Blog 5 – Found! One Open Door
April Koppenhaver , owner of Mulberry Art Studio in Lancaster PA met with my husband Bruce and I just over one year ago to take a look at some of my brother’s paintings.
After Aprils arrival, Bruce facing a stack of paintings said, “How about you tell us which ones are good and which ones not so good.” He wanted to create two separate groups out of the paintings. We can laugh at that now! After an hour of viewing over 50 paintings we realized, according to April, my brother Lewis’s abstract paintings were exceptional.
Painting after painting April marveled, “strong, excellent, talented, amazing…. April finally stopped going through the paintings and began talking to Bruce and I.
She explained that it would be foolish to send these paintings to auction at this time. April explained we had work ahead of us. She began listing what we needed to do. “The paintings need to be photographed, document where his signature is located on each painting along with title and size. Each painting should be copyrighted. “ She suggested we consider publishing a catalogue of Lewis’s paintings. Get his name out there again. Begin contacting persons he knew from the past. The list continued.
April noticed many of Lewis’s paintings were not signed. She was curious why . She suggested I authenticate each one with a signed sticker and brand them with a custom brand. The work we had ahead of us sounded overwhelming.
We spent over 2 hours looking at paintings with April and her husband Charlie that Sunday afternoon. The plan was to meet again in a month .
Before leaving April made two statements I have not forgotten. “Who is to say who will become the next Picasso? Your brother was extremely talented and disciplined.” At our next meeting April wanted to see some of Lewis’s anatomy drawings. Plus, Bruce needed to come up with a plan for framing the art which she would review before proceeding.
The second memorable thing she said before leaving. “It was an honor to see your brothers work at this stage. Thank You.”
On that Sunday as guardians of the art, Bruce and I made the decision to invest finances, energy and time in seeing Lewis’s artwork launched. Our family had worked hard and fast over a six month period clearing out my brother’s cluttered house. All his belongings were scheduled for auctions. We now realized the paintings of Lewis Lanza Rudolph were going to need to be handled differently. It was going to take commitment on our part to see this through. There was no written road map available to explain how we were to proceed. Fortunately we would start with April Kopenhaver and later meet others to guide us through each aspect of our journey. Finally a first door had opened.