SoHo (South of Houston Street) was home to a vibrant art scene in lower Manhattan beginning in the 1960s. Artists lived and worked in massive, light-filled lofts above the many important and pivotal galleries below at street level. Some of the early galleries included Park Place Gallery, 112 Greene Street, Paula Cooper Gallery, OK Harris, Artists Space and later in 420 West Broadway building Leo Castelli, Andre Emmerich and Ileana Sonnabend. Some of the many noteworthy artists who lived and worked in SoHo included: Adolph Gottlieb, Al Held, Ray Parker, Eva Hesse, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Donald Judd, Nam June Paik, Chuck Close, Neal Jenny, Deborah Remington, and Fred Eversley, among many others.

Thornton Willis, Joan Thorne and Dean Fleming lived and worked in SoHo during that early and dynamic period from the mid-1960s and onward. Willis, who moved to SoHo in 1967, and Fleming knew each other. Thorne knew Willis and Vered Lieb, who is married to Willis. Willis and Thorne were early residents in SoHo and continue to create new paintings and live in their original lofts to this day.

Fleming, a founding member of the Park Place artist cooperative, moved to SoHo in 1965 when Park Place Gallery expanded and relocated to a large space at 542 West Broadway near Houston when the original location (the Washington vegetable market) became the site for the World Trade Center. Later in the 1960s, Fleming and his wife Linda founded Libre, an artist community in the Rocky Mountains. Fleming maintained studios in New York and continued to exhibit in SoHo well into the 1980s. New York and the rich experiences with the Park Place group of artists and the vibrancy and intensity of the community of artists in SoHo had a profound impact on Fleming and his work. Fleming’s processes and approaches to painting and imagery, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, were very much inspired by his many international trips and experiences in North Africa, the Mediterranean, Japan, Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, Panama, and Western US.

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