Sunday, August 14, 2005
Moss collects 'friends' galore
A big crowd of fans of artist P. Buckley Moss gathered in Roanoke to see her Saturday.
From the outside, this all looks a little fanatical. Maybe even a little cultish.
There may be some casual fans of self-styled "people's artist" P. Buckley Moss - everyone calls her Pat - but they weren't apparent among the hundreds who showed up at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center for a national Moss collectors convention Saturday.
The room teemed with mostly women milling through the largest exhibit of Moss paintings outside her Waynesboro gallery, almost all of them with a purchase tucked under an arm.
Nearly 2,500 people had attended the convention by early afternoon, said Jake Henderson, vice president of P. Buckley Moss Galleries and Moss' stepson.
Moss holds two of these conventions a year in states where she's most popular - Virginia, Ohio, Iowa - but there are not many places more Moss-mad than Roanoke, which last hosted Moss in 2001. The biggest crowds are always in Roanoke, Henderson said. Roanoke, in fact, was the site of Moss' first public showing of her work in the early 1970s.
Fans are drawn not only to the simple, clean living depicted in Moss' trademark country scenes, but also to the highly accessible artist.
"Pat herself is one of the biggest draws," Henderson said.
The business around Moss is enormous. At 72, she paints an estimated 150 pieces a year, many of them with her familiar bowlegged Amish characters in country settings or in front of local landmarks. And it's more than paintings. Saturday's offering included not only prints starting at about $80, but also books, stockings, tote bags, pendants, ornaments, tiles and figurines all selling for $40 to $50 or so. For the deep-pocketed collector, original paintings were for sale up to $28,000.
Moss' company employs 40 people and does $5million in sales a year through a network of 500 authorized dealers.
On top of her business ventures, she has harnessed the devotion of her fans to do charitable work as members of the P. Buckley Moss Society. The group has 15,000 members in 38 chapters, including several in and around Roanoke. Herself dyslexic, Moss also has a charitable foundation to benefit kids who "learn differently," as she did.
Amid all this, she makes 35 appearances a year to sign her prints. Nearly everyone who entered got in line to have Moss place her ubiquitous signature on whatever they could buy or carry in.
Asked why they come, Moss said, "I don't know, they're all friends."
And she does seem to know a surprising number of people in the room personally. The rest seem to feel like they know her.
"You're a Hokie!" she said enthusiastically to Kelsey Ogden, 9, who was wearing a Virginia Tech T-shirt. Moss proceeded to explain that her daughter and son-in-law attend every Tech football game, and that she's working on a painting of Lane Stadium.
"I love your necklace," Judy Boothe of Tazewell County told Moss, prompting a five-minute girl talk about accessories.
Boothe and her sister, Kathy Gibson of Blacksburg, are just budding collectors with fewer than 10 pieces each, though Boothe figured she'd have at least three more by the end of the day.
Moss conventions typically feature a parade of fans dressed as their favorite Moss characters, but only two showed up in costume Saturday, and one was an actual Moss character.
Two years ago, Norma Roupe of Salem gave Moss a couple of snapshots of her grandson, Jacob Roupe. Soon after that, to Roupe's surprise, Moss released a print of a painting made from one of the pictures. Called "Box Boat," it shows Jacob sitting in a cardboard box pretending to fish.
"Of course, we're just thrilled," said Roupe, 58. That print is among about 200 Moss pieces she's collected since 1978.
Like other Moss fans, Roupe found it hard to explain the attraction.
"I think it's the simplicity and the honesty of the Amish," she said. The peaceful pictures offer an antidote to the craziness of modern life.
Gibson, the collector from Blacksburg, believes it's about everyone being able to find something they connect to.
"There's so much to choose from," she said, "and you can choose something that's very special to you."
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