“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” — Ronald Reagan

In 1994, Ron C. Curlee II was the first intriguingly talented individual I met in our fair city after relocating mere days before from Los Angeles. I’d wandered into Babylon, an infamous rave club located on South Elm in the long-dead heart of downtown Greensboro. Babylon was notorious for shoveling underaged kids through its doors. For all I knew, Ron may have fallen into that category.

As it happens, that den of iniquity was sponsoring an art opening of Ron’s Crimes Against Nature series — enormous canvases featuring, for the era, bold, lurid and graphic imagery of exactly what the work’s title suggests. We instantly hit it off and, since then, it has always been a pleasure in those too rare instances when our divergent paths cross; laughter is always sure to follow, sparked by his gregarious personality, somehow both serious and fun.

I marvel that today Ron remains on the cutting edge, a key component of his career being his three decades participating in the High Point Market as a painter of extraordinarily original abstracts, as well as a designer and merchandiser.

Accomplished in both art and design, his career has had an internal reach. In addition to dozens of local shows and commissions, his artwork has been featured in most of the well-known furniture showrooms, including Highland House, Harden, Francesco Molon, Excelsior, Century, Hickory Hill and Drexel Heritage.

This area has grown significantly since the mid-1990s, when the impact that Market made all across the Triad was seismic. Families back then were renting out their homes to attendees for $1,500 a week, due to lack of available hotel rooms. Venturing out to dinner, even in Greensboro, became a challenge during those two-week periods, the nicer restaurants being predictably overbooked. On those occasions when I would dine out with my parents during April and October Market, generally at some out-of-the-way steakhouse such as Jordan’s on Church Street, we’d amuse ourselves by observing nearby tables where sales reps were expense accounting the night away with obvious ladies of the evening who flocked from near and far to service this influx of out-of-towners.

Ron grew up in Lenoir and attended the University of Georgia’s studies abroad program, where he studied painting in Italy. But it was actually the lure of the Market that brought him to Greensboro in the 1990s. I recently caught up with him in his richly appointed, downtown Greensboro home-studio duplex (thestudioandgallery.square.site) to look back on some of his more colorful experiences at High Point Market.

Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Paul Burrell, her former butler and one-time footman for Queen Elizabeth II, began licensing his name for various upscale goods that included furniture. “I was director of visual merchandising for an upholstery company that paid to use Burrell’s name,” Ron tells me. “So we made up all the stories behind his collection that was [supposedly] based on his travels with Princess Diana.”

This was following the “uppity” butler’s trial for stealing various personal items from the beloved Princess and after Prince Harry publicly accused him of “milking” his mother’s death in Burrell’s scandalous book, A Royal Duty. “I traveled around England with him,” Ron recalls. “People either loved him because they wanted to know about Princess Diana or they despised him because he had risen above his station. So it was very awkward.” At gallery openings and tea parties, Burrell would regale audiences with stories about how Diana’s boys would sit on chairs like the one on display or the way Princess Diana would relax on a sofa resembling that model. “And we wrote all of that for him.”

On one occasion, while imbibing a bit heavily on a rather empty stomach, Ron recalls, “I may have told [Burrell] that he was just the front man who didn’t know anything, that I was doing everything while he was getting all the credit.” The next morning, he says, “They told me Paul didn’t have anything to say and just up and left.” Not long after, Ron got wind that Burrell was talking with a friend in New York who was getting him drunk and secretly recording their conversation about the Queen and Princess Margaret, then selling it to a tabloid for a million dollars. “And I was like, why didn’t I think of that?!?”

Ron has also rubbed elbows with Hollywood royalty and recalls a furniture collection introduced at Market that he thought was immediately fabulous and very successful. “The Humphrey Bogart Collection from Thomasville,” he replies. “I have pieces from that line in my living room. It was like Old Hollywood, a little deco with lots of unique woods, veneers and different applications. A mixture of skins and veneers like shagreen shark skin, tiger-eye maple, zebra wood.” Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s son, Stephen, had input into the designs and made an appearance in 2002 at the presentation party.

Was there a ruinous collection he was saddled with showcasing that was an absolute disaster? “At Fine Furniture Design, they’re no longer in the United States,” Ron says with a laugh. “They were high end and introduced a collection that was entirely covered in mirrors. They had a mirrored poster bed, entertainment cabinet, occasional end tables, cocktail tables and a dining table that sat 12.” Ron was flabbergasted. “I was just like, what the hell is this? It was so ostentatious, so over the top and it didn’t sell.” Upon reflection, the manufacturer blamed Ron for the line’s failure. “I was told that I didn’t paint the rooms the right color, I didn’t do the right presentation. I was thinking, my accessories should have been razor blades and straws!”

Collections are generally only offered for a year or so and then quietly disappear. “They can last longer but Market is fashion driven,” Ron points out. “Everybody wants something new. So you may add a few pieces and continue a collection for a couple seasons, maybe a year and a half or two years. But you want to be fashion forward.” To that end, designers tend to lean into Pantone’s Color of the Year — in 2025, it’s Mocha Mouse. “So buyers are looking at mocha fabrics; yarns will be dyed that, too. Last year it was Peach Fuzz.”

Both during and outside of Market, folks generally approach Ron when they’re looking for artwork to complete a room. “I’m known for large abstracts, so I can build up to 10 feet by 10 feet,” he says. “At Market, they’re not going to offer something custom. It’s going to be what’s on the wall and buyers will order 10 of them or whatever. But all of my creations are going to be original and custom.”

For the next few weeks, it’s once more into the breach for Ron C. Curlee II: “So I’ll merchandise several showrooms and then, when they’re completed, I head to the Suites at Market Square and put my own showroom together to sell my artwork.” He’s been showing at Market Square for about four years now. “Sometimes I have other artists or product designers in my space but I’m not going to sell a container full of merchandise. A lot of my clients are designers, so they’ll come to market, see what I have and what I’ve done and then commission artwork in specific sizes, specific colors. Seeing me at Market is a reminder that I’m still here.”