Art expert awaits fate of Beatles mural he painted in his Omaha bedroom in 1970s
An Omaha teenager had a part-time job and money to spend. He had his own bedroom, with four blank walls. And he had a major man-crush on the Beatles.
The logical thing to do? Buy some costly acrylic paint and create a “Yellow Submarine” mural. It took more than a year and some trial and error, but when it was done, it made him proud. He signed his name and the date at the bottom: Jay Dandy, 1977.
It turns out that Dandy’s love for pop art and iconic artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein — and his affinity for the colorful decade that put them in the spotlight — have influenced a fair piece of his life since he moved away from Omaha.
He got an art history degree, became a pop art collector, met some influential people in the art world and now is a research assistant in the modern and contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago.
To Dandy’s gratification, visitors to a late-spring estate sale at his childhood home still were able to see his pop-art masterpiece more than 35 years after he painted it.
By: Betsie Freeman
Source: World Herald
