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Plastic Trophies

Artist: William Everhart

Exhibits open during Art Walk on the 1st Friday of every month. 6pm-10pm

Gallery hours Monday through Friday 10:00am – 5:00pm

Extended Gallery Hours most Thursdays & Fridays until 10pm

Occasionally galleries may be closed for private events

– Please call ahead for gallery hours –

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Overview

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

—Grateful Dead, 1970

Born into the baby boomer generation, the artist was just seven years old when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Only three months later, America was swept up in the euphoric arrival of Beatlemania. These two seismic events—one steeped in national grief, the other bursting with unbridled joy—became defining emotional landmarks in his early experience of the 1960s.

The paintings and drawings in this exhibition offer a darkly comic, visually rich reflection on one of the most tumultuous and mythologized decades in American history. Figures like JFK, The Beatles, James Bond, Marilyn Monroe, B-movie monsters, TV wrestlers, Rat Finks, and twist dancers populate the work in a surreal parade of cultural icons. Childhood and adolescent memories—ranging from troll dolls and bell bottoms to race riots and political assassinations—are reimagined as a kind of slapstick shadow play. These fragments of the 60’s are melted down and recast into ironic, “plastic” trophies of a revolution that bloomed, wilted, and left behind a psychedelic afterglow.

There’s a haze of nostalgia and uncertainty throughout—an intentional nod to the oft-quoted adage: “If you remember the 60’s, you really weren’t there.” The artist insists he was there (probably), and these groovy, bittersweet souvenirs are his proof.

Bio

Born in a small rust belt town near Pittsburgh. 

Three Stooges, Popeye, Mad Magazine. 

Misc. telepathy with dog, fox, old man. 

Kennedy assassinated.  

The Beatles come to America, tangerine Telefone. 

In grade school struggle times tables, blank at blackboard. 

High school: basketball, track, cross country. 

Kent State: Virginia Perryman Award for creative writing. 

Drop out after one year. 

House painter. 

Ivy School of Professional Art. Two semesters. 

House painter, paper hanger. 

Therapy. 

Meet Allen Ginsberg at reading. Visit NYC. 

Best story: William Burroughs hands me a joint, 

says, “Here young man, get ecstatic.” 

BFA: Indiana University of Pa. 

MFA: Hunter College, NYC. 

Thesis exhibition titled “Withdrawal.” Consists 

of a gated empty gallery room.  Small scandal. 

Actually withdraw from art making for 33 yrs. 

Marriage. Cats. Brooklyn. 

Various jobs at art related institutions inc. 

Sotheby’s Auction House and Snug Harbor Cultural Center. 

Move to Fort Myers, Fla. 

Work at a surveying co. 

Work at Thomas Kinkade art gallery. 

Work at Goodwill Industries. 

Dog Pogo. 

Retire. 

Start writing again. Start making art again. 

At 70 yrs. old have first solo art exhibit at Sidney & Berne Davis Arts Center.