Terry Twigg comes to Benicia after a lifetime on the east coast and a stint living in Europe where he studied painting masters and was especially influenced by the Impressionists. Locally, he has exhibited his work in a Benicia Art Center Group Show. This April, he and his wife, Vickie Marchand, are debuting their new Benicia gallery NY2CA, which will feature individual artists and their work in painting, sculpture, and mixed media.
He is an Iowa native who had an idyllic childhood on the banks of the San Francisco Bay in Palo Alto and then returned to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he graduated from high school. Freshly fortified with a BFA from NW Missouri State University, he decided to pursue a creative life and landed in late 1960s NYC falling in with well-known counterculture artists and intellectuals of the time. He secured a position managing exhibitions at the Museum of Natural History — his most memorable show was about the extraordinary gold pieces fashioned by the Mayans.
Up for adventure, an airline stewardess friend convinced him to head over to Europe for a couple of months while still in his 20s. Their overseas jaunt turned into a four-year Roman expat adventure that cultivated his artistic and entrepreneurial skills. He started crafting hand-painted, hip-hugging belts and selling them off a blanket on the Spanish Steps — careful to evade Rome’s notorious polizia who would confiscate anything and everything. Flush with cash, he was also able to pursue his love of painting and soon after was invited to have his first one-man show at Temple University’s Tyler Art & Architecture School in Rome.
Returning to NYC in 1974, a casual meeting of like-minded artists led to an opportunity that made Twigg a pioneer in the conversion of manufacturing lofts to artists’ studios in what is now the famous Soho neighborhood. With a group of other creative Manhattanites, they reclaimed a six-story, loft building on Wooster Street that became a 25-unit anchor in the district’s renaissance. He was one of the early boutique owners in the emerging retail community and showed his paintings in the Second Floor Gallery, which he also co-founded.
At the same time, he was developing his fine jewelry-making skills and business acumen. He crafted a bone, silver, and gold line of women’s jewelry that eventually took off launching his lifelong career and his company Van de Lune, Inc. His subsequent work has been noted for fine craftsmanship and the creative interplay of unique minerals, agates, and crystals with gemstones.
Throughout his career, Twigg has continued to paint with a technique that utilizes acrylic paints and acrylic paint pens. He finds inspiration for his ethereal images by going into a meditative state while painting and allowing visions and messages to emerge onto the canvas.
Twigg’s fine jewelry has sold in art galleries, museum shops, juried craft fairs, and top department stores across the United States as far west as Honolulu. And he has been featured in numerous publications including Women’s Wear Daily, Harper’s Bazaar, and Essence.
His jewelry has been sold in the following:
Stores and Galleries
Henry Bendel, Bloomingdale’s, Bamberger’s, Macy*s, Franklin Simon, Aaron Faber Gallery/NYC, Artisan Gallery, Craftsman at Chelsea Court in DC, Ruelle’s of NYC, Rare Discovery of Honolulu, Steinhardt of NY, Thomlinson Craft of MD, Museum Shop at Carnegie Institute, Newark Museum Gift Store
Shows Curated by American Crafts Museum/NYC
Fort Mason/SF, American Crafts Festival at Lincoln Center/NYC, Rhinebeck Craft Show/NY, Baltimore Winter Market, Minneapolis/St. Paul Craft Show, St. Louis Craft Show, Ft. Worth Craft Show
Museum and Art Shows
American Museum of Natural History Art Show, Queens Museum of Art Show, Whitney Museum Craftsman Show, Washington Square Art Show/NYC, WBAI Crafts Fair/NYC, Evanston Craft Show at Northwestern University, Crafts at the Castle/Boston
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