{"id":299114,"date":"2025-11-18T13:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T13:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/299114\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T13:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T13:02:09","slug":"harrisburg-grad-didnt-know-who-picasso-was-now-his-art-hangs-in-the-guggenheim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/299114\/","title":{"rendered":"Harrisburg grad didn\u2019t know who Picasso was. Now, his art hangs in the Guggenheim"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 19, Alteronce Gumby<\/a> left Harrisburg without knowing who Picasso was. He returns to his hometown this week a world traveler with an international reputation as an abstract painter and budding filmmaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really excited to come back home and share the work I\u2019ve been up to with the community that helped raise me,\u201d Gumby, now 40, told PennLive during a recent phone interview.<\/p>\n

Gumby, whose many family ties to Harrisburg continue to lure him from his Bronx, N.Y., home, is being celebrated with an exhibit at the Susquehanna Art Museum<\/a>. The show, featuring his colorful, cosmos-inspired, glass-and-gem-bedecked paintings, is entitled, \u201cIf Herr Street Could Talk.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s that Herr Street, which courses through the Allison Hill neighborhood near where Gumby grew up on the 1800 block of Market Street. Both of his grandmothers, along with a great grandmother, lived nearby on Herr. <\/p>\n

Their homes were hubs for Gumby\u2019s extended family, always brimming with food and bustling with activity. Those few blocks around 18th Street became Gumby\u2019s whole world, the axis of his childhood.<\/p>\n

\"AlteronceThe artist as a young man: Alteronce Gumby growing up in Harrisburg. Today, at age 40, he’s a celebrated artist. (Provided photo)Provided photo<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember just constantly visiting,\u201d recalled the 2004 Harrisburg High grad. \u201cI would go from one house to the next, just walking up and down Herr Street, because those were the meeting hubs of family. I\u2019d walk in that house, and it would just be full of aunts and uncles, cousins, distant relatives, friends of the family. That\u2019s the place that kind of made me who I am, those very formative years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gumby poured all that personal history into the painting named after Herr Street. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat painting is paying a homage to a neighborhood, a community, a street that really helped make me who I am,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The process of creating it was just as personal.<\/p>\n

Gumby dispensed with a brush, painting with his hands and fingers. All the colored glass that highlights the cosmic, up-sloping path from his childhood was set by hand. He likened his intimate process to a master gardener sinking his hands into soil. He hopes viewers of the work can feel the love, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a very human process for making that painting that I hope someone can pick up on,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a visceral connection when I paint with my hands. If anything, I just hope people could just feel the love or the affection — the touch — particularly within that painting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harrisburg-bornImage of Harrisburg-born artist Alteronce Gumby’s painting is courtesy of parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles. \u00a9 Alteronce Gumby.
\nPhoto credit: Ed Mumford
\nPennLive<\/p>\n

Gumby also credits his racially diverse hometown with igniting his artistic interest in color. He spoke of boyhood friends from Puerto Rico, Africa, Vietnam and fondly recalled feasting on both the food and culture at Passage to India<\/a>, the Shipoke restaurant that closed in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about that micro-diversity in Harrisburg \u2014 the textures of culture, tastes of culture and a sense of community \u2014 that shaped me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As both an artist and a Black man, color \u2013 and all the moral and societal stigmas that come with it \u2013 became Gumby\u2019s obsession.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf society says I am a Black man, I want to be my own shade of Black, my own hue of Black, my own uniqueness of whatever Black is,\u201d he declared. <\/p>\n

His explorations of color have led him to work with raw pigments, gemstones and glass, connecting his art to geology, physics and nature.<\/p>\n

For Gumby, color is \u201cone of nature\u2019s love languages.\u201d He seeks to reflect \u201cits universal and spiritual dimensions\u201d in his work.<\/p>\n

But the spirituality radiating from his cosmos-inspired paintings comes from his mother, a Pentecostal minister. What Gumby witnessed from a Harrisburg church pew has stayed with him throughout his life.<\/p>\n

\"AlteronceAlteronce Gumby with his family in the familiar surroundings of church — a constant in his Harrisburg childhood and a continuing inspiration for his art. (Provided photo)Provided photo<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching my mother catch the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues\u2014those aspects of life made me think deeper about otherworldliness. I\u2019m searching for that in my work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

No wonder many of his paintings reach into swirling, colorful galaxies in search of universal truths.<\/p>\n

\"Harrisburg-bornImage of Harrisburg-born artist Alteronce Gumby’s painting is courtesy of BODE Gallery and Alteronce Gumby Studio.
\nPhoto credit: Katharina Balgavy
\nPennLive<\/p>\n

These are all the hometown influences and experiences that formed the artist and shaped his work. But it took leaving Harrisburg at 19 to awaken Gumby to the possibilities of the artist\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Enrolled at Harrisburg Area Community College with designs on becoming an architect, Gumby was in Barcelona, Spain, on a study abroad excursion. The city\u2019s flamboyant buildings, birthed from the mind of architect Antoni Gaud\u00ed, showed Gumby the possibilities of design.<\/p>\n

But it was a detour into the Pablo Picasso Museum that opened his eyes to a pursuit he\u2019d never considered. At the time, he didn\u2019t know who Picasso was. But the art \u2013 the colors, the cubes, the freedom \u2013 didn\u2019t just speak. It shouted.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing from gallery to gallery, seeing how he evolved as an artist and as a human being really just spoke to me. I wanted that for my life,\u201d Gumby said.<\/p>\n

The voice Gumby heard that day beckoned him to New York City. He didn\u2019t plunge right into painting, however. Music was his first muse. <\/p>\n

After spending five years performing in a nightclub, he took up the brush and enrolled in art school. He earned degrees from Hunter College and Yale, becoming the first college graduate in his immediate family.<\/p>\n

Soon, he was visiting Renaissance cities in various artist-in-residency programs. He became drawn to abstraction after studying works by Rothko, Pollock and de Kooning.<\/p>\n

Since then, Gumby\u2019s art has been exhibited at \u201crenowned galleries such as Nicola Vassell Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, and Gagosian,\u201d his website says<\/a>. His work is held in the collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem; Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Allentown Art Museum; and Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Or, as Susquehanna Art Museum Executive Director Alice Anne Schwab put it: \u201cHe\u2019s the real deal. An extraordinary human being and a great talent. A 2004 Harrisburg High graduate who has made it big in the art world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harrisburg-bornThe textured, abstract work of Harrisburg-born artist Alteronce Gumby. (Provided Photo used with permission)PennLive<\/p>\n

Most recently, Gumby, in collaboration with writer and director John Campbell, completed his first award-winning documentary film<\/a>. Entitled, \u2018COLOR,\u2019<\/a> It explores \u201cthe rich and diverse facets of color as experienced around the world,\u201d his bio says.<\/p>\n

But the roots of Gumby\u2019s artistic inspirations remain in Harrisburg. Even his penchant for adding glass, gems and resins to his paintings came from his hometown visits to one of his grandmothers. She was always working a puzzle, Gumby recalled. Each time he visited, Gumby wouldn\u2019t leave before adding a few pieces to the developing mosaic.<\/p>\n

Looking back, Gumby said there\u2019s a direct line from working his grandma\u2019s puzzles to his current glass-setting technique.<\/p>\n

Indeed, all of Gumby\u2019s artistic quests for meaning in the infinite colors of the cosmos began when Herr Street was his whole world.<\/p>\n

If You Go:<\/p>\n

Alteronce Gumby\u2019s \u2018If Herr Street Could Talk\u2019 at the Susquehanna Art Museum<\/p>\n

Members\u2019 preview: Thursday, November 20<\/p>\n

Third in the Burg with the artist: Friday, November 21<\/p>\n

Private fundraising event: Saturday, November 22.<\/p>\n

Public exhibition during the museum\u2019s regular hours: November 22, 2025 through February 22, 2026.<\/p>\n

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 19, Alteronce Gumby left Harrisburg without knowing who Picasso was. He returns to his hometown this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-299114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}