Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M., last year held an art show featuring his own works of art in Milan, Italy, accompanied by a catalog.
Jackson Fine Art owner Anna Walker Skillman, who has known Stipe for three decades, sifted through the book and was impressed.
“The photographs were strong but also complex, vulnerable, poetic and mysterious. Each page led the viewer to intimate portraits of family and friends,” she said. She was even more intrigued by his sculptures: “I knew he had been a photographer all along but had no idea the depth and breadth of media and mediums in his practice.”
Credit: RODNEY HO
So she contacted him via email in May about Stipe doing a book signing at her gallery. A month later he replied “I am the worst on email” and asked if she wanted to see his prints in person. A week later, Skillman visited his studio and they began conceiving an actual exhibition…