Loud Enigma

 

 

It's always hard to come up with a postcard invite for a group-show.  You don't want to feature one artist, and you want to give a sort of global take on the concept, but a "global take" never is that interesting.  So often what gallery people do is collage together a bunch of images, which makes everything look a little puny, even while you're desperately trying not to.  So for our upcoming show, "Superunknown:  the Neo-Folk Impulse," curated by Leigh Cooney and featuring Andrea Heimer, The Cooney Brothers, Mike Egan, Ben Kehoe, Bill Ross, Marc Lambert, and Matthew Waldeck, I thought a little bit and decided:  go with Raymond.  But not a Raymond drawing, a Raymond costume.  "Superunknown" could totally describe Raymond during his heyday.  He was a secret, unnerving, but beautiful presence on Cincinnati streets, walking in one of those clown outfits with a big ominous toolbox in tow.  He created his own enigma, and boy was it loud.  A "loud enigma" is kind of a good way of explaining what Leigh is after in the show:  folk art that does not have a sense of preciousness, but a smart snappy attitude that deconstructs notions of what "folk/outsider/self-taught" art can mean and be.  He's selected these artists because they seem to be working on art that does not conform to notions that are already in the world.  They are mining what's inside their minds and souls without aligning themselves with a genre or school. 

 

So be on the lookout for the "Superunknown" postcard.  Coming soon...

About Last Night

Last night we had an opening at Thunder-Sky, Inc. for a show Bill curated called, "Glory Be!  (a Historical Romance):  Works by Britni Bicknaver, Paul McGurl and Matthew Waldeck."  It felt like old times somehow.  Like 12 years ago in fact.  Bill and I first curated a show of "outsider" art back in 2001, at a place called Base Gallery.  That show featured Antonio Adams, Raymond Thunder-Sky, Paul Rowland and Richard Brown, all artists we had met doing our regular jobs helping people with developmental disabilities.  That gig was titled "Art Thing," and it truly was a groundbreaking moment for me because I realized how art can allow you intense moments of grace and happiness that can sometimes push you forward to do bigger things.  Without "Art Thing," we would not have started Visionaries and Voices, and without Visionaries and Voices we would not have opened Thunder-Sky, Inc. 

 

What has changed in the last 12 years for me, though, is an evolution of trying to figure out how to do shows and projects and events featuring great art by artists often consigned to the background without having to frame their work with their diagnostic biographies:  without having to say what they've accomplished is a product of what a doctor says they have, or has happened "in spite of" this or that diagnosis.  So in "Glory Be" and in every show we do now, the idea of "disability" and "outsider" gets critiqued through stone-cold silence.  That stuff just does not get mentioned because you don't need to know how "outsider" the artist is in order to enjoy the beauty and peculiarity of the art.  Major case in point is "Glory Be," a show featuring three artists whose works have a lot of things in common, but whose demographics aren't really in sync.  Matthew's intimate, playful drawings of famous presidents, Paul's text-infused drawings of the names of presidents and other historical figures, and Britni's sly, sleek, blithe sculptural inventions cracking the code of historical gloss and pomp -- all these works belong together, and we can relish the way they fit and knock into each other, creating both mystery and meaning.  And we don't need to know who went to art school and who didn't, and we don't need to know IQ numbers or socioeconomic indicators.  We just need the work to be here, pulled together succinctly, given room to expand.

 

Last night, too, I felt a weird, beautiful reconnection with the idea of congregating around art.  I have a major fear of groups of people, but at the opening reception last night the groups of people felt organically okay somehow, as if they had come together to feel better about being people, not so they could feel charitable or sympathetic.  Matthew's family brought enough food for a huge family reunion.  Britni had a sweet soulful crowd of her own.  It all just came together.   And I got it:  this is what we're supposed to do, what Thunder-Sky, Inc. is.  Gatherings of people with lots of food and art and that's enough. 

 

Like "Art Thing" back in the day.  We did a full-color catalog for that show, back in 2001, and below is the back-cover, our mission statement at that time.  I wish I would have known then what I know now:  I would have taken out "disability" and "outsider" from the get-go.   As in:  "The Art Thing Project Is...  ART and helping artists gain access and credibility and success on their own terms."  Why do you need "outsider" or "disability" slapped onto any of these concepts and ideas?  Is it the idea that first you need to assess/label/diagnose people prior to helping them?  Like a doctor?  Bill and I are not doctors.  I don't really know what we are.  But I truly understand, I think, what we're supposed to do here on out, and it has nothing to do with systems or charity, and it has everything to do with what happened last night, and what happened 12 years ago:  finding ways to allow everyone to leave all the bull-shit behind, and proceed accordingly...

 

 

 

 

Below are photos of last night's opening of "Glory Be! (a Historical Romance):  Work by Britni Bicknaver, Paul McGurl and Matthew Waldeck," and from March, 2001's opening night of "Art Thing:  Drawings, Objects, Paintings and Words by Antonio Adams, Paul Rowland, Raymond Thunder-Sky and Richard Brown." 

 

 

"Glory Be!"



 

 

 

 

 

 "Art Thing"

 

 

Names and Battles into Lullabies

 

 

 

 

Paul McGurl uses words.  Matthew Waldeck uses pictures.  By "use," I mean both artists appropriate and deliver their ideas, feelings and subject matters in ways that are workmanlike and focused on a central purpose that's kind of mysterious and in-your-face simultaneously.  There's no fooling around in either man's works, but there's a sense of off-kilter bliss, as these artists find meaning in the way they themselves take on what is symbolic and standard.  The names of presidents fashioned into a optometrist chart.  Historical figures lined up like Fischer Price figurines.  Both artists are creating their own worlds out of the world they've been given, and in their drawings they are finding out that history can become an incantation:  all those names and battles eventually become lullabies.

 

Paul and Matthew's works, along with the sculptures of Britni Bicknaver, will part of "Glory Be!  A Historical Romance," opening February 22, 2013 at Thunder-Sky, Inc.  Reception that night if 6 to 10 pm.