The folks behind the 20 year old Dallas Video Festival provided projections in the parking lot of Kettle Gallery. They showed the best of last summer’s festival which is always interesting, independent, innovative & frequently imported.
Speaking of Kettle Gallery, they had a group show celebrating the green line and Barry Kooda’s fabulous icon birdhouses. Clint Scism’s 3-d shadow boxes stole the show for me with their cleanly layered lines & charm. “Mass Transport” was especially dreamy with its layers of drawings, structure and clouds intertwined by the riveted snake train.
Hal Samples Gallery featured the show “Genius, Order, Phylum, Species” exhibiting the metal sculpture of George Fowler. Inspired by nature, the work focused on metal interpretations of flora. I don’t know how many red dots were up but quite a few girls around the art walk seemed to have collected the long stem singles in brushed sheet metal. Self taught & from East Texas, “two main themes in his work are the synchronicity of disparate elements … contrast of the idea of fleeting beauty in juxtaposition of the relative permanence that metal affords the sculpture…mechanical elements made beautiful in both meaning & aesthetics.”
The good people at Public Trust did an exhibit of editioned works called Manifold. Beautiful serigraphs on exquisite paper, numbered & signed by artists like Evan Hecox, Shepard Fairey, Marcel Dzama, Andrew Schoultz & Ryan McGinness (who did an exquisite print in gold leaf). But this was more than rare print show, some works were hand painted pigment prints and the digital video by Richard Garet extended the exhibit away from the walls & flickered to gather your attention. & word is that art prostitute is getting ready to work the corner again. Relaunch issue to feature works by Steven Hopwood-Lewis, Margaret Meehan, Misty Keasler, M and Brent Ozaeta (limited edition print suite by all 5 artists for $100).
The good people at Public Trust did an exhibit of editioned works called Manifold. Beautiful serigraphs on exquisite paper, numbered & signed by artists like Evan Hecox, Shepard Fairey, Marcel Dzama, Andrew Schoultz & Ryan McGinness (who did an exquisite print in gold leaf). But this was more than rare print show, some works were hand painted pigment prints and the digital video by Richard Garet extended the exhibit away from the walls & flickered to gather your attention. & word is that art prostitute is getting ready to work the corner again. Relaunch issue to feature works by Steven Hopwood-Lewis, Margaret Meehan, Misty Keasler, M and Brent Ozaeta (limited edition print suite by all 5 artists for $100). Edward Ruiz showed cast resin figures at Avenue Arts in Exposition Park. The DIY monkey was back from spring and the deranged raccoon action figure. But lots of other artists made figures as well in the show, like Tyson Summer for example. But most interesting to me was Edward’s offering of the figurine blanks open to the creative impulse of the collector themselves to decorate in the same vein as the popular Munny dolls. DIY yet again gives the viewer a turn to be creative.
Barry Whistler was showing Lawrence Lee’s ink & graphite on paper. His sepia tones are provided through artfully applied tea stains. I’ve always been a big fan of his work. Powerful re-appropriation of iconic African American figures is a prevalent theme. The personality of all his characters, both man & animal are infused in Lee’s drawings with a unique energy. These characters seem to have their own back story.
Barry Whistler was showing Lawrence Lee’s ink & graphite on paper. His sepia tones are provided through artfully applied tea stains. I’ve always been a big fan of his work. Powerful re-appropriation of iconic African American figures is a prevalent theme. The personality of all his characters, both man & animal are infused in Lee’s drawings with a unique energy. These characters seem to have their own back story. 
Back in Expo Park, Central Trak has a colorful show inside & the installation in the display window by artist, Mary Benedicto is pretty & candy colored as well. Benedicto’s sound installation was based on a single tone sung by the Castrato Boys Choir and her own intonations recorded and looped played from a speaker inside a tiny toy piano placed upon green Astroturf. But the real star is the lemon yellow St. Angela surrounded by almost tentacles forms shaped from plastic, rubber & prints of Mary’s signature digitally manipulated patterns & colors. Skittles for the eyes.
Art Love & Magic on Commerce offered its guests an opportunity to witness the creative process in action. Artists of multiple mediums gathered easels in a single room & worked for hours. I visited early during daylight & later just before the close & the evolution of the work is always remarkable to watch. Sadly I didn’t get pictures of the after, only the before. Nice seeing art in action
Next door is the 3 story Nomad Gallery, with its registry bank of computer taking the place of a sign in register with ink & paper. I always like seeing other people’s handwriting. It says so much about them. Great afterparty featured djs on the first floor & bands like the Happy Bullets on the roofdeck with video projections. I especially liked the assemblage work by Jason Ice and Melissa Carroll’s brightly colored interpretations of antique photography framed in equally neon colors. Henry Dees aka Junkie has been catching my eye for sometime with his diverse & sometime dark conceptual art. He is definitely one to look out for, his work is something special.I must admit, the most interesting invite I received on the walk was for midget wrestling at some West Dallas nudie bar named for a jungle feline. as far as performance art goes, I don’t think anything can top it this week.
More practical than an invite to midget wrestling, the Deep Ellum Public Art Guide is a handy postcard map listing all the permitted murals & sculptures in walking distance of the neighborhood. Best of all the artists are listed for easy reference.
Uptown Art Festival this Saturday Sept. 27 on Fairmount between McKinney Ave & Howell. Last weekend was the DADA art walk through Dragon Street & the like.
Uptown Art Festival this Saturday Sept. 27 on Fairmount between McKinney Ave & Howell. Last weekend was the DADA art walk through Dragon Street & the like.
Dale Chihuly has a magic rowboat of blown glass globes in fiery yellow, orange & reds for a half million dollars. Check it out before its gone at Dunn & Brown unless you want to see its sister installation shown seasonally at the botanical gardens in Miami.On my way to Deep Ellum I stopped and saw the show at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary featuring video projections & much more by Paul Slocum, Amy Revier, Brian Fridge and Edward Setina. I was especially fond of the crawling astronaut projections.
A quick visit to the Dallas Contemporary offered a solo show by Vernon Fisher, who is interviewed in this month’s THE magazine. Large scale conceptual work splicing together dreamy chalkboard images with embedded collage images. Cobalt blue grid frames the torn edges of the Hindenberg zeppelin. Plasticized punctuation marks attempt to draw the viewer into the deeper textual subplots behind the images. Water is a theme as is visceral anatomy and cartographic elements.
Fisher says in the interview: “Art isn’t for every
body…some people’s lives are so grueling that they have nothing left after putting food in their mouths… Texas encourages a sensitivity to ‘bleak’.” The native Texan artist mentioned the scattered art community of Dallas, “Everything’s so far apart that the reward to exertion ration is out of proportion.” I tend to agree that Dallas has more to offer than seen at first glance but the galleries are not pedestrian friendly for the most part aside from Dragon Street & the determinedly resilient Deep Ellum areas. Hopefully the green train will encourage cooperative scheduling between the xpo park & ellum galleries in future art walks.
Fisher also confesses that “for me, Texas has been a place to overcome.” Like many Texas artists, we attempt to stretch the boundaries of the “regional artist” categorization and seek to join the ranks of expatriates such as Donald Judd, Robert Rauschenberg & Julian Schnabel who are known more for the impressive quality of their artwork rather than their state of origin.
With that thought, we bid fond farewell to And/Or Gallery and its curator, Paul Slocum as they close up shop & leave us for a bright future in NYC. Take a moment & check out his online portfolio.
Slocum’s final installation at his own space offered us a peek at three tax returns that made me think long & hard about the cost of running a for-profit art gallery. So he showed the 990’s for the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), the Mac (McKinney Ave. Contemporary) and his own space (And/Or). Interestingly enough, in the year displayed the forms indicated the little gallery on Peak at Bryan sold as much art as the Mac. The major difference is that the Mac and DMA pay no rent, and receive lots of funding from both private donors & govt. grants for programs. That’s pretty tough to compete with, but And/Or showed consistently some of the most innovative (and often 8bit) artwork Dallas has seen in a long time. & we’ll definitely miss their digital influence that had the more institutional spaces scrambling to keep up. xxoo1s&0s
