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Tue, Mar 16 2010 

Published: May 07, 2009 10:50 am    print this story  

FOR THE LOVE OF POLLY: A son's mission


Polly King’s paintings fill the house where Don King grew up. They are stockpiled on shelves, hung on walls or displayed in frames on tabletops in every room.

CLICK FOR INTERACTIVE 360º

Take a 360º panoramic tour of the Polly King Gallery in Niagara Falls. Immersive imaging by James Neiss



To a first-time visitor it is an explosion of color and images and far too much to take in during a single visit.

The place where she and her husband Marvin raised their two sons is now a casual museum of her work, a testimony to her energy. What is clear upon opening the door of the Chilton Avenue home is that Polly King’s work is astonishing in quantity, style and scope.

From the chipped pottery she implanted in the front sidewalk to the casually organized sketchbooks and colorful decorations, her efforts pays homage to color and the contrasts between whimsy and drama compete for the eye.

Throughout her life Polly King created thousands of paintings and her youngest son, Don King, is making it his business to organize and grow his mother’s legacy so that the world knows the extent of her gift.

And while he knows that building her legacy is the challenge of his lifetime, he also got a small legacy of his own in progress due to the time he’s spent working to improve the city of Niagara Falls.

Don King has been on the Niagara Falls School Board for 31 years. Over the past three decades he’s also been a member of the board of Memorial Hospital, the YMCA and the Niagara Falls Library. In the course of his life he’s helped run a prestigious dress shop in the Falls called the Wellesley Shop as well as an art gallery and he has raised four successful daughters with his wife, Betty.

When others of his era might be looking to spend more time on the golf course or fishing some quiet pond, he

has set a much bigger agenda set for himself.

“All this time, I knew that at some point in my life I would really want to take this challenge on and help my mother become known as not just a regional artist but as an international artist,” he said.

“These are some of my favorites.” Don King reached into a shoulder high cabinet of thin drawers and, one after another, pulled out paintings to demonstrate the scope of his mother’s talent.

“This has the very feeling of Cezanne,” he said, referencing the French impressionist painter. He held up a bright watercolor depicting a bowl of lemons on a blue and white tablecloth over next to open windows.

Another of his favorites, he said while reaching into the drawers, was a sketch from her travels in Europe. Polly was without her paints so she took the soil from the ground. “She rubbed it on the paper and that’s how she got the black and brown tones,” her son explained, proudly. “I think that’s a magic piece.”

“That’s the kind of piece that should be in the Albright Knox,” he added.

There’s the real rub. Winning international acclaim for one’s mother is a big job for anybody’s son, no matter how talented the parent.

“This is huge,” he admitted of his intentions. But, he’s currently researching how the greatest artists are marketed and he’s planning to convene a summit of Polly King loyalists from around the country.

Their challenge he said, will be to “romance,” the world with the talent of Polly King, but first they will have to decide how to package her as an artist.

He recounts a story of taking a portfolio of her work to a highbrow gallery and how the curator asked if the same person did all the paintings. When assured that she did, noted “she couldn’t be very good,” if she painted in so many different styles.

Don King feels certain that talent is only one facet of acclaim, while the other is apt marketing.

Surely the son has the marketing skills in his gene pool. His mother created the ads for the family’s prestigious Main Street dress shop and wrote all the copy for its televised fashion shows. His brother, Peter King, was the founder of one of the most well known ad agencies in Buffalo, Weil, Levy and King.

Also, King is hoping some of the local art museum’s can add a bit of muscle to his efforts. The Castellani Art Museum has two Polly King paintings in its collection, and the director of the Burchfield Penney expressed interest in obtaining a King painting as well.

While noting that it’s not the job of art museums to promote the work of any one artist, Kate Koperski, director of the Castellani Art Museum noted that the museum owns a floral still life and an abstract of Niagara Falls.

“I really appreciate they represent the different styles she experimented with,” said Koperski.

The Castellani also held a temporary exhibit of her work after she died in 1993, she said.

The Burchfield Penney Museum in Buffalo, which is more noted for presenting the work of regional artists, does not yet own a Polly King painting.

“I’d love to have her in our collection,” said Ted Pietrzak, director of the Burchfield which is noted for their regional collections. His gallery has been concentrating for a long while on capital fundraising which has allowed them to open their brand new building five months ago. There is currently only a minimal budget for acquisitions, he said, noting that “most of our artwork comes to us by donation.”

Whether or not the art world fully embraces his mother’s work, Don King is using his mother’s work to enhance the world in other ways. He has begun selling reproductions and originals at benefits such as a recent event for the Children’s Choir in Washington, D.C., increasing his mother’s profile while raising money for a good cause.

Regardless of the outcome of his efforts, Don King is certain he is doing some of the most important work of his lifetime and that his mother would have approved. “She wanted her paintings to be loved,” he said, “not judged.”

When Polly King died sixteen years ago her family buried her with her paints and brushes as she requested. They also read a piece she had written to be read upon her death called “Polly’s Goodbye.”

It reads, in part: “Cheer any who may come to pay respect ... that they may catch a gleam of all the happiness I felt as I tried to tell in paint, the joy I had in people and places and everything.”

Contact reporter Michele DeLucaat 282-2311, ext. 2263.







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Photos


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Prolific Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. Her son Don King is confused why she still has not been recognized as one of the last centuries greatest artists, though many think she should. / (Click for larger image)


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Prolific Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. Here, her son Don King, shows off some of her works in her former home, now a museum. None/ (Click for larger image)


None/ (Click for larger image)


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. She produced an incredible variety of styles, even in the bathroom. None/ (Click for larger image)


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. She produced an incredible variety of styles. None/ (Click for larger image)


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. She produced an incredible variety of styles. None/ (Click for larger image)


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Prolific Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. Here, her son Don King, looks at one of his favorite images of Niagara Falls. None/ (Click for larger image)


James Neiss/staff photographer Niagara Falls, NY - Niagara Falls Artist Polly King left her legacy of work in her home, now turned into a museum. She produced an incredible variety of styles. None/ (Click for larger image)



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