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The unique abstract needlepoint creations of the late Washington (Conn.) artist David Eugene Bell are featured in a special exhibition running from July 11 to August 27 at the Good News Cafe and Gallery. The retrospective show, "David Eugene Bell: His Life, His Art," invites you to rediscover the powerful vision of this extraordinary artist whose professional career spanned nearly seven decades, from Broadway to internationally famous interior design to his pioneering interpretations of needlepoint art. The retrospective show marks the first anniversary of his death on July 2, 2006.
The exhibition celebrates an artistic odyssey that began in mid-life during the 1970s when Bell took up needlepoint and began to transform this traditional art form into profoundly personal "electric abstractions" characterized by a synergistic interplay of color and form. In a review of a Bell show in 1995 published in the Litchfield County Times, Alistair Highet described Bell's works as "reeling, exuberant, often outrageous, reflective of a magnanimous personality."
"One thread, one stitch leads to the next in spontaneous patterns that are fascinating to the eye and painstaking to create," Highet wrote. "Despite the tremendous concentration the work requires, the last thing his work could be called is fussy."
His needlework pieces gained widespread critical acclaim in the New York Times and other publications, and were featured in exhibitions at the Silo Gallery in New Milford, the Main Street Gallery in Nantucket, Mass., the Stamford (Conn.) Museum and other galleries and museums across New England. The new retrospective exhibition at Good News Cafe and Gallery represents the first major show of his works since the artist's death.
Bell's uncommon career began as a youthful actor on the Broadway stage in plays such as "Life with Father" and "Our Town." Following service in World War II, he pursued studies at the Pratt Institute and New York School of Interior Design and launched his second career as a designer for Best & Company, Lord & Taylor and Macy's in New York City. He secured his international reputation in the field during his tenure in the 1970s and 1980s as director of the interior design department at Bloomingdale's, where he inspired the "Country Life" style of theme-based home and room designs and worked for celebrity clients such as Johnny Carson, Carol Channing, Lucille Ball and Joel Grey. He founded his own creative design firm, Design Multiples, to provide a diverse range of prize-winning designs, displays and promotions for corporate clients including Eastman Kodak, Burlington Mills and Laura Ashley.
His decision to leave behind his high-profile profession as an interior designer and devote himself to his third career in needlepoint art brought him to Litchfield County, where he settled in a historic former church along the banks of the Shepaug River in Washington Depot. In the studio of his home rechristened "The Bellfry," he embarked on a series of abstract creations that often combined abstract needlepoint designs with an eclectic diversity of three-dimensional objects.
Reviewing a previous Bell exhibition at Good News Cafe & Gallery in 2001, Alice Tessier wrote that the spontaneity of the artist's creative process was a driving force in his works.
"Few if any of his compositions are pre-designed," Tessier observed. "He starts with more of a notion than an idea, and it takes shape in form and meaning as the needle moves in and out across an expanse of canvas.
"He works with a sure hand at his needlework, executing bold, colorful and frequently intricate designs," she noted. "What contributes to his surety is his spontaneity and the fact that he employs a simple one-and-a-half cross stitch."
As his needlepoint work developed into more abstract and complex creations over the course of more than three decades, Bell was drawn to explore variations such as collage, multi-paneled diptych and triptych compositions, and split canvases. "His wall pieces combine needlepoint with collage dolls' heads, masks, wooden molds, window frames, and reproductions of recognizable works of art," Highet remarked in his 1995 review. Bell's most complex works such as the triptych "Star Wars" took several years to complete.
"There is something in you, in the creative person, when you begin to work," Bell told Highet. "If you stick with that, and follow it, then it is going to work out."
Susan Pearsall, writing in The New York Times, observed that Bell's re-creation of the art of needlepoint might be more accurately described as "painting with a needle."
"Sometimes ideas are suggested by the worn window frames he searches out at antiques shops and flea markets," Pearsall noted. "For example, Bell followed the diamond-shaped gridwork of a narrow, arched window frame when doing a needlepoing work he titled 'Gothic Window.' In another piece, 'Through the Garden Gate,' Bell used needlework designs to fill the openings in a section of Victorian-style porch railing."
Bell's local reputation as an artist and designer was matched by recognition of his active engagement in a broad range of community service activities in the Washington and New Milford areas. He served as a longtime volunteer for the New Milford Hospice, taught art classes at local schools on a pro-bono basis, and assisted in patient visits and fund-raising for the Northeastern AIDS Project in Torrington.
"My work is the tapestry of my life," Bell said when his earlier Good News Cafe show opened in fall 2001. "There is a reason for everything in my life, and I see it now more than ever. In every stitch, I find the answers I have been searching for. But the search never ends there is always something new to discover."
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