BY RICK DE YAMPERT
Walk into Steve and Rebecca Dornsife’s art-packed residence — an 1890s, picket-fenced home near the heart of DeLand — and you’ll feel 13 eyes watching you as you move through the formal living room. The 13 eyes are littered across a single face in the oil painting The Blind Poet, by 32-year-old Italian artist Alessandro Sicioldr.
A witch with sacrificial goat and grimoire; a giant, bizarro bright-hued portrait of rock star Freddie Mercury that looks like he stepped out of a Mexican wrestling ring on the Day of the Dead; a woman with a face that seems distorted by a computer glitch (a work titled The New Normal) — these are just some of the many surreal and phantasmagoric paintings that hang from virtually every bit of wall space in the Dornsife home.
The couple, who moved to DeLand from Delaware earlier this year, insist they will have the wall space to hang the dozens of other works still scattered on the floors throughout their home.
More than a dozen paintings from the Dornsifes’ collection, including The Blind Poet, will be featured in “Through a Glass Darkly,” the aptly named exhibition at the Museum of Art – DeLand’s 600 N. Woodland Blvd. location that runs through Dec. 3.
Along with the Dornsifes’ paintings, the exhibit will feature what the museum’s website calls “the more magical, mysterious and macabre-themed work” within its permanent collection, including works by Cheryl Bogdanowitsch, Larry Cahall, Richard Frank, Judith Page, Phil Parker, Frank Rampolla, Elsie Shaw and Hiram Williams.
Steve and Rebecca Dornsife show Margo Selski’s Under the Collar, one of the works in “Through a Glass Darkly.”
PHOTO BY MUSEUM OF ART – DELANDThe Dornsife collection “speaks to my dark soul,” Rebecca Dornsife said, her laughter indicating her comment is, at least to some degree, tongue-in-cheek.
Indeed, she adds, “I don’t think most of these pieces are dark. This is what I love. I very much love the Halloween season. I love horror movies. I love spooky.”
That love is sometimes reflected in her work as the art director of Suntup Editions, a publisher of exquisitely crafted and illustrated limited-edition books including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-house Five and such horror and sci-fi works as William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Stephen King’s Misery and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.
“I don’t look at some of this art and say ‘It’s dark,’” said Steve Dornsife, who works for Guidewire, a California-based software company. “I would say it’s eclectic.”
Indeed, some of the Dornsife collection, such as Margo Selski’s Under the Collar, is whimsical in an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way. Other works, such as Gustavo Rimado’s Rebirth and his Freddie Mercury portrait, are more creepy, akin to the paintings featured in Night Gallery, Rod Serling’s post-Twilight Zone TV series in the early 1970s.
Rebecca grew up in Maryland and earned a double major in fine arts and graphic design at Flagler College in St. Augustine. Soon after, she and Steve met in Tampa.
“I’ve always known I wanted to do something in the arts,” she said.
The couple, who celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary this month, began collecting art on their honeymoon cruise that featured an art auction where they bought a signed silk-screen Erte, a Peter Max original and a Dali etching print.
Their art collecting was sporadic over the immediately ensuing years, as they raised their son, Jacob.
In 2015, Rebecca’s work as art director for Suntup led the couple to attend a pop-up event near their Delaware home by the IX Art Show, a prestigious event that features works of “imaginative realism” — that is, paintings by such top fantasy artists as Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell and others.
The Dornsifes’ collecting of surrealist, fantasy and outre works began in earnest in 2018, when they attended the IX show at its permanent home in Reading, Pennsylvania, and later Art Market Hamptons in New York and Haven Gallery in Northport, New York.
Steve says about 85 percent of the couple’s collection are mutually agreed upon purchases.
“We tend to be drawn to the human figure in some way, shape or form — either magical realism or contemporary realism,” Rebecca said.
“I like when there’s a narrative in a painting,” Steve added, something he often finds lacking in mainstream landscapes or abstracts. “There’s gotta be some story behind it, you know.”
The story of the Dornsifes’ move to DeLand is almost as fantastical as the tuxedo-wearing fish and apocalyptic landscapes in their art collection.
Given that they both work remotely, they were contemplating a move from Delaware to Virginia, elsewhere in the Northeast or really anywhere across the country. Florida was on their radar because they had lived here previously, and Rebecca’s parents had moved to the coast near the Indian River several years ago.
Then came the serendipity. In mid-January, the Museum of Art – DeLand opened “Mysterious Realms,” a solo exhibition featuring the works of Andrea Kowch, whose paintings the Dornsifes collected. The Dornsifes, who had never met the artist, were invited along with other collectors of her work to attend the opening festivities. The couple arrived on a Friday, attended the opening reception Saturday, became spellbound by the charms of DeLand and, on a whim, went house-hunting. After a real estate agent showed them that historic home on Sunday, they signed a contract to buy it on Monday.
“We fell in love with the vibe of the town, the vibe of the people,” Steve said. “I don’t see a pretentious person around here. It feels very community-oriented and arts-oriented.”
The presence and bustling activities of the museum, the Athens Theatre and Stetson University, the availability of the historic home, the proximity to the ocean, “being close enough to some metropolitan areas but not feeling like we’re right in the middle of the city” were all factors, Steve said. “We found a gem of a place that we didn’t really know about until we came down for the first time.”
Museum works in “Through a Glass Darkly” include the disturbing portraits, if one can call them that, of Hiram Williams; Robert Fichter’s Atom, a discombobulating sort of cartoon-style scene of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb, replete with baby cyclops; and Elsie Shaw’s untitled black-and-gray German Expressionist-like painting of a forlorn woman holding some sort of canine animal.
Museum Executive Director Pattie Pardee said curating “Through a Glass Darkly” was a team effort by museum staff, led by Tariq Gibran, curator of art & exhibitions, in conjunction with Martha Underriner, curator of education.
The outre, phantasmagoric works of “Through a Glass Darkly” “intrigue me,” Pardee said, adding that the museum “can’t just stay static.”
“We collect modern and contemporary art, whether it’s lovely and idyllic or it’s difficult and emotional. The works of ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ are an important part of our collection.”
