Neil Grayson in conversation with Skip Sheffield

Boca News, Boca Raton, FL
article by Skip Sheffield

June 1998

Neil Grayson’s career has been booming since his West Boca show. He is shown recently in the Lucky Strike Pub in New York’s SoHo district.

I paid a visit to New York artist Neil Grayson June 19 to check up on the progress of his career and his non-profit Dactyl Foundation at 64 Grand Street in SoHo, New York.

Grayson’s career has been booming since the one-man show he mounted at the Boca West penthouse of Stanley and Janice Sussman on March 3.

Grayson’s inventory of his own work is virtually depleted, and his Dactyl Foundation has been a hotbed of artistic activity, which ironically has cut into his time for painting.

As I was walking down Mercer Street with Grayson , a man hailed him and asked how preparations were going for reading at the Dactyl Foundation.

Grayson assured him that everything was on track. I assumed the man, clad casually in blue jeans and workboots, was a contractor. It turns out the man was Patrick Markey, a Dactyl Foundation director and producer of 12 films, including “The Horse Whisperer”, “Joy Luck Club”, “A River Runs Through It” and “The Natural”.

Markey was hosting a backer’s reading at the Dactyl Foundation that Monday with Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Langella and four other Broadway actors. Markey’s assistant, Lenore Conviser, were scrambling to get everything just right for the occasion. Lenore, an aspiring New York actress, was even invited to read three small parts. I couldn’t stay for the reading, but Grayson tells me it went fine.

Markey invited Grayson up to his ranch in Montana for the July Fourth holiday, but by Tuesday he expects to be back at work at the Dactyl Foundation for the Arts and Humanities.