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At first glance, the images in the blue-velvet hardcover book appear to show the home of an eccentric hoarder. Nearly every surface is covered in seemingly random objects and paraphernalia: There are piles of women\u2019s shoes. Wigs, magnets, pins, paintings. Drums, a bass clarinet, a tambourine. Paint cans, used paintbrushes, cameras. Life-sized cutouts of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Pages ripped out of magazines adorn the walls, along with ads featuring Vanessa Williams and artistic prints of Marilyn Monroe.<\/p>\n
Keep looking, though, and you\u2019ll also see photos of one man in various life stages. In one image, his salt-and-pepper beard and moustache frame his smile while a black bucket hat and sunglasses adorn his head. In another photo, he is younger; his beard and moustache are still dark brown. He dons a tuxedo and a red bow tie and holds a drink as a woman stands next to him.<\/p>\n
The man is the artist and Connecticut College Professor Emeritus of Studio Art Barkley L. Hendricks, who died in 2017. The woman next to him is his wife and current estate manager, Susan Hendricks \u201994, who earned a degree in art history from Conn. She and Hendricks\u2019 former student David Katzenstein \u201976, a photographer, spoke at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum on Oct. 9 about their recently published book, \u201cBarkley L. Hendricks: Piles of Inspiration Everywhere<\/a>,\u201d as well as Hendricks\u2019 life, career, legacy and the environment that inspired him.<\/p>\n \u201cBarkley was notoriously private; he didn’t open his studio to anybody,\u201d Susan told the audience of about 50 people. \u201cThere were times when he was not too thrilled to have me in there. I knew what the deal was when we married: That was his space. He felt he needed to have that private space to create whatever was going to be next on his plate. That was how he did what he did, which he did so beautifully and masterfully.\u201d<\/p>\n It turns out the piles of objects featured in the book weren\u2019t the random and forgotten stashes of a hoarder\u2014they were \u201cpiles of inspiration\u201d for Hendricks, a Yale-educated multimedia artist who taught at Conn from 1972 to 2010 and was known for his life-sized oil portraits of Black Americans who were his relatives, friends, acquaintances and strangers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe title of the book is something that Barkley said to me numerous times,\u201d Susan explained. \u201cWhoever is married, you know how marriage is over the years: You have your little tiffs, and it could be very frustrating living in the house with everything that he collected\u2014shoes to Barbie dolls to paint, everything you can imagine. I would say, \u2018Can’t you just clean up that corner?\u2019 and he would shrug and say, \u2018Piles of inspiration everywhere, dear.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That inspiration yielded a prolific and in-demand output. Hendricks\u2019 work has been featured in places like the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Tate Modern in London, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. His major retrospective, \u201cBarkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool,\u201d featured more than 50 paintings and was on exhibition at a number of national museums from 2008 through 2010. One of his paintings was also displayed at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., for its opening in September 2016.<\/p>\n A portrait Hendricks painted in 1972, \u201cMr. Johnson (Sammy From Miami),\u201d sold for over $4 million at Sotheby\u2019s in December of 2020, eclipsing his previous sale record of almost $3.5 million for his 1975 double portrait, \u201cYocks,\u201d set in May of 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cPiles\u201d invites the public into a space where Hendricks produced many of his creations. Through pages of vibrant photographs interspersed with quotes from and images of the artist\u2019s handwritten journals, the book is a window into the mind of the artist, as well as where he worked and lived for 35 years with Susan.<\/p>\n Katzenstein took photos \u201cas if he were walking through the house for the first time,\u201d Susan said. \u201cThe book is laid out like a tour of the house, as if someone were visiting. Each chapter is a different part of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n Conn alumnus Katzenstein is a New York-based photographer who has traveled the world to visually chronicle humanity. In 2018, he formed the nonprofit organization The Human Experience Project<\/a>, which creates content to support the mission of organizations who work to inspire lifelong learning and strengthen communities. He is the managing editor of the Barkley L. Hendricks Photography Archive<\/a> and the author of the books\u00a0\u201cRitual,\u201d \u201cDistant Journeys,\u201d and \u201cBrownie<\/a>,\u201d which was published on the same day last month as \u201cPiles.\u201d<\/p>\n Katzenstein worked with the graphic designers for \u201cPiles\u201d on his other books and explained the benefit of the familiar collaboration. \u201cWhen you’re working with very creative people, and there\u2019s a great deal of trust and openness, usually the end product comes out very well. I had complete faith in them, and they had faith in us that what [Susan and I] were going to give them was the quality they needed.\u201d<\/p>\n On trusting the process with Katzenstein for creating \u201cPiles,\u201d Susan said, \u201cI\u2019m representing Barkley, and I\u2019m presenting something to the world that nobody has ever seen before. We\u2019re wandering into his private space, so I felt a really large responsibility for [the book] to be something that he would be proud of and that he wouldn\u2019t take exception to.\u201d<\/p>\n When an audience member asked what it was like to share a home with Hendricks, Susan said, \u201cIt was wonderful. I lived with one of the preeminent artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. I had no complaints\u2014except occasionally when I asked him to move his piles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At first glance, the images in the blue-velvet hardcover book appear to show the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-136531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/shoes2.jpg\")
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