Characters of the Village

Vincent Inconiglios: Orchestrating Artistic Life In the Meatpacking District

By Brian and Joy Pape

This month’s “Character” is a voice for what made the Meatpacking District so special in so many ways. Village View sat down with Vincent Inconiglios at his Gansevoort Street loft studio that he shares with his wife Donna Raftery and their 4-year-old dog Klinewell (after Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell). We also had the chance to view his vast collection of artwork and artifacts from several series.

Where did you grow up and how did you get into art as a career?

I was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island. In my teens I worked for the neighborhood butcher shop and learned all about different cuts of meat. My grandfather, who I didn’t get to know, was a barber who took care of Buffalo Bill’s long hair. He taught my father how to cut hair and my father cut Caesar Romero’s hair…and mine. My father could draw, too. When I was 5 years old I received my first art award for drawing. As a teen, I would draw in the late evening and I sent drawings into the Saturday Review. I saved copies of the checks I got for them.

I got a scholarship to Miami University of Ohio and after graduation worked with Richard Anuszkiewicz at the first Blossom Kent Program of music and art. Following that, I was artist-in-residence at the Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute where I lived in the penthouse. In Dayton, there was a wonderful project called The Living Arts Program with art, music, dance, and creative writing with visiting artists. I participated with a diverse group of wonderfully talented children. The arts were federally funded by grants and awards then, unlike now.

When I came to New York in 1969, I looked for a studio space for $50 a month or, better yet, 2,000 square feet for $200 a month. I found that in the Meatpacking District and it has been a symphony with multiple movements ever since. It was a 24-hours-a-day experience ─ it was emotional ─ creating connections at different times of the day.

During the day there were men in bloody white coats tending to the meat hanging everywhere and Al Pacino filming Serpico on the corner in 1973. Then we’d party all night, often crossing paths with the transvestite hookers as well as gay, straight, topless and bottomless folks. The bars on Washington Street were open 24 hours. In 1984, Florent opened on Gansevoort Street and the after-hours “breakfast” meeting became fashionable.

As an artist, I did assorted things in the early years. “Everything for Everybody” was this little storefront on Little West 12th Street. You would join for $5 and you could be a doer, or you could get things done. In the early ‘70s, before I decided to use what I knew in the commercial side, I’d do odd jobs moving people and painting apartments. Then came special creative projects like a movie history mural for Jerry Lewis. In the ‘80s I was publisher of American Fabrics and Fashion magazine and then I consulted for multiple major companies including Philips Electronics and Estée Lauder. It was just a couple of us doing work for some very large projects, including a major book on Hollywood and Broadway, but this is how you survive in the city and in the arts… sharing your talents.

The Meatpacking District was an inspiration for my art work on many different levels ─ whether I was doing abstract pieces or doing faces or cut-out masks based on people I’d seen in the street or things I would find in the street. I collect everything to learn and discover. The medium of collage is something that has been dominant for me since the ‘60s and the Meatpacking District is like a big collage, especially in the earlier days. When I walk the streets, some of the torn signs, the little details on the poles, or even the graffiti…look very much like paintings or collages to me.

Other artists have worked in my building over the years. One day in the ’70s one of them slipped a note under my door which read, “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste,” by Marcel Duchamp. I framed it for inspiration and instruction.

Back then, I’d go under the railway and under the elevated West Side Highway to the Gansevoort Peninsula, which was the garbage dump where I would park my old Volvo. I remember when fires burned the piers down and it felt like the Far West Village was on fire ─ a wild experience bringing big change for sure.

It’s one of those things with the evolution of the city, where all we have left is some vestige or shadow ─ but there’s something that still identifies it as being a little different than other parts of the city. I walk the dog to Starbucks where he gets a pup cup… he loves going there. But my favorite thing is not going into places, it’s walking the streets.

NPR had asked me a question about what’s changed in the Meatpacking District over all these years. It was simple to answer: “No meat. The meat made it special.”

Tell us about your favorite accomplishment.

Opening my studio in the ’70s as part of “10 Downtown” events, having kids come to my studio to work on collages using tape, a staple gun, picture magazines, and other things. I’ve got notes from kids who have grown up, telling me, “I love the stapler ─ how Vince and I would learn to love art.” Recently I did some more educational work with children and the stapler enables them to spontaneously discover how putting things together that don’t normally go together can lead to an art experience.

I think of the T.S Elliott quote:

“We shall not cease from exploration, and
The end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”