Blue was more than a color for Randy Dalton.
Throughout his career, the highly accomplished artist promoted the motto “Do Blue,” encouraging people frustrated by a lack of support for the arts to get active around the issue.
The Mount Airy artist and activist died Feb. 5 after a stroke. A community memorial will be held April 9.
Dalton was a native of Milwaukee, Wisc. His partner of 34 years, Michael Martin Mills, said that when Dalton moved to Philadelphia in 1970, he worked in a state store and on a road crew before taking a position that paved the way for his art career.
“He was a nursery school teacher at the Durham School, which was an experimental program in the ’70s. Through that, he became engaged with people with progressive ideas and connections into the arts and through this, that and the other that led him to know a lot of people who became lifelong friends who worked in arts, architecture and urban development,” Mills said.
He later joined the crew at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
“For about 15 years, he installed exhibitions and helped construct exhibitions,” Mills said. “He worked with Keith Haring, he was part of the crew that installed the famous Mapplethorpe show that prompted Jesse Helms to go bonkers and worked on the Red Grooms’ ‘Philadelphia Cornucopia.’”
Dalton was an early member of the Dumpster Divers, who create art from found objects.
“His specialty was making lamps from just about anything that were illuminated with blue,” Mills said. “Blue bulbs, shades, gels — whatever. They were very idiosyncratic sculptural lamps. He could make a lamp out of a gas can or a colander, that sort of thing. And it grew from there.”
The Community Education Center, which he had been involved with since the 1970s and where he most recently served as artist in residence, ultimately became the setting for his beloved “Blue Grotto” installation.
“He was at the CEC once, twice, three times a week through the rest of his life,” Mills said. “He stripped paint off the banisters, he was the one who knew how to deal with the furnace. He organized art shows there, he was on their board, he was on the first performance-art committee that started a series of really edgy performances. And then he got permission to start installing his sculptures in the basement.”
The CEC basement is now filled with Dalton’s sculptural creations illuminated with blue hues, which Mills said is a wondrous sight.
“He started bringing in more and more and more and there are now hundreds of them there. There’s not much natural light in the basement so if you go, especially at night, and it’s just the sculptural lamps that are on, it’s a little wonderland, with all these blue lights.”
In addition to working on his own creations, Dalton also aimed to share his gifts with other artists.
“Randy was a very giving, sharing person,” Mills said, noting that among Dalton’s mentees was his godson, who started working as a teenager with Dalton. “He started churning out paintings, ceramic work and Randy was always encouraging him and helping him put up shows of his work. He now has a mural with the Mural Arts Project at 36th and Lancaster that he created with Randy and a few other people’s help. Randy just liked to help people. That’s what motivated him.”
Outside of his art, Dalton was also a gifted gardener.
In their three decades in their Mount Airy home, Mills and Dalton developed an extensive garden, which includes many azaleas and rhododendrons. Dalton was a member of the American Rhododendron Society and worked on a rhododendron exhibition at the Philadelphia Flower Show for the past 20 years.
Mills and Dalton met at a Labor Day picnic in 1981.
“It was a matchmaking type of thing by a mutual friend,” Mills explained. “It took rather quickly.”
Mills said Dalton’s positivity was infectious, and inspiring.
“He madly cared about the arts and the power of art to make places better, especially to make Philadelphia better. He was constantly throwing out ideas: ‘Let’s have a visual-arts festival. Let’s restore this antique building. Let’s develop this or that,’” Mills said. “Some of them were pie in sky and maybe a few happened. But he was always thinking about how we could use art to make the world around us better.”
In addition to Mills, Dalton is survived by siblings Kathy and Richard, several nieces and nephews, in-laws and a wide circle of friends.
A memorial for Dalton will be held 4 p.m. April 9 at Germantown Friends Meeting, 44 W. Coulter St. Memorial donations can be made to the Community Education Center.
A pop-up show titled “Blue for Randy Dalton” will be open 6-10 p.m. April 1 and 2-5 p.m. April 2 at TandM Arts Studio, 319 N. 11th St., on the fourth floor. The ImPerfect Gallery, 5601 Greene St., is featuring a front-window display of several of Dalton’s works, with nighttime the best opportunity to view Dalton’s lamp creations.
The “Blue Grotto” is open 6-9 p.m. Wednesdays and 6-9 p.m. on the second Friday of the month, as well as by appointment, at CEC, 3500 Lancaster Ave. To make an appointment, call 215-387-1911 or email [email protected].