Emvergeoning

This post is a response to Kristy Perez’s recent Chez Bernard (Artist Foundation) show at the Friedrich Building. Photos by Justin Parr.

Love in Return (After Anteros)

When we speak of love we begin with the feet. This is dictated by the movement of the heart, but it suggests the movement of the eyes. Of course the mirrors strip us bare even as they sink into the shoes. At what point does the wheel (the base of the leg apparatus) begin to turn? At what point does our fate return to the nest, gilded and headless (armless, legless)? Should I stop here, love, on the white banks of the river? You’ll find your shoes alone. Never. You’ll find your dissolusion in the air. If you reach the top of the ladder then do we find beauty? Yes I’m saying beauty is dissolusion. My heart brings me back to your feet. And yes those mirrors push me straight up your skirt. I’m building your leg straight through your heart. Don’t look away, love.

If at First You Don’t Succeed

The Voodoo is High in the Salt and the Oil of Our Air

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This is the third in a series of posts on publicly accessible outsider art installations in San Antonio, Texas. The first two covered the work of Samuel Mirelez and Rev. Seymour Perkins.

I’ve only just started writing this post, and already I recognize it to be a failure. I’m writing on Ed Clark’s Christmas House [], but I’ve never met Ed Clark, never been inside the house, never seen it in its full lit-up Christmas glory. All I know about the project is what my friend Leigh Anne told me: Ed Clark turned his house into a permanent Christmas-themed installation in honor of his late wife, who loved Christmas. That sound you hear is the shattering of any remaining pretense to journalistic credibility here on Emvergeoning.

So my plan to is show you some good photos of the outside of the house, shot, of course, by Justin Parr, and talk a bit about why I started this little series of posts in the first place.

Amid all the chatter about the art market, whether the bubble will burst or whether diamond-encrusted skulls are here to stay, it can be refreshing to look at people working outside of this art world ecosystem. It’s not that these outsiders aren’t ego-driven, or don’t want to be paid for their work, or are somehow more “pure” than a Creative Capital-trained art entrepreneur. But what we see in the work of Samuel Mirelez, or Rev. Seymour Perkins, or Ed Clark is a gesture mediated by the materials and needs of their own private lives. It is no coincidence that these artists turn their homes into installations, or that their works begin simply as gestures of love. While many artists try to universalize their work, to escape the personal, we see these outsiders revel in their own eccentricities to the point where the work becomes an homage to the very fact of being human. So through this work we can see more directly the original motivations, tools, and creative solutions of the artist. You can see the initial, unobscured impulse to create as well as the edifice which is built on top of it.
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My interview with Alan Licht is now available in the newest issue of NeoAztlan. Also in this issue: Kate Green interviews Angela Bulloch and Steve Peralta interviews Ioana Nemes. Licht’s on sound art came out this week as well; look for my review in the upcoming issue of Artlies.

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It’s wonderful that we live in an age in which an essay such as this can exist:

Melancholy and joy are poetry’s modest, binary legacy. Affirmation and repudiation taken together form a somewhat psychotic gesture, the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” casually borrowed from the Roman caesars (both caesars and poets rely on the thumb). And isn’t poetic melancholy at times only rapture in disguise, as if the poet wished to enjoy inspiration just a bit longer and so hides it in a heat-resistant container? At times these affirmations and negations may be slightly ahistorical, pronounced without reference to new facts and conclusions. The court assembles, experiences inspiration and, ignoring the witnesses, ignoring both the prosecutor and the defense, passes its apodictic, beautifully composed sentence. Is Baudelaire’s complaint really so different from Ovid’s?

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Katie Pell’s current show at Galeria Ortiz (you belong (here)) explores the relationship between artist and viewer in a more explicit way than artists usually attempt:

Like the framed niches printed on wallpaper adorning French houses and salons, I am presenting works to frame whatever stands before it. Like you. You are a product of a lot of hard work, and this is my version of a standing ovation. Yes, that’s right, this is my standing ovation to you, full of adorable fuzzy creatures of the forest, rock stars, bouquets of flowers and mythical creatures from heaven.

Well, ok, I didn’t see any rock stars, but these mirror-framed pastel drawings do leave a wide-open sky within which to see yourself surrounded by flowers and fuzzy creatures (photos by Justin Parr):

Pell’s decision to frame the viewer twice, first within the reflected gallery environment, then within the dense, baroque flora / fauna scenery is an interesting one, if a bit jarring (and difficult to photograph). What is the viewer to make of this fantastical world, full of happy forest creatures clutching Pixie Stix and Hershey’s kisses, framed by a mirror reflecting white walls, and perhaps a Mondini-Ruiz painting or two? Is the artist celebrating the viewer or projecting an idealized facade, not too different from the idealizations art enthusiasts might project on artists? Why does she expect us to see ourselves in these whispy, pink- and yellow-tinted clouds floating in a baby blue sky?

Pell claims in her statement: “I just want you to feel special” — and I appreciate her attempt to address the relationship between artist and viewer directly, whether she means it or not. I don’t know when the show closes (the flier doesn’t say, and apparently every section of the Galeria Ortiz website is “currently under construction”) but Tuesday morning (November 6), Pell is having a gallery talk at 11:am, which she would prefer you not attend, miracle though you may be. Well, at least she told me not to attend, but maybe you’re more special than I am.

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• Emvergeoning friends Megan & Murray McMillan are workaholics. They just finished an incredibly scenic residency in Greece and one of their video projects is currently on view at the 10th Annual Istanbul Biennial. It that’s not enough, check out a review of their Channelbone, 2-day whale installation in St. Louis in the latest issue of Art in America
• Speaking of Art in America, Michael Duncan wrote an informative and eloquent feature on San Antonio recluse, Dario Robleto, in this month’s issue. Duncan also wrote the catalog essay for Robleto’s show at Arthouse, a collaborative installation with the recently deceased Jeremy Blake.
• In other news, why does this story have Dario Robleto written all over it? Seems to fit into the themes of fear and tenderness in men…
• And last but certainly not least, David Rubin gets a high five for managing to book Jennifer Steinkamp for the San Antonio Museum of Art: installation stardate 2009.

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This post is the second in a series focusing on publicly accessible outsider art installations in San Antonio, Texas. The first post in this series covered the work of bird house maker Samuel Mirelez. All photos by Justin Parr.

Although San Antonio is considered a well-integrated city, the black population is still for the most part confined to the east side of town. Hackberry Street is one of the main thoroughfares running through the east side near downtown. It is on the corner of Hackberry and Nevada that Rev. Seymour Perkins wages a battle against drugs and violence with art, mythology, and religion. At his home on Hackberry, Rev. Perkins runs Hanging Tough Ministries, Perkins Art School, and The Debbie Jo Christi Museum Project. His ministries began after Perkins’ daughter was killed in drug-related violence. He then started preaching and working in the neighborhood to curtail drug use. In 1999, his church was burned to the ground. Even after this tragedy, Perkins continued to preach from the cement slab on which the church once stood:

Much of Rev. Perkins’ art celebrates boundary-breaking African-Americans, such as the first black cowboy, Nat Love, the first black college president, Martin Freeman, Sammy Davis, Jr, and Martin Luther King, Jr (you can find some of these portraits at San Angel Folk Art). At other times Perkins uses the art itself to break down barriers, by painting the Statue of Liberty as a black woman, John F. Kennedy, Jr. as a black man, or by painting traditionally white, aristocratic hairpieces on various black figures. By interweaving American mythology with his own visions, Perkins becomes a sort of poetic revisionist, fighting truth with faith. He works as a quixotic figure, trying to break down long-entrenched boundaries and nullify the fear, hatred, and desperation that they have created within his community.

Recently, Rev. Perkins was arrested by San Antonio Police officers after a search turned up drugs in his home. Some claim the drugs were planted there, while others speculate that a member of Perkins’ “congregation”, many of whom use drugs themselves, may have left the substance in his home inadvertently. The artist is out of jail, but his legal fate is uncertain.

You can find the work of Rev. Perkins at the San Angel Folk Art Gallery, and at see his Sculpture Garden at in San Antonio.

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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.

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I just received news that Garth Clark Gallery in New York, one of the best contemporary ceramics galleries anywhere, is closing. According to the co-owner of the gallery, Mark Del Vecchio:

After 27 years and over 600 exhibitions we have decided to go “private” and “by appointment only”.  We no longer represent artists and no longer present exhibitions.  This has been a difficult decision to make but we are somewhat burned out after all our years of rotating exhibitions and while we remain in business in the same locations with the same phone numbers, this limited time frame will allow us to grow in new directions.  We will do “salons” from time to time in which the gallery will be open for an evening but otherwise we have our door closed on 57th street and are working privately with collectors and museums selling resale works from the latter part of the 20th century.

As we noted back in June, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is acquiring 375 pieces from the Garth Clark Mark Del Vecchio collection, which will be unveiled in May, 2008.

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This post is the first in a series that will cover some currently active, publicly viewable outsider art installations in San Antonio. We’re starting with Samuel Mirelez because he passed away on September 17 after a long battle with cancer, and the work may only be viewable for a short time. In the coming days we’ll cover Rev. Seymour Perkins and Ed Clark. All photos by Justin Parr.

As with all the artists we’ll be looking at in this series, Samuel Mirelez began his work as a gesture of love. Finding himself in a state of poverty, and with a wedding anniversary fast approaching, Mirelez decided to craft a gift for his wife out of Folger’s coffee cans. Despite the humble materials, the gift was ambitious: a bird house modeled after the San Fernando Cathedral, where the couple wed. The gift was a success, but the choice of materials took its toll; soon, the bird house began to rust and deteriorate. Seeing his wife’s dismay, Mirelez vowed to build a new San Fernando bird house, this time out of aluminum. Soon he found himself building bird houses for his children, his friends, and his coworkers. And he kept building them. He modeled bird houses after castles, Spanish missions, even the White House and the Kremlin. Eventually his yard, front and back, became a permanent installation of avian domiciles (though, strangely, with very few birds):

Although he switched to rust-proof metals, he continued to use found materials for all his houses: left over aluminum siding, scraps of wood, and anything else he could find, or that friends would give him. On a recent visit to the Mirelez house, we even spotted a transparent bird house:

The pieces also became less functional over the years, although they retained an architectural focus. Note this large piece with no walls, but architectural features including arches, spires, and friezes.

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Since UTSA art professor Ken Little is doing a performance of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece tonight, I thought I’d link back to a post I wrote about the piece in the early days of Emvergeoning (the seventh post!). It is a four part response to a video of Ono performing the piece at Carnegie Hall.

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