at the Sepulcher," it depicts the religious figure reclining in a wasteland with the crosses of Golgotha in the distance.

"I love the expression on Mary Magdalene's face," Janice explains. "You can feel everything she's feeling. And the skin tones are wonderful."

The artist, an Englishman who divided his time between New York and Europe, painted socialites, in addition to figures from the New Testament. May is known for his sensitive portraits of American novelist Edith Wharton.

Juxtaposed against this traditional canvas is a neon-bright pop art painting by another New Yorker, Patrick Glover. Both Elders are admirers of Glover's edgy work and keep another large piece by the painter in the bedroom hallway. Larry confirms that in their art collection, as well as their environment, he and his wife aim for "a mix of the traditional and the cutting edge."

A Room with a View

This mix is carried out successfully in the living room, where the grand piano commands attention. (Both the Elders play.) Paintings, notably a large abstract mounted above the fireplace, pump up the emotional volume here. Painted in electric tones of red and blue-green by Santa Fe artist Javier Barbosa, the painting is lacquered with a secret finish that makes it gleam '1ike a new car," as Larry puts it. The work provides definite drama, but it doesn't overpower, thanks to the stabilizing influence of art pottery and glass treasures that stake out the room's horizontal planes.

Pottery pieces from Spartanburg. raku from Japan and a pair of pie crust-edged urns picked up at an estate sale (since identified by a Sotheby's assessor as significant pieces) are displayed in an egalitarian assortment on the sun-lit hunt board. Built-in niches flanking the fireplace display pieces characterized by earthy colors and vestigial shapes. These include handmade Seagrove pottery, an unusual aquamarine Rookwood vase with nautilus-shell handles and contemporary hand-blown glass treasures. More glass glitters in a collection of heirloom crystal arranged on an antique dresser. Above the dresser, a starkly beautiful snowscape of the Baltimore waterfront by American painter Henry Gasser echoes the crystal's icy light in its street lamps and lonely tenement windows.

Art From the Heart

Goethe wrote, "In art, the best is good enough." That philosophy seems to guide the Elders in their fearless approach to collecting, acquiring unique pieces that appeal to them regardless of style, age or provenance. As evidence of this, Larry points out a mid-century portrait of a dark-haired woman that hangs in their living room. The woman in the painting is unknown to them, but Janice Elder was so strongly affected by the portrait that she had to acquire it.

"A painting has to speak to me almost instantly," Janice observes, trying to articulate her criteria for buying art. "I know within a few seconds if it's right. Larry and I don't usually buy a piece without giving the other a chance to see it, but in this case I bought it, brought it home and said, 'Larry, you may not like this piece, but I love it enough for both of us.'"

She needn't have worried. Larry responded positively to the portrait, and both husband and wife were touched by the story behind it. According to a poem the Elders discovered attached to the back of the portrait, the subject of the painting died young. Penned by her widower, the poem was a profession of love for his beautiful bride.

"It's an emotional choice," Elder elaborates. "People sometimes choose art for the wrong reasons. They're looking at the colors, the style. But art just works."

This proves consistently true in the other rooms of the Elders' home. In Larry's dressing room, a haunting Sargent-like oil of a pensive young man painted by Leon A. Makielski in 1939 ("Polish Gentleman") shares the tiny space with a rough-textured painted panel by a contemporary Seattle "outsider" artist named Terry Terrell and a mixed-media piece in bold geometric shapes that is the work of one of the Elder's favorite artists, Cuban-born Leonel Mattheu.

In the master bedroom, guest bedroom and bath, the visual feast continues. The walls of these restful, shady rooms display more work by Makielski and Hopkins, among others, including a portrait of the Elders that Janice commissioned from Hopkins and presented to Larry for their 25th wedding anniversary.

"Here's the weird thing," Larry recalls. "I also commissioned a portrait of us by another artist and had it delivered to Janice."

Janice admits that over the years she and Larry have developed tastes and inclinations that are similar. The first piece they purchased together, a painting of an Asian woman by Carolinian Eula Lecroix, still hangs at their cabin in the mountains, and Janice says, "I still look at it and smile, remembering how we chose it." After thirty-five years of marriage and collecting art together, Janice Elder has developed a philosophy that could be as useful in acquiring a partner as it is in acquiring art.

"Don't rush," she advises. "Make sure you love the piece before committing to it. Make sure you're going to love it 20 years from now." TCW