Artist Kelly Sullivan Revitalizing a Historic Theater – with Help from The Rolling Stones
FingerSmears®
Artist Kelly Sullivan’s extraordinary 30-plus-year career has taken her around the world, from Spain to India to Canada and more. Through her trademarked “FingerSmears®” collaborative, multi-user, hands-on artworks, everyone from Bruce Springsteen, Edie Falco, Carol Burnett, Harrison Ford and Willem Dafoe to Fortune 500 CEOs have dipped their fingers in paint alongside Sullivan.
Rolling Stones Artwork
Sullivan’s newest project is redeveloping the historic Strand Theatre in Lambertville, New Jersey, where she is based, into a performance/art space for use by the community as well as for private functions. To help offset the estimated $800,000 in renovation costs, Sullivan is selling “Rock and Roll Voodoo”, a large acrylic on canvas that she co-created with the Rolling Stones.
Strand Theater
Sullivan had long admired the landmark Strand building, which had been used as warehouse space since being destroyed by fire 50 years ago. “I walked by it in high school and thought, Wow, I wonder what’s happening in there.” After moving around the country, Sullivan returned to Lambertville around ten years ago and found she was still intrigued by the old theater. One day while with the owner, she blurted, “I love this building. I could do something amazing with it,” prompting the owner to ask if she’d like to buy it. It had not been on the market. Sullivan agreed on the spot. “I ran home and told my husband, ‘Tom, we’re going to buy the Strand!’”
Slated to open in Spring 2023, the reborn theater will be called Strand Arts; An Enterprising Art House, offering 5,000 square feet of mixed-use space. A gracious art gallery lobby leads to an intimate assembly area equipped with state-of-the-art technology, followed by dressing rooms, and Sullivan’s new live-work painting studio. Strand Arts is designed to be an elevated destination for the area’s many large corporations to hold mid-week conferences and presentations.
“The idea is that I can bring corporate clients here and they can produce meetings in this very beautiful professional artistic environment. We use the arts to amplify the message of their meeting and to inspire their teams and to take them into something that is just a bit different,” says Sullivan. “We can make noise, we can get messy, that kind of thing that’s not always available in a hotel environment where a lot of these meetings are produced.”
Sullivan intends to use the space on weekends for exhibits, activities and performances for the community at the newly refurbished Strand. Several artistic directors will work together to produce music, theater, visual art shows and a bit of comedy.
Madam Secretary
The location is also an attraction. Lambertville is a short walk across the Delaware River from New Hope, PA; both artsy towns are popular with visitors who flock to the galleries, shops and performance venues. Charming inns and hotels abound.
Midway between New York City and Philadelphia, the region’s design and antique shops often draw designers. Nine of Sullivan’s paintings appeared in the McCord family house on Madam Secretary after its set decorator wandered into her studio from the store downstairs. “She loved my work and thought it would be a great fit. It was fun to see my work on television week after week.”
Rock and Roll Voodoo
How did Sullivan get the Rolling Stones to collaborate on “Rock and Roll Voodoo”?
It was at the band’s private Halloween party at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater in 1994. Sullivan tended bar at the infamous Phoenix Hotel’s Miss Pearls Jam House, which catered the party. She
convinced her bosses that she’d be more entertaining as a painter than serving cocktails, and just before the party began, she nailed a canvas to the wall, sketched the faces of the Stones’ members surrounded by voodoo tools like daggers, snakes and a skull, and began painting. She worked up the nerve to ask Keith Richards if he’d care to paint on her work-in-progress. He playfully smeared paint around the canvas, leaving a handprint on her shirt, a peck on her cheek and a smudge on her face.
When Ronnie Wood arrived, his 10-year-old son declared the FingerSmear the coolest thing at the party, and enlisted the rest of his family, including his dad, who painted marks on the canvas and signed his name.
Mick Jagger
Upon arriving, Mick Jagger declined with a terse “Not now.” He had to pass the painting on his way out, and Sullivan was waiting. Jagger covered his thumb in red paint and added flames along the side of his head and red marks on the snake. Sullivan handed him a pen and he drew a line down the middle of his painted tongue and signed his name on the canvas. Charlie Watts didn’t make it to the party, but the painting ended up backstage at the next Stones show where he made his mark and signed the canvas.
“Rock and Roll Voodoo” remained in storage for over 20 years. “It was destined to support the arts someday,” Sullivan says. “That day has arrived.” The piece will be exhibited at Carlton Fine Arts on Madison Avenue in mid-July. carltonfa.com
