05/07/2025
Evelyn Patricia Terry
Until the Magic Comes
Offset Lithography, 1992
Editioned, signed, and numbered original print
21 ½ x 30 in.
Price $1000.00 (Free shipping)
In 2024, guest curator Juanita Sunday selected Until the Magic Comes from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives for their Sacred Space traveling group exhibition, currently on view at Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, through June 22, 2025.
In 1975, while living in Tallahassee, Florida, I began collecting non-commercial dolls. As a card-carrying romantic, I often wondered—like Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God—“When will the love come?” That question stayed with me after my failed marriage in the 1970s.
In 1984, a classmate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago gifted me an especially odd doll, three inches tall, made of twisted yarn strings. In 1992, during my one-week Brandywine Workshop residency in Philadelphia, the diminutive doll became my model for the monumental spell-caster in my lithograph print titled Until the Magic Comes. She still inhabits my 150-plus doll collection.
Originally, I paid no heed to magic as a practical expectation from life. However, I can recount many moments when it appeared as a recognizable, loving experience. After purchasing a floor-model printing press, I created The Magic Series, a body of mixed-media Chine Collé monotypes. In 2024, I even experienced an unexplainable healing after a two-month painful rotator cuff tear. The healing occurred half an hour before a scheduled Zoom talk, which I, thankfully, completed pain-free. It felt so good—and so magical.
Love arrived through an 11-year relationship with self-taught artist George Ray McCormick, Sr., who died in 2009. I named my home—the Terry McCormick Contemporary Fine and Folk Art Gallery—in his honor and dedicated a room to his artwork. Over time, I also cultivated a deep love for myself through spiritual practices and my commitment to being a full-time artist since 1985.
The doll, the gallery, the healing, and the artwork connect to one truth: magic is real. For me, it manifests through art, health, love, beauty, plants, supportive people, and every moment I choose joy.
My recommendation for attracting magic is to remove—or strive to remove—oneself from negativity by adopting healthy word usage, eating raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts, embracing joy, and staying passionate. Filled with gratitude, I now experience and expect magic—and I know it’s real.
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