in yo face
Archived Posts from this Category
Perkins’ Piano Pics
Posted by thomas-cummins on 29 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: celebrations, in yo face, performance art, r.i.p., renegade performances
- Raul throwing the metal end of a sledge hammer.
“ and Skye Cosby will be destroying a historic piano upon which music legends such as Sam Cooke have played. The piano was a gift from the late artist Reverend Seymour Perkins’ family to commemorate his artistic career and legacy. Perkins and Castellanos collaborated extensively for the last 2 years of Perkins’ life. Afterwards, Castellanos will build a wall sculpture out of the piano pieces…” -Raul’s MySpace
- Perkins house view West towards the Tower, Alamodome, and new Obama mural.
“My performance partner suffered a heat stroke last week cancelling our performance but we are now able to guarantee that on Tuesday the 28th, at 7:45 PM, at 602 Nevada (and Hackberry) at Reverend Seymour Perkins’ famous cement slab/sculpture garden, I, Raul Castellanos, will be breaking a piano given to me by the Perkins family to honor the late controversial and legendary artist from the Eastside. My assistant is Skye who is also Perkins’ only authorized biographer. I collaborated on many projects with Perkins for a bit more than 2 years and was truly honored to do so.” -Raul’s MySpace
- Weapons for killing a piano. The chain was awesome. I wish I would have seen the Ninja sword at work. The crew raises the piano here for vertical destruction. Starting from the right- Perkins son, Raul, and Skye. David Rubin watches in the background.
- Raul hard at work while the neighborhood watches.
- REVIVAL CENTER. Remains of Perkins burnt house on right while Ben and Danielle watch.
It’s hard to believe, but this event was actually as good as it sounded. Raul once had an art studio next to mine and he was always pretty intense- destroying perfectly good instruments to create paintings and sculptures that helped him represent his deafness to the world. Destroying this antique, though, seemed particularly irreverent as well as the fact that, this time, his chaotic artistic performance was taking place in the middle of one of San Antonio’s poorer black neighborhoods. For the most part, passing cars would just honk curiously at the gathering crowd. There were moments, though, when this art crowd might have felt they were on the wrong side of Sunset Station. One passing neighbor yelled at a nervous spectator and told him to put the piano back together. Overall, though, I felt a real sense of community built between artists, San Antonians, and the recently bereaved. It has often been said that in art- in order to create, you must destroy. What better place, then, than at the Reverend’s Revival Center which once strived to rebuild the tattered remains of strung-out lives.
UPDATE: A video of the event was just uploaded to .
Tales from Luminaria Weekend
Posted by justin on 16 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: adventure day, art paparazzi, arts organizations, in yo face, party photos, performance art, possibilities, public art, rock!, silliness
Well, after a good deal of rain, some unexpected cold, and a little bit of worry, Luminaria 2009 turned out to be a really nice night in San Antonio. Aside from my experience with the overbearing police force (who wanted to tackle me for riding my bike down an empty LONG stretch of closed off road) I found this Luminaria to be much better organized and more satisfying to take part in. I carried my camera and photographed the projects I was able to come into personal contact with. Heres a selection of those photos, with my garbled commentary.
Laura Varela & Vaago Weiland collaborated on the Alamo this year. Vaago (from Mönchengladbach, Germany) said, in doing research on the Alamo, he kept coming across these photos with tents in the surrounding area. He was determined to surround the old Mission with 200 tents, however, upon closer inspection of the site was only able to squeeze in 54. Lauras video projection played alongside Vaagos sculpture, within the top of the Alamo.
Hyperbubble was the only real music I stood still and watched an entire set from. Not for lack of interesting options, but more in awe of the reaction of the crowd to their music. I heard more than several proclamations of “WHAT IS THIS?” and “THIS is the best band EVER!!” loudly from behind. I couldn’t have been happier.
My own piece (shamelessplug) was projected onto this old building(I was told it might have been called the Turner Magika Theatre?) facing out into the Hemisphere park, I showed the current version of my “Portrait of the Artist as a City,” a project I took up as a result of receiving a grant from the Artist Foundation. The video is made up of a constantly shifting set of over 9000 still photos, and encompasses more little parts of my life than I can begin to explain before losing your attention.
This year, the real showstopper for me was Ansen Seales 100 ft photograph of the San Antonio River. Contained inside the San Antonio Convention Center, It set the tone for the more conventional “walled,” section of the show. After talking to Ansen for a few minutes I was able to extract from him that this image was composed of 86,400 individual “slitscans,” made by his own homebuilt digital camera, and weighed in at a whopping 1.2 gigs for the file itself…and I thought trying to get my computer to juggle 9000 still photos at one time was tricky.
This fantastic ghost image of a dancer is local artist/instructor Rebecca Dietz. She was one of the roving performance artists, and a recent FL!GHT Gallery featured artist. I nearly missed her moving by me, and was glad I noticed who it was at the last minute.
John Mata, part of Leslie Raymonds New Media program at UTSA, built a cardboard room and filled it with books and media discussing…New Media.
Judith Cottrell & Gary Smith built this human like glowing form, and scared children for the duration of the night. I enjoyed watching.
Holly & Bryson Brooks decided it was best to be “Married with Paintings.” So they walked in at 6 on the dot, started working inside their makeshift studio(replete with audience the entire time), and by the time I rolled around with my camera, they were already at this point within each of their portraits of the other.
Back out on Alamo Street, Ethel Shipton had filled these two store front windows with her characteristic puffed objects, this time being birdhouses.
Kelly O’Connor was just a few windows down. My camera was having trouble not blowing out the detail in this one.
I stumbled upon this projection by Victor Pagona & his wife Sarah Susan, an artist I’ve heard of for years, but never met in San Antonio.
Sadly, I could only get this much of the smaller Leigh Anne Lester window displays without the detail of the sculptures being blown out by the harsh jewelry store lighting. These window displays will be available for all to see for the next month along Alamo Street.
I stumbled over this Michele Monseau projection right across the street from the Alamo, hidden on a side wall.
These patterns & lights can give you a general idea of what everything else looked like, that was not affected in some way by an individual artist or group of artists.
These two large scale Thomas Cummins Lightboxes, while difficult to do justice with a photograph, were mindblowingly detailed in person.
Another fine example of the general lighting scheme found that night. Its almost like that time I had to shoot photos at a certain laser light show..
Jenny Browne gave away 4 shopping cartloads and a truck bed full of books, for FREE, as her piece. It was awesome to see people swarming the truck and carts, trying to get at free books, while Jenny sat on the roof watching & laughing.
..and finally to end the weekend, Tom Otterness made an appearance with his newly unveiled(in our locale at least) public art piece, “Makin Hay’,” mentioned a few weeks back here at Emvergeoning. Some things I’m sorry to say I don’t have good photos of, the first being the EXCELLENT Contemporary Art Month installation by Randy Wallace in the basement of the old Beauty College building on Travis Street. I shot many photos of it, but none of them quite did it justice. I was also sad to miss crazy Mel Feldman and his cultural arts Kaleidoscope. Somehow 1000 artists all in one place on one night is just a LITTLE hard to keep track of.
Another Matthew Rodriguez on S Flores
Posted by ben on 30 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: graffiti, in yo face, public art
I thought I’d throw a little Friday-night fun your way: another Matthew Rodriguez piece spotted down the street from Emvergeoning headquarters. I think it goes quite well with the hand-painted signage on the Ruby Ann Cleaners.
Calma con La Algebra of Life: Remembering Manny Castillo
Posted by aaron on 14 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: arts organizations, essays, in yo face, music, mustaches, possibilities, public art, r.i.p., rock!, wordy
Manuel Diosdado Castillo, Jr. tragically succumbed to lung cancer on January 6th at the age of 40 – a matter of weeks after receiving the diagnosis – leaving behind a remarkable legacy of music, public artwork, of pride in and a powerful sense of responsibility for his beloved Westside San Antonio barrio. Manny was, for nearly twenty years, a singular presence in both the underground music scene in San Antonio (whose spiritual epicenter is marked by the centuries-old live oak tree at his favorite local dive/venue: the legendary, much-missed Tacoland) and in the non-profit community organization he built, originally as an offshoot project of Patti & Rod Radle’s Inner City Development, but which quickly blossomed into San Anto Cultural Arts.
My friendship with Manny goes back to a spontaneous garage rehearsal circa 1991. Marshall Gause and I were fruitlessly waiting at my folks’ house for some now forgotten drummer we wanted to try out, as our last band line-up hadn’t worked out. Marshall suggested trying to get in touch with this guy he had played a couple of times with the year before – they had enjoyed it, but it didn’t go anywhere as Manny soon left for New Orleans to follow Academic Pursuits. Marshall had a hunch he might be back in town now. After a few calls, the hunch was confirmed and we had a drummer on the way.
That first rehearsal (guitar, bass, & drums – singer Terry Brown had to work) immediately revealed an undeniable chemistry between Marshall’s hippy-punk musicologist guitar explorations, my intuitive but rudimentary bass playing (which, lucky for me, sounded better than it had much right to thanks to my chronic music obsession, a plethora of interesting audio exposure at a job selling used records, and especially Marshall’s unpretentious ability to cover for my lack of formal musical knowledge,) and Manny’s balls-out, hit-the-drums-hard-enough-to-break-at-least-one-head-per-session-but-always-dead-on-the-beat style, using complex rhythms even formally trained jazz drummers wouldn’t have the nerve to try. He was, and remains, one of the fastest, most precise drummers I have ever seen (even faster when he was nervous,) augmented by the physical strength to just bash the hell out of his drums – a steamroller cross between John Bonham, Neil Peart, Mitch Mitchell, George Hurley and Elvin Jones. All on a minimal and creaky drum set usually somehow held together with yarn.
That afternoon we quickly bonded musically over our mutual love for Rush, The Plugz, Esteban Jordan, Thin Lizzy and especially The Minutemen. Spontaneous jams we engaged in that day became the basis for numerous songs later fully developed and forming the initial base of our oeuvre (some still included in the set list at the time the band imploded.) In short order, we brought Terry back into the circle, sat around with some Lone Stars or whatever was cheap that day and soon agreed to call ourself El Santo, in homage to the legendary Mexican lucha enmascarada/film star who never lost a match.
Obama Victory at Tuckers Kozy Korner
Posted by justin on 05 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: adventure day, announcements, art paparazzi, image & sound, in yo face, vs.
Myseries of San Antonio street art vol. 3, or JOY!
Posted by ben on 26 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: graffiti, in yo face, outsider, poetry, politics, public art
I’ve noticed this one for months (years?) on the access road to I-10:
Also, a followup on Justin’s great street art find from a couple months ago. Apparently this is by the same artist (it’s in the men’s bathroom at the Voodoo Lounge, aka SWC Club):
tacoland and the tree.
Posted by justin on 21 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: announcements, art + bikes, art paparazzi, borders, graffiti, in yo face
Anne Wallace sidewalk stamping project to come to a close this week.
Posted by justin on 06 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: acquisitions, announcements, art + bikes, art paparazzi, in yo face, public art
(photo by Justin Parr)
Anne Wallace’s sidewalk stamping project, originally commissioned to her in 1999, is finally able to come to a close with the completion of Florida Streets new sidewalks all the way from 281 to S. St. Marys (San Antonio, Texas). The work includes a range of quotes from neighborhood people about their memories of the area, as well as images of traditional crops grown in the area, which was once the farmland for the Alamo. The corn, beans, frogs, hands, snakes, and text panels are totally worth a bike ride down Florida next time you are down this way.
mystery public aqualung?
Posted by justin on 05 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: acquisitions, adventure day, art + bikes, art paparazzi, design, in yo face, rumors, silliness
public art? aqualung? pigeon coop? design by committee? I’m trying to get a good angle on it, but nobody seems to know ANYTHING about these. Pictured below, I’ve spent the last 2 months asking people “in the know,” if they know of, or have seen these objects, to no avail. Do you know anything about these giant acrylic hollow boxes, sheathed in metal and bathroom tile on the fore-front of our walk through downtown to the Alamodome? I’m not sure of the exact install date, but I have seen them unchanged in their current condition since the 2 weeks preceding the Final Four basketball games that gripped downtown San Antonio for a week. Possibly its unfinished? ..or maybe I just don’t get it.
(more images by clicking below)
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I got a call from the neighbor that there was a loud noise upstairs.
Posted by justin on 16 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: adventure day, bird flu, in yo face, mustaches, party photos, possibilities, renegade performances
Ms. Southtown: The Last?
Posted by ben on 06 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: art paparazzi, celebrity sightings, in yo face, mustaches, party photos, performance art, renegade performances, rock!, silliness
Everything got screwed up. Emvergeoning’s calendar editor forgot to post Ms. Southtown, San Antonio’s artsiest drag beauty pageant, to our events listing; last night, when Ms. Southtown was happening, our trusty photographer was out working for The Man; and our amateur backup paparazzo filled up the camera memory right before the trophy was handed to the winner. I guess that’s why we don’t get the big bucks, and why I’m typing this from a cardboard box in an alleyway off Houston St. But here it is: Ms. Southtown in photos.
Humbling Moments
Posted by ben on 01 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: in yo face, politics
Andrew Sullivan humbles bloggers everywhere by announcing that after deciding to go “balls to the wall” during the primary season, he posted over 1,600 items in one month. His Daily Dish has been a big inspiration to me by providing a steady stream of interesting political, social, and cultural commentary that defies the standard ideological structures. Congratulations to him on completing his first year under the Atlantic masthead.
Image vs. Image or, Repitition: American Vernacular
Posted by ben on 17 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: in yo face, tattoo, vs.
Contact Sheet of Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park by Diane Arbus, 1962 (Detail — full image here)
Tattoo flash sheet by Gus Wagner, ca. 1900 (via )
Image vs. Image
Posted by ben on 16 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: in yo face, vs.
Domo Arigato Mr. Bubble Head
Posted by ben on 11 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: art + bikes, design, in yo face, performance art, silliness
As many of you know, San Antonio sculptor / performer Jimmy Kuehnle has been in Japan since August working on a Fulbright project. He recently posted photos of his first two exhibits, at the Kyoto Museum (Artjam 2007) and the Aichi Geidai Gallery in the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Continuing a body of work he started in San Antonio, Kuehnle fabricated huge, inflatable sculptures, which also served as interactive / performance pieces.
Mr. Bubble Head, which Kuehnle made for Artjam, is a huge orange inflatable sculpture with ropes criss-crossing inside. Kuehnle spend much of the opening inside the sculpture tugging on the ropes as people walked by, creating an impression of organic response to the viewers’ presence. Museum visitors were also allowed inside the sculpture at various points, turning it into an interactive sculpture.
His piece at the Aichi Geidai Gallery, called Big Blob, was another inflatable sculpture made of the same orange material. This piece, however, was a suit which Kuehnle could walk around in “like a large leviathan.” After his performance in this enormous suit, Kuehnle invited audience members to try it on — but it seems a bit more unwieldy than those ridiculous sumo suits.
While the paste was still wet…
Posted by justin on 05 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: adventure day, art + bikes, art paparazzi, graffiti, in yo face, possibilities, r.i.p.
(words: Aaron Forland, photos: Justin Parr)
Who would have thought the day would come when the mighty Emvergeoning machine would get scooped on its home turf by a little-known upstart lowbrow/street art magazine called Juxtapoz? Not only that, but with photos we took, documenting a one-of-a-kind, one-night-only (thanks to our crack City maintenance crews – good lookin’ out, fellas) extralegal public art installation coordinated and executed by a group calling itself Uniting Artists Through Crime. Word has it that Scotch! and co-conspirators utilized the awesome networking power of to pull off this small coup. The diverse international show was mounted (after a false start one week prior) during daytime hours Monday, December 17th on the defunct, boarded-up former haven for the transient on North Saint Marys at Convent, directly across from our beautiful Greyhound Bus Station. As the press release (which also contained the magic word emerging) stated, the show ran “until the buff,” which, as mentioned, went down the following day. Fortunately, Fl!ght World Headquarters received a telephone tip late Monday night and we were able to semi-thoroughly document it in the wee morning hours.
The show featured the work of artists from four continents, and may be the largest wheatpaste-based collaborative installation ever mounted in Texas. Standout works came from (Florida), New York City’s stencil-mad Bot, the sociopolitical stylings of (Malaysia), and San Antonio’s own fevered x-acto imagists and . Other contributing artists included (Califas), Aphro (SA), Bomit (Houston), Chis La Notte (Madrid, España), Dual (Houston), Dwell/Oneunit (NYC), Enosh (Califas), Enos One (SA), Genevieve (SA), (Queensland, Australia), Give Up (Houston), (SA), REPS/EPSR (SA), Washer (DC), Wes (SA) and probably a few others (apologies to anyone left out – I did my best to ID you all.) Media varied from traditional wheatpaste methods of xeroxed, screened or stenciled paper to hand-painted pieces and even stenciled metal plates.
Here you will find the entirety of Justin’s photos, and here are some supplementary celly snaps I took attempting to show a little more detail.
sneak peak – the alamo in LED’s? ..possible Luminaria Arts Night project?
Posted by justin on 05 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: art paparazzi, in yo face, possibilities, rumors, sneak peeks
Bill Fitzgibbons (not pictured above) was seen directing the prologue to a rumored Luminaria Arts Night installation today at nightfall.
Ken Little/Yoko Ono Performance recap.
Posted by justin on 20 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: adventure day, art paparazzi, in yo face, possibilities, responses/reviews, silliness
Heres a little recap of the Ken Little performance of Yoko’s “Cut Piece.”
(all photos by Justin Parr, click here for a more extensive folder of images)
Wheres Waldo? – a little San Antonio Halloween diversion.
Posted by justin on 29 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: adventure day, art + bikes, art paparazzi, in yo face, party photos, renegade performances, silliness
I took part in San Antonios semi-regular Bike Gang Summit the other night for Halloween. During the process of riding through spooky parts of the city, we stopped at a cemetary on the East Side. It quickly degenerated into a game of Wheres Waldo..take a look (Waldo makes an appearance in each of these images).
To see images from the entire night go here.
Casa Segura..Border art?
Posted by justin on 16 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: borders, in yo face, opportunities, possibilities, sneak peeks
Seems Myspace is good for something..the other day my friend Julia sent along a bulletin making mention of a new project titled “Casa Segura.” I thought it quite relevant to our present locale and situation (you know..those fancy new solves-all-problems border fences?) . from the website :
Casa Segura (Safe House) is an artwork that combines a small public access structure on private land in the Sonoran desert in Southern Arizona with a dynamic bilingual web space that facilitates creative exchange, dialogue, and understanding. Located north of the Mexican border, Casa Segura engages three distinct groups: Mexican migrants crossing the border through this dangerous landscape, the property owners whose land they cross, and members of the general public interested in learning more about border issues and the intricate dynamics at play in this heavily trafficked region. It is a conceptual project that contrasts existing conditions with new choices that can positively transform how individuals on both sides of the divide engage with and perceive one another.
A lot more information is contained on the website. The prototype will be shown at Eyebeam in New York City,
Sept. 27-Nov. 10th, 2007.
SMART weekend recap
Posted by justin on 15 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: adventure day, art paparazzi, arts organizations, in yo face, party photos, performance art
La Tuna celebrity sighting
Posted by justin on 28 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: adventure day, art paparazzi, celebrity sightings, in yo face
So, it depends on who your list is made up of, but to some folks at La Tuna this past Friday night, it reminded them a little bit of of high school when they thought they knew somebody in the crowd..
he looks kinda familiar.. wait.. heres a Bryan De La Garza Polaroid of him :
oh wait.. here he is with Tori Amos.
…
oh!
Now I remember.
what a wierd Friday…
