End Show at Tangent Gallery

I had the opportunity to display one of my paintings at Tangent Gallery's final show, appropriately titled the "End Show".  While it would have been fun to explore the theme of “the end” in a way that was a little less, shall we say, overt, my painting Murder Scene 1: Invasion of the Bee Girls, which I had just put final touches on, was too good a fit not to be my submission for the show.  This piece garnered mixed reactions at the opening reception, and by and large seemed to make people uncomfortable.  So it wasn’t an hour into the reception when I took to disclosing the story of the depicted couple to anyone unlucky enough to have been caught gawking at the piece.  After explaining to the stranger that the two were secondary characters from a B movie, the story that followed went something like this:

So this is a husband and wife.  They’ve been married long enough that they have deep, embedded resentments towards each other that materialize in their sex life.  The husband constantly tells the wife how generally awful and unattractive she is, while also trying to get sex from her. The wife will likewise verbally emasculate the man while blatantly withholding sex.  This tension between them builds throughout the movie until the woman is turned into a “bee girl” seductress by an evil bee-lady scientist.  The way the bee girls work is they seduce the man into sex, and then in the final throws of passion, suck the life-force-energy out of him, killing him.

…And it was usually right about here that the person would politely act like they knew just what I was getting at, thank me, and then excuse themselves.  I like to think that these people related to the story just a little too well, rather than being completely confounded by it, but I don't know.  Likely they were simply not that interested to begin with. I realized later that my eye had an involuntarily twinkle as I told and retold this story, and that certainly couldn’t have helped.

Other works on display that night ranged from a ceramic sculpture of a pizza topped with pepperoni and a dismembered piglet, a line of what looked to me like aging pubic hair, Dia de los Muertos motifs, and a very Disney-esque painting of a man taking a picture of himself with his I-phone while giving a thumbs-up in front of a mushroom cloud.  The curators of Tangent Gallery put together a terrific final show, and I will forever be in debt for the opportunities and memories they gave me.  Adieu. 

Considering B Movies

The other day I found myself attempting to explain to a friend the difference between bad movies, obscure movies, and real B movies – for as you may have noticed, B movies fuel the flames that cook my artistic stew.  Intuitively I had always known the difference between these categories – it is how one ugly painting at a garage sale can be ugly but brilliant while another is only awful, or how a mustache can be hipster-chic on one person but antiquated (or molester-creepy) on the next.  Yet while beauty and “bad” are relative, a “B” is not in the eye of the beholder – it exists  independently of the viewer, if not in spite of her. 

Our Lord Wikipedia defines “B Movie” as a “low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an art-house or pornographic film”.  It also states that it is a “genre film with minimal artistic ambitions” but then, curiously, explains that B movies do not have the same artistic limitations that “indie” and other similar genres self-impose.  Essentially, B movies occupy a place between and outside of these other genres.  So, with such a broad and compounded definition, what is the unifying element that makes these movies B?

For me, a true B movie has to fail at a number of essential elements (plot, narrative, effects, acting, etc.)- whether by aiming too high relative to its means or by a commercial disregard for craft- but in the process gains for itself an unintended and alternative beauty, as well as entertainment value.  This is different from, say, the seamless manufactured reality of a high-budget Hollywood “block-buster”.  This is different than a movie designed to be bad for purposes of nostalgia or comedic value (which often only delivers on the “bad”).  It’s different than a decent movie no one’s ever heard of or an art-house film that has succeeded, by sheer earnestness, in becoming “art”.  The B movie is its own mutant spectacle of intentions gone awry and desires gone amuck.

There is a wonderful moment in Slavoj Zizek’s Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, where he uses an attack scene from the movie The Birds to reveal how horror manifests in a movie.  In this scene, an attractive, upper-class woman walks unassumingly into a comfortable, well decorated room of her house only to find that a windy horde of thrashing, pecking birds has invaded the place. Zizek identifies this as reality disintegrated –  an abrupt collapse of a taken for granted reality caused by something that is supposed to remain silent in the background.  But B movies defy Zizek’s understanding of what horror is. In a B movie, an alternative reality is never allowed to manifest in the first place and thus cannot be destroyed.  Bad acting, script or effects constantly remind the viewer of its “moviness”.  The B movie blurs the artificial boundary separating the cinematic from the everyday, and there is something enjoyable and perhaps even a little perverse in this comingling.  This is partly why most of these movies are also called “exploitation films” – they expropriate and make use of the "reality" the viewer brings with them into the film.

More than this, the B movie gives us a pure vision of the underbelly of reality: a grotesque id-paradise of lust, chaos, failure, and self-undoing.  It is this multiplicity that interests me – how something can be everything and nothing at once, falling between the cracks but standing alone as its own unique, untouchable thing.  It is the inimitable failing that interests me, and the fun-house mirror effect that such movies bring to everyday life.

Fertility Exhibition at Tangent Gallery

"Head" - mixed media, 9x12"

"Tongue" - mixed media, 9x12"

Friends looking at my work

This Saturday I had my first-ever, non-university sponsored, public exhibition of my work at Tangent Gallery, Sacramento – and it was fabulous!  I couldn’t have come about this experience in a luckier way.  While working on my Pornocopia series, I would oftentimes wonder where, if ever, I could actually show these pieces.  After-all, I was working as directly as possible from pornography, and I left no “petal or stamen” fig-leafed.  Adding to this anxiety was this false notion I've had of myself that I’m terrible at networking with new people and breaking into “scenes” – i.e. the local art scene.  But it's as they say, you only need to know one person.

It happened one day that a friend of mine asked me to accompany her to an event that Tangent Gallery gallery was hosting.  We arrived, looked at some work, and then entered into what would turn out to be a LONG conversation with one of the gallery’s curators.  About half way through this conversation, which I was only intermittently taking part in, my ADD got the best of me and I began to leaf through an assortment of brochures and flyers located on the entry table.  There, to my surprise (because seriously – around here you almost never see this in respectable galleries) was a “Call for Submissions” brochure.  I snatched it up, saw that I had only missed one out of the six shows they were seeking entries for, and then began to frantically give my friend the “I’d like to go now because my pants are on fire” sign.  What had made me want to get back home, immediately, was the gallery’s upcoming “Fertility” themed show – exactly the opportunity I had been hoping for; a place and time in which my pervie porno pieces would be welcomed.

When the day came that these pieces of mine were accepted into the show, I knew that the real labor had just begun.  I still had to figure out how to mount my images (mixed media which included shiny layers of plastic), and how to do it with little more than the ten bucks I had in the bank at the time!  It wasn’t until the day before the art was due for installation that I decided upon black photo mounting boards… not the best choice.  The day of the show my pieces seemed to capture a lot of attention, however these photo boards sucked much of the life out of the images.  Nonetheless, the lesson was learned, the feedback was to die for, and everyone important in my life showed up to congratulate me and share in my experience.  This show is surely just the start of many more good things to come – I just have to do the work and stick my neck out a little more often. 

The Woodmans

As a teenager, I, like many young artists, was infatuated with the idea of the tortured genius; that one fragile soul who was fortunate enough to either be taken for granted by his or her contemporaries, or taken off this earth by the mad desires that made them “genius” in the first place.  We can all name our favorites: Van Gogh, Caravaggio, Basquiat… but few seem to fit both categories quite like Francesca Woodman.  Her short life, as detailed in the 2010 documentary film The Woodmans (Dir. C. Scott Willis), hardly seemed to have a moment of triteness or triviality about it.  From almost the very moment she first held a camera, Francesca was taking amazing and striking images that even the most senior of photographers would feel proud to have in a portfolio.  Yet she struggled to get even a glimmer of acceptance from the 1980’s New York art scene, and after suffering mental illness and emotional loss, took her own life at just 22 years of age.

While this story is well told in this film, what I, as a now older artist, find most intriguing is not the story of the tortured genius, but the aftermath that follows.  Her parents, George and Betty Woodman, are professional artist who have been working in paint (George) and ceramic (Betty) since the 1950’s.  They have achieved a level of success in the international art community that many only dream of, but their talent and recognition have seemed to come not from genius, but sweat.  As they speak of their daughter in the opening scenes of The Woodmans, a sense of resentment about them becomes instantly apparent.  It is not clear at first whether this resentment is of their daughters’ supreme level of fame, if it is a repressed jealously of her innate and immediate talent, or if it is the fact that they are asked to defend their role in her short life.  What is genius about this documentary is that instead of unfolding this riddle of resentment, the film keeps adding on layer after emotional layer until you see only pain.  George and Betty lost a daughter they loved.  They have regrets and they have thoughts and feelings that they will likely never reconcile within their hearts.  It’s a complicated tale that speaks not just to the condition of being an artist, but to the human condition.

Wikipedia has a large library of Francesca's photographs.  You can find them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Woodman

Murder Scene 1 from Invasion of the Bee Girls, 40X40: Beginnings & Middles

Sometimes I feel as though the more practice I have painting in oil, the more difficult and involved it becomes.  This painting was started back in February but has been in the dreaded and seemingly interminable “half finished” phase for months now.  It seems to always go this way - I victoriously cover the white of the canvas in one to two sessions, slap on a second layer in spots I feel comfortable with, and then bang my head on my pallet the entire rest of the way.  This frustration for me is bitter-sweet.  It represents a duality inherent to the art-making process, one which is both indispensable and compulsory.  Without some level of challenge one would acquire severe boredom and cease making art (or make very bad art), and yet this very challenge can overwhelm, exhaust, or for some, debilitate.

Unfortunately, I often find myself in the latter category.  I consider what this says about myself as a person and as an artist – am I simply too pessimistic in character, lazy in body and spirit, too unpracticed, or perhaps to foolish and dense to be asking the right questions of my art?  In the end I gamble that this is experienced by all artists at some point and that I am simply normal… but “normal” is never something an artist wants to be.

Captive's Logue

8:00 am – alarm has been going off for a half hour.  I sleep another half hour.

9:30 am – time I am supposed to meet a friend for coffee at Weatherstone, but instead I am lugging my bike downstairs.

9:45 am – coffee commences, we talk about bilingualism and the drawbacks of translation.  I devour an entire almond croissant.

12:15 pm – after meeting up with another friend and walking to another coffee shop for beans, I finally head home to paint.

12:30 pm – about five brush strokes end up on my canvas before I am distracted by prospective properties on Craigslist.  I also look at bike frames. 

1:10 pm – decide I should wash my paint brushes before I really dig in and paint, but I’m hungry so I make food instead.

2:15 pm – finally get around to cleaning my brushes.

2:40 pm – you know what sounds good?.. a protein shake.

3:05 pm – five more brush strokes accomplished, but I need music to drown out the ghetto-blasting taking place in my next-door neighbor’s driveway, so I fiddle with a playlist.  

5:05 pm – don’t remember anything that took place over the last two hours, but it looks like a little bit of painting got done.  My palette is messy anyway.  Guess it’s dinnertime.

6:30 pm – intend to paint for only another fifteen minutes before stopping to do something else unnecessary, but the spirit catches me.  It’s about time.

7:22 pm – forgot about a pot of tea boiling on the stove.  Not good.  The kitchen is steamy like the jungle but luckily the pot hadn’t yet burned.

7:45 pm – back on a roll.  I paint for a solid two-and-a-half hours, save for restroom breaks.  The process is painstaking but it feels good.

10:15 pm – starting to feel exhausted.  I pop some popcorn but don’t actually eat any of it.  Zone out in front of the TV for fifteen minutes instead.

10:30 pm – back in the studio.  I surge like a madman through my last 45 minutes of painting. 

11:15 pm – eyes are too strained to continue; I throw in the towel.  For all the time I did manage to spend on the canvas, the painting itself barely looks any different.  There’s no real sense of accomplishment as I stagger into bed, only a vague impression of cosmic servitude.  I wonder at why it took me all day to commence creation.  Only one answer circles round and round my head as I drift to sleep; one word so simple, yet to my best attempts, confounding: fear. 

Foreign Language

Writing this blog is the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried to do, excepting the horrific experience I had of writing an undergrad honors thesis for my anthro major.  There’s something about using language to communicate inner thoughts, ideas, and feelings that is downright foreign to me – and frightening.  After all, one’s application of language is, in practice, equally an expression of the speaker/writer’s level of intelligence, comedic sophistication, social facility, etc., as it is a tool for communicating said thoughts, ideas, and feelings.  So much could so easily go awry, and often does.  I have found myself paralyzed at times by this fear, knowing that my very next word or phrase could likely provide the evidence needed to confirm stupidity, short-sightedness, naïveté, or worse, single-dimensionality of person.  Other times I have overcompensated by rambling; hoping I could flesh out a gist, if only the listener would squint his ears just enough to hear what I’m meaning and not what I’m saying. 

What happens most often, however, is that I end my half of the conversation (or essay) with a sigh, knowing that the person(s) on the other end have no clue that I just completely failed at something.  It is precisely this sense of unremitting inability to share or satisfactorily participate, that fuels my desire for, and love of, the visual arts.  Yes, one can fail at art.  Yes, the fear of failing at making art can also be paralyzing or drive one to overcompensate.  Yet when I sigh after a work is completed, it is in relief.  My person is no single work; my person is that proverbial work in progress.  If it takes me a lifetime to express through art that which is inside, all the more exciting and sustaining.  Certainly there will be times when the inside-come-outside is trite, unimaginative, overcompensating or stale, but if that is all my sweat leaves behind, then I accept my fate.        

In honor of all those who fail, please enjoy the following bad poem and artwork.  I am not making fun, rather I delight in their indefinable genius:

A FRIEND MOST TRUE

By “W. Hinson” (read more “friend poetry" here: http://www.friendship.com.au/poetry/

I need to know if you’re my true friend,
will you be by my side until the end?
Can I tell you my secrets deep,
and trust them in your heart you’ll keep?
We are neither of us without our flaws,
can you accept mine as I will yours?
I’ll be a shoulder to cry on when you’re blue,
will you be there for me when I need you?
No matter how busy I will make time for you,
if you are busy will you make time for me too?
I will take your hand and comfort your tears,
will you hold me and soothe my fears?
I will give you joy and many warm smiles,
can we share that even across many miles?
I will not forget what’s important to you,
will you remember what’s important to me too?
With you my most favourite things I’ll share,
If only I know do you truly care?
If you can accept me as I do you,
then I will know you are a friend most true.