Writing on Mirrors

Vincent Gray

Dale Jackson's calligraphy on a mirror reflecting Ricky Walker's drawings and Patricia Murphy's sculpture.

Patricia Murphy

Patricia Murphy

Vincent Gray

Vincent Gray

Signage

Dale Jackson

Ricky Walker

Ricky Walker and Patricia Murphy

Ricky Walker

 

I had this idea to ask Dale Jackson to write on mirrors about a year ago, for a show still unnamed.  Dale's work is about writing down segments of language on any surface he can find (usually paper, but sometimes shoes, other objects, wood, etc.), words and phrases that don't interrelate as much as disintegrate, flowing and disappearing into the ether the way living life does.  It's as if he's writing verses for his own unique invisible Bible, imposing a very structured sense on nonsense, and providing a way to reiterate and reinterpet one of my favorite actual Bible verses, Ephesians 1:2:  "'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.'" 

 

So Dale obliged.  On six mirror tiles, he wrote what he writes and it's somehow both magical and jarring when you see it in the gallery.  His words imposed over a reflection of a reality that has no end, no focal point, just silvery and obligatory scenery.  Black Sharpee sharpness across all that is there, sort of cinematic, sort of like midair doodling, sort of like a conversation freezing into calligraphy across the space caused by dialogue. 

 

Those mirrors vacuum in the space.  Saturday, while Bill hung Ricky's repetitive, gorgeous-Crayola drawings, I watched them appear one by one in the marked-up mirrors on the wall, and it all somehow made total sense.  Then across the gallery is Vincent's Pointillist masterpieces of boxers boxing, a whole neighborhood of disenfranchised people holding their hands up, the flashy eyelids of Diana Ross.  And in the middle of the floor, Patricia's oddly shaped little figments, geometrical clouds turning into Kafka bricks, 1970s album covers for Electric Light Orchestra, resplendent with half-dead houseplants and a beautifully restricted sense of whimsy. 

 

This show called "Makeshift" keeps flashing in my head like a book of poems I read when I was in high school and only now can understand.  It's a bunch of blocked-out, accidental haikus and villanelles, a suite of works you can't solve a puzzle with, and yet when you see all of their works stationed in one room it seems somehow predetermined, makeshift in a totally wonderful way.

 

I know, I know.  I keep going on and on.  But I think it's taken me about 15 years to understand this is what I want art shows to look like.

 

February 28, 2015 "Makeshift:  New Works by Vincent Gray, Dale Jackson, Patricia Murphy, and Ricky Walker" opens with a reception 6 to 10 pm.

  



Perfect Little Nothings

Patricia Murphy

Ricky Walker

Vincent Gray

Dale Jackson



 

Some of the shows we do at Thunder-Sky, Inc. are junked-up paradises, maximalist, thrift-store exercises in gorgeousness that seem to fall apart as soon as they come together, and come together as soon as they fall apart.  "She Blinded Me with Science," one we did in 2013, comes to mind:  lots of pseudo-steamer-punk flourishes, a silly overarching narrative attached to a 1983 techno pop-song, etc.  Just dumb fun.  "Dumb fun" in the best sense though.  We've done shows dedicated to freak flags, to Raymond's messy sense of place and non-place, to art-school drop-outs.  The gallery has been home to vast expanses of sewn-together plastic grocery-store bags, Magic-Marker-ed rocks, Antonio Adams' complicated all-consuming cosmology of super-stardom and non-super-stardom.  We've had a basement full of monster drawings from a nine-year-old boy's notebooks, as well as walls covered in heavenly, William-Blake-inspired kid drawings, and don't forget:  one whole gig dedicated to a homeless guy's hats. 

But this one we're doing the end of this month (opening February 28, 2015, with a reception 6 to 10 pm) is one of my faves because it has a focus and a predetermined feel to it, comprised of works that are humble, conceptual, silly and pretty.  I kind of pulled it together in my head before I even found the name for it:  " Makeshift," one of those nondescript adjectives that feel derogatory coming out of your mouth and yet somehow regal going into your brain.  I first thought of a show like this one when I saw the works of Ricky Walker, someone Bill met through his work as a social-worker, kind of like back in the old pre-Visionaries-+-Voices days, an artist who only has access to crayons and copy-paper, and thus creates what he creates with what's at hand:  simple, nervous, perfect little nothings that somehow have a grandeur and power, like New Wave album covers or notes written in secret in a language not yet invented.  That led me to think about Dale Jackson, an artist who uses both V+V and Thunder-Sky, Inc. as places to make stuff, and by "stuff" I mean long poetic treatises on paper, cardboard, and wood, in marker usually, made from non-sequiturs and overheard and/or remembered phrases, catch-phrases, and old Motown classic.  Dale creates an endless expanse of language without giving a crap about what it means, only feels, kind of like the James Joyce of Kroger parking lots (that's Dale's day-job, working at Kroger).  Ricky's wordless missives match right up with Dale's wordy ones, until they make a trade-off, translating into one another.  Vincent Gray is an artist who has come to many Thunder-Sky, Inc. shows, sometimes bringing his work with him and showing it to folks on the sidewalk during openings.  I included him in this one because he is pure style, and the paintings I chose to be in "Makeshift" are exercises in Pointilism, that old-school 19th Century technique.  Dots blur into imagery, like visual measles, developing lush, sad pictographs like the one above, almost anonymous, but also kind of feverish too.  Patricia Murphy's sculptures have a carefree concentration to them, colorful, blissful, a little off, and I thought of her work once I saw the three other artists' works together.  I needed something off the wall, literally.  Made of all kinds of low-end and high-end materials, Patricia's works have a cartoonish melancholy that seems both dreamy and yup makeshift, like boats adrift a sea of plastic kindness. 

So this one is personal to me somehow, and a little more careful, but still has a comfortable, late-afternoon feel to it, like watching TV after school, or doodling and/or writing love-letters in church, or listening to the radio right before you go to sleep on a summer day:  pictures, words and other things that kind of melt away your decision not to see them.

"Makeshift:  New Works by Vincent Gray, Dale Jackson, Patricia Murphy, and Ricky Walker," opens last Saturday in February, 2015.  Reception 6 to 10 pm.

Down to Earth

U-Turn Art Space is about to come to an end.  It feels sort of like the last episode of Friends , that weird nostalgic ache, that sense that a group of people who made something both approachable and unique, culturally aware but also down to earth, is over.  And there's nothing that can take its place, not even reruns. 

I first stumbled onto the space last July and got mesmerized by the glamour and chutzpah of a show called "The Place You Made to Find One Another," featuring the works of Eric Ruschman and Patricia Murphy (two artists who also helped run the space).  The exhibit had a ghostly cast of misfit sculptures and intricately conceived paintings, but also a sense of finish and what I call "there-ness," meaning it just seemed like a show that came fully intact from somebody's brilliant brain, like Athena busting out of Zeus's skull, or a crazy chandelier dropping out of the sky and landing without breaking right in front of you.  There was an easy-going pretentiousness that I loved in that show, and every other show I saw there also had that knack to be both sophisticated and unfussy, brave without showing off.  Each show examined the limits of what art can be, while expanding the way you can appreciate those limits, like Duchamp without fustiness.  Each exhibit, it seemed, offered a new brand of readymades, a new centerstage urinal.

But something else:  an enthusiasm and naivete tempered with glittery wisdom.  Nothing heavy-handed, but a sort of gravity through the curatorial choices made, the careful consideration of how art got installed and lit and talked about.

So thank you Matt Morris, Molly Donnermeyer, Zachary Rawe, Patricia Murphy and Eric Ruschman.  What an incredible sitcom you created.
 
Here are the shows I wrote about:

"The Mechanics of Joy"
"moon in the wall, hope it don't dissolve"
"The Place You Made to Find One Another"

The final show at U-Turn, "Aloha Means Both Hello and Goodbye" opens this Saturday, June 4, 2011, witha a reception at 7 pm to 10 pm.  (Bill and I were asked to be a part of it, and we're so happy to be.)  U·turn Art Space 2159 Central Ave.  Cincinnati, Ohio Please come and show the U-Turners how much they meant to Cincinnati art, and just plain old art in general.

Seance with Art Supplies

Antonio Adams working on one of the large-scale "reinventions" of a large print of one of  Raymond Thunder-Sky's unfinished drawings.  Raymond, when walking around the city drawing deconstruction sites, would often not finish some of the drawings -- possibly because of the volume of pieces he did.  There are approximately 400 unfinished drawings in the archive. 

We're pulling together the "2 + 2 = 5: Collaborations" exhibit, opening April 29, 2011 at Thunder-Sky, Inc.  The show will feature variations on the theme of "collaboration," and how getting rid of "one author" can open up new vistas and territories to investigate.  We'll have the "Guernica" pieces Antonio Adams and the late Brian Joiner did together in 2008, a triptych of large golden panels reenacting Picasso's famous grand-guignol masterpiece, re-configuring and re-conjuring that visual feast using superhero and urban imagery.  Amazing work.  As well, Antonio is working on pieces, utilizing remnants donated  from Brian's studio.  Pamela Rhodes Myricks has written a beautiful elegy about Brian, and we'll be publishing it along with a brochure about the Antonio/Brian collaborations.  We've had large prints made of some of Raymond Thunder-Sky's unfinished works (thanks to Dan Leesman from United Electric), and David Mack, Antonio, and a few other artists are working on "finishing" them.  Thunder-Sky, Inc. co-founder Bill Ross has some collabs he did with the late Donald Henry.  The exhibit is shaping up to be about how collaboration is not just about people working on art together, but about how collaboration can be a sort of a continuation of a conversation, a seance with art supplies...

We're also going to publish a book of writings inspired by Dale Jackson's text-driven works.  Titled I Was Dreaming When I Wrote This, the book will feature color reproductions of Dale's works, side by side with the writings done by local poets and writers, including Patricia Murphy, Matt McBride and Micah Freeman.  We'll be sponsoring a reading of these works along with the opening in late April.  Matt Morris and Eric Ruschman are also going to contribute a sculptural piece.

Dale Jackson beside his work in January 2011's "Mechanics of Joy" exhibit at U-Turn Alternative Space in Brighton.

April 2011 is going to be a great month for collabs.  We're doing the "2 + 2 = 5" show, and Visionaries & Voices has a fundraiser called "Double Vision" at Memorial Hall April 22, 2011, featuring collaborative works by "established artists and V&V artists."  Which begs the question:  what is the different between Thunder-Sky, Inc. & V&V?  They were both established because of Raymond and Antonio basically.  Bill and I started supporting both Raymond and Antonio and many other self-taught artists back in 1999, and from that initial support grew V&V, a studio for artists with disabilities.  Bill and I left V&V in 2009 because it was a project we no longer needed to be a part of.  We cofounded Thunder-Sky, Inc. to underline the importance of collaboration and also to problematize/reenvision the notion of "outsider art" and programs for artists with disabilities... 

Can't wait for April!

Donald Henry and Bill Ross, "Dreamhouse," acrylic and marker on canvas, 2009.

2 + 2 = "Pretty"

"The Place You Made to Find One Another" opened last night at U-turn Art Space (2159 Central Avenue, Brighton neighborhood in Cincinnati), and runs through August 28, 2010. It's one of those shows that casts a magic spell over you. "Pretty" is a stupid word, but that's what came into my head as soon as I walked into the space. But "pretty" in a more broken and specific way -- like the "pretty" Joseph Cornell finds and worships in vacant hotel rooms, or the delicate gritty "pretty" Carson McCullers discovers in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Each piece sings a little off-key, but when you see the exhibit all in one walk-through you have the sense that "off-key" is exactly where beauty and absurdity meet, where sadness finds a place to laugh.

Eric Ruschman's work has a polished, precise tenderness to it, channeling pure feeling through a minimalist aesthetic that doesn't come off as minimal as much as carefully self-contained. This carefulness carries a lot of weight in pieces like "And Since You Can't Be a Fox in a Foxhole" and "This Is a Different Kind of Love Song," and allows you to luxuriate in what's there and what's not there. The colors evoke childhood simplcity, but the pieces themselves have a sophistication and mystery, with imagery that provides clues while also allowing you the benefit of the doubt. My favorite work by Ruschman is called "I Know, I'm Worried Too," a round wood shiny-surfaced table with cute animal knick-knacks arranged on it. What might have been a Jeff-Koons pastiche somehow becomes more of a Cornell ice-dance, a nostalgic little trip into what unnecessary objects can do to you if you look at them long enough, if you truly try to understand them.

Patricia Murphy has a more broken sense of "pretty." Her sculptures and paintings in the show feel as if they have been washed ashore, while Ruschman's pieces reached dry land via cruise-ship. In "Knot" and "Partly Because It's Easier on You," she uses abandoned boards and objects in arrangements that defy meaning while creating it. The pink knot seems to be an afterthought but also somehow predetermined, and the blank board with a yellow rectangle almost complete the puzzle, but then again it's not a puzzle we're looking at: it's more like a William Carlos Williams poem, all perfect and slight and weird. "Partly..." has that same cooked-down murmur to it, a poetry that climbs a ladder into itself. "Rush Beyond Silver Silence" seems like Murphy's answer to Ruschman's "I Know, I'm Worried Too." (It's also my favorite work by Murphy.) A left-behind nightstand with a small pillow with a ceramic bear on it, some dreamy wrinkled photos stuck to the sides of the nightstand with silver tape, "I Know" is lifted off the floor by an arrangement of naked wooden boards. As a whole, this piece has the fever of an intense memory you feel before you remember.

I kept thinking about Joseph Cornell the whole time I was at the show. Cornell said once that the shadowboxes he made, filled with nostalgic arrangements of trinkets, were poetic theaters, settings he created to transform childhood pastimes into moments that can't be lost anymore. Both Ruschman and Murphy create art in that vein; they seem to be searching for places and sensations that have somehow been lost. They are slowly recovering these scenes and feelings piece by piece.

Pictured above, top to bottom: Patricia Murphy, "Partly Because It Is Easier on You," aluminum dust, boards, broken ceramic horse. latex and spray paint. Patricia Murphy, "Knot," acrylic paint, found board, non-adhesive flagging tape. Eric Ruschman, "And Since You Can't Be a Fox in a Foxhole?" oil and enamel on MDF panel. Eric Ruschman, "This Is a Different Kind of Love Song," enamel on MDF panels.