Orlando artist's globe-traveling work comes home

Josh Garrick had to travel around the world to arrive in College Park, but the journey was a lot longer than that.

From childhood among the farm country backroads in Pennsylvania, to Manhattan, Greece, Hong Kong to Orlando, he weaved himself into the art world over decades, becoming a teacher, curator, historian, publisher, all while slowly creating a fine art photo collection that would one day make him famous.

In 2013 it all went boom. Massive, towering works on brushed metal loaded onto ships and sailed east while Garrick boarded a flight bound from O-Town toward fame.

In the two years since, for all the unpredictability of it, his artistic career has taken on the suddenness and impact of a tornado dropping out of a long-building storm.

Garrick and his works — of photographed decaying ancient Greek stone shot at odd angles and rendered onto shimmering 3-D-like aluminum — have in the past two years landed in Athens, Istanbul and New York City, now heading toward a date with the Greek Island of Santorini and an exhibition of Pompeii in Toronto.

In that first explosive moment in Greece he became a star, carted around in limousines as his show at the National Archeological Museum in Athens readied to be the first ever by a living artist, and the first ever by an American.

“Timeless: Past, Present, Future” will be the featured exhibit of the black-tie-optional charity gala opening of Henao Contemporary Center. The celebration is from 7 to 10 p.m. Oct. 10, followed by a complimentary after party. Proceeds will benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Florida. Visit Henaocenter.com for tickets.

“They were so welcoming,” Garrick said. “It was incredible.”

The doors opened on a red-carpet exhibition on Sept. 12, 2013, and the accolades flooded in. Standing inside by one of his favorite pieces, “The Little Jockey,” capturing a weathered bronze Greek boy and his horse who had survived a battering for two thousand years under the sea, Garrick basked in his moment in the light.

“It was an immense honor,” Garrick said in the wake of a streak of good fortune that defies his explanation after decades of work. “It’s just insane.”

He was no mere tourist in his dozens of trips to the ancient birthplace of famous white marble statues and homages to gods that warp perception in their scale. He’s studied the land of Aristotle and Phidias since he was a middle schooler, later teaching the wonders of ancient Greece to art students as he amassed an artistic photo-documentary of the decay and resurrection of a lost world.

Get into a conversation with him over a glass of scotch and chances are a history lesson will find its way into the room. He can casually reel off a yarn about the turmoil leading to the Peloponnesian War in one breath and hammer through 2,500-year-old stone engineering in the next.

Maybe that’s why friend and art curator Iris Kritikou said, “He makes [statues] appear to be alive.” For Garrick, that connection to a still-living ancient Greece comes from a place he has yet to explain. Ask him and even he doesn’t know where it started. He just knows where it led him. Two Saturdays from now, it leads him home.

On his mind these days is the big night awaiting him at 5601 Edgewater Drive. Inside the Henao Contemporary Center’s big grand opening, Garrick takes the spotlight once more.

The dream of local artist and Center founder Jose Henao, the Center will come to life Oct. 10 when the doors open for the first time to a black-tie optional grand opening charity gala.

Though the masonry work on the opening started five months ago, it was 10 years ago when Garrick first met Henao and critiqued his paintings.

“I really cherished honest, good feedback,” Henao said. “Josh gave me the buyer’s perspective, the buyer’s feedback. It really helped me. That conversation was 10 years ago and I still remember it.”

When Henao asked Garrick to open the gallery, the answer was obvious.

“When he asked, I didn’t hesitate at all,” Garrick said.

Garrick’s work, in “Timeless: Past, Present, Future,” will hang from the rafters in a unique exhibition compared to the ones that crossed to the old world and back again, but the works will have the same unique allure.

“You look at his work and you know there’s something special about it,” Henao said of Garrick’s work. “After him, I’m sure there will be a ton of people who emulate what he does. It’s like with Banksy. Before Banksy was Banksy, nobody was paying attention to street art. Now people are copying him and it just helps Banksy.”

Some stars of his first big show won't be back. Of the ones that didn’t end up in the hands of collectors, three of his best prints are still back in Greece, part of a permanent exhibition. But new pieces will be. In the final weeks leading up to his show, he was still making the call on what would wow people the moment they step out of their cars and glimpse it for the first time through the wall of glass fronting the Center just north of College Park.

“I have complete faith in Josh,” Henao said. “I believe in his vision.”

For Garrick’s Orlando homecoming, it’ll be a reintroduction for an artist who left on a journey celebrating the past. The future? No one knows.

The celebration begins at 7 p.m. Oct. 10, with an after party beyond 10 p.m. featuring DJ Dennis Mero. Proceeds will benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Florida.