Home Business Information

With the help of a local gallery, Dan and Sue Sweeny have turned their Denver home into a photo homage to classic Hollywood and unique portraiture

The "guests" surrounding the dining-room table at Dan and Sue Sweeney's Denver pied a terre radiate the sultry sophistication of classic Hollywood and the smooth sounds of an era when a look was all it took to beguile.

Katherine Hepburn is draped over a chair, Lauren Bacall stands columnar against a wall, and Marilyn Monroe seduces the camera. Sarah Vaughn mirrors success; Nancy Wilson sets anguish to music. Leonard Bernstein is as intense as Frank Lloyd Wright is stoic.

These high-profile guests are found in the black-and-white photographs found throughout the Sweenys home.

"The beauty of black-and-white photography," said Dan Sweeney, "is that it captures the essence of a person much better than color, which has a tendency to overwhelm the characteristics of the subject. Especially in very interesting people."

If he hadn't discovered Denver's Gallery M, Sweeney believes he never would have begun collecting black-and-white photography.

"I didn't really have a collecting interest," he said, "until I came to Denver five years ago. I had rented a place north of Cherry Creek (a Denver suburb) and was wandering around the neighborhood shops when I ran into Gallery M. After that, I would stop in to see what's new whenever I was in town."

When Denver's Circle Gallery dosed in 1996, director Myrna Hayutin gave herself two weeks to decide what she wanted to do. She wanted to do art her way--"I knew I must stay in the art world."

Eight months later, she and son Mason opened Gallery M with a cadre of artists who spoke to her experience.

Five years later, Hayutin moved the gallery, this past June, to its present location in Cherry Creek. Opening with a street-level atrium, the gallery is an expansive 2,500-square-foot contemporary design on the second floor, which takes advantage of large white walls and northern light ideal for featuring photography.

One evening, Sweeney was dining in town when he and a friend, both jazz fans, wandered across the street to Gallery M while awaiting their reservation. His friend emerged with a black-and-white portrait of Duke Ellington, while Sweeney acquired the first of "his ladies" Sarah Vaughn and Nancy Wilson.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:05 AM