Blue Star Arts Complex – First Friday

Holiday music courtesy of Boneshakers Bicycle Pub (featuring The Circle School & Blessed Sacrament Elementary, The Weetles).

Phillip King Exhibit “Four Decades with Colour” Dec 1- Feb 12, Main Gallery.  Sculptural and print work from the artist dated from the 60’s to today.  King has been a teacher throughout most of his life, including  posts at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools.  He has also been a trustee of the Tate Gallery.  His work spans many different ‘styles’ of sculpture and serves as a brilliant dialogue about sculpture and art in general.

Philip John Evett Exhibit “Untitled” Dec 1-Feb 12, Middle Gallery and Gallery 4.  Also an educator for much of his career, Evett currently teaches at Trinity University.  Sensual and figurative sculpture.  Beautiful work, typically carved wood or cast bronze.  Click the link above for a great gallery of his work.

Harold Wood Exhibit “Levelland [Points of Scale]” Dec 1-Feb 12, Project Space.  Hard to give a short description of Harold Wood, or his studio/workshop/showroom/art gallery/complex ‘Harold J. Wood and Company LP’.  In essence they create environments.  Form furniture and paintings to some involvement in the complex computer driven equipment as well as old world traditional means of production.  They create an environment, without seeming to be ‘interior decorators’.  Instead there is nothing but art.  Go to the site and read the bio, it is amazing all by itself.

Also coming up soon at the Blue Star Arts Space: Blue Starry Night Holiday Sale.

The revised info for the event is now December 8^th, 2pm to 7pm.  There will be awesome work for sale here, fine art, decorative art, food and drink.

David Shelton Gallery

Also along the Friday artwalk trail will be Jane Lawrence at the David Shelton Gallery.  The samples available online of Lawrence’s work do this artist’s work no justice.  The illustrations I have seen are brilliant.  The architectural, figurative, formal and surrealistic abstractions involving the human form, machinery, insects and more are full of life.   Great gallery showing great work.

Luminaria 2012 – Update

The application to be involved is now available online.  Last year was amazing (see some images on Voices of Art Magazine) and as always, San Antonio will do it bigger and better this year.  There have been same changes, so go to the site and take a look if interested.

And because the internets need to be represented…

There has been some awesome work coming out of Flash Fiction coming out of the San Antonio Current.  The Flash Fiction section is run by Lyle Rosdahl who also is involved in the Postcard Fiction Collaborative, which is also something you should check out.

Check back frequently for updates and event info, reviews, interviews and other great San Antonio Art Events!

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Rene Rodriguez: Sub-Trance Communication

Featured currently in the 106b Studio Space in the Blue Star Arts Complex is Rene Rodriguez and his show entitled Sub-Trance Communication.  A local San Antonio artist, Rodriguez is only one of the many up and coming artists to exhibit at the space in recent years.  The space, owned  by Artist/Professor Alba DeLeon and curated by DeLeon and artist Dustin Meredith, strives to bring in both student and self taught artists who deserve the spotlight and a chance at the crowd the Blue Star’s First Friday and First Thursday events bring in.  The artists (usually painters) who show in the gallery tend toward the abstract, at least in application of mediums, if not necessarily directly in the genre.  When there is an artist in 106b who is in a representational vein, they always have a knack for realism and detail while also exacting an amazing amount of control over the chaotic and ‘random’ nature of the abstract process.  Translation: realistic details and graphics alongside abstract beauty.  They also always have the personal control needed to stay within a deep concept or thematic presentation, rather than a collection of unrelated and uninvestigated ideas and works.  Rodriguez is no different.

Rodriguez presents us with several paintings, all on panels, of vehicle sound system speakers.  But not just speakers, he gives us the speakers as a physical means of producing sound.  The speakers, surrounded by clearly defined graphical elements (more on that later) and the occasional insect which, along with the repetition of the number ‘8’, is a recurring theme in his images.  The speakers are created in a realistic fashion.   Shining steel and muted felt float over the spray paint stenciled and splashed background.  We get a combination of washes, heavy brush strokes and stenciled half-tone-like spray paint.  The realistic elements, while forced from the panel by the abstract background, are locked into the concept of the series by the very same background.  Space taken by the abstract elements holds the items in an indescribably world, a trance-like void of brilliant colors and patterns.

The more graphical elements float in the void.  There are musical bars and notes on one panel, the repeated number eight (seemingly an icon used by the artist as a personal tag or emblem) and an immediately recognizable ‘speaker and sound waves’ icon seen on many operating systems, cell phones, websites, etc.  Again, these elements are afloat in the abstracted void of controlled chaos.

Two of the pieces stand out as being a different kind of work.  The panels, long horizontal pieces titles Equalizer 1 and Equalizer 2, embody the spirit of the project in a much stronger way.  The paintings contain no recognizable forms, no photorealistic speakers or insects.  No numbers.  There is only the visual experience of music.  There is, as the titles of the pieces suggest, the severely abstracted translation of an equalizer’s visual display.  Strong cubes and rectangles, bringing only a slight visual representation of the equalizer’s display and spray painted stencils of grids and dots.  Among the controlled elements is a dash of the uncontrollable.  There are spots of obvious chemical subtraction.  Perhaps paint thinner or a similar chemical was allowed onto the surface to do its work.  It was brought in to destroy.  To break the artist’s control.  This is an even greater connection to the trance concept.

On top of all of this was the sound.  At first, it seems as if a vehicle on the street outside was running its bass too loud and interrupting the exhibition.  But it never ended.  It just kept playing.  The bass, penetrating the walls and becoming not just sound, but a tactile experience, tingling the skin and ears.  The beats would change, the tones would fluctuate, and the music would continue.  The obvious ties between the speakers and the street-culture stencil roots are obvious, but the distortion and changes of perception are interesting enough to secure the show as an event worth seeing.  One is reminded of the recent UTSA Satellite Space show Ron Binks: Black Sites & Justin Boyd: Black Sounds which was playing with some of these same perceptual alterations (albeit a drastically different concept).  See the Glasstire article on the Binks/Boyd show.

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The Joseph Bravo/Ron English @ IMAS; Background: X-Ray Guernica,digital print on vinyl, 12’x24’, 2011

Ron English entered the Valley of South Texas in full force and occupied the art community and its Art institutions, demonstrating his seditious creative spirit in three independent and simultaneous exhibits.  English’s approach is so pronounced that a distinctive, yet diverse, connect was witnessed within these three exhibits. South Texas College’s Visual Arts and Music Gallery presented the opening exhibition; the International Museum of Art and Science, (the most prestigious and experienced of the Rio Grande Valley’s Art establishments) presented the  next, and a new, friendly, inventive artist-run space hosted the third.

South Texas College presented English’s inventive satirical and subversive series of works that make a mockery of, and chastise, corporate advertising. English is timely, clever and ingenious with his observations that spank the hell out of their campaign jingles and tag lines. He targets immediately recognized corporate advertising slogans that seduce us with their fervent lies and deceit into believing happiness comes in a baggie, a bottle, or deep fried in lard and coated in sugar.

Ron English, Military Might. Digital print, 2011, STC VAM Art Gallery.

English’s brilliant propaganda of genuine reality changes a Miller Light Ad into a war protest poster. Utilizing the same font he changed the text of the logo to read Military Might, with a Jingle that sings Less Chilling and More Killing. And the small print warning at the bottom reads “Repeated exposure to violence may lead to psychological conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder. Veterans have a higher risk of homelessness and societal neglect after service. “ The beauty of the success of his parodies lies in the fact that they are humorous and accessible; we don’t shut down from their harsh reality, we see corporate advertising’s falseness and become enlightened by the veracity of English’s reality. His concern is to champion the rights of the common man, for compassion, empathy and fairness. True Patriotism often runs against the status quo and requires courage to question the reasoning behind many of the conflicts our country is in today.

He designed a poster with the likeness of a sneering insensitive Uncle Sam clad in a Red White and Blue suit, extending his arm with index finger pointing to a color gradient between dark brown and lily white, like a carnival sign that reads, “You Must be This Tall to Go on This Ride.” But in this version Uncle Sam was forewarning all passersby: You Must Be This Color to Enter the Country. (The gallery audience loved taking their picture next to this poster). English and his crew took the sign across the river into Mexico, set it up at the entrance to their Immigration and Customs Port of Entry and photographed Mexicans walking past the sign entering their customs office. And if that wasn’t ballsy enough he then set it up at the entry door of the Immigration and Customs office on this side of the river, again photographing Mexicans walking past the Snidely Whiplashesque caricature of Uncle Sam as they entered through the glass doors of the U.S. customs office. One can only imagine the perplexed and astounded stares this setup fetched. One of his crew stated, “Customs officials asked to see the work, gave it a worried frown, and passed us thru.” While in Mexico they heard the firefight that left six people dead less than ten blocks from where they had filmed. He then quietly traveled down the river toward Mission, and suddenly, the Border wall sported a Ron English souvenir – a Mexican and U.S. hybrid donkey, which due to its configuration, cannot function normally.  It is, in fact, necessary to participate in one of English’s secret art actions in order to appreciate how determined and daring he is.

While here in South Texas, English never let up; like a throttled wrecking crew he lectured, did radio, and T.V. interviews, filmed, photographed, shaved a horse, bombed the wall, and whether talking to a Diplomat or an art student, never lost his humble, gracious, interest in their creative endeavors.

Super-Sixed Ronald McDonald Piñata destruction at the artist’s space.

English’s event at the artist run space, Texas Naturally Surreal, was the climax of his triad exhibits. English examined the customs of our Border Nation and discovered one of our most popular symbols of established cultural entertainment, the piñata. He had several fabricated in the image of his most admired toys, Fat Super-Sized Ronald McDonald, Gas Mouse, Blue Bunny and his Mexican/American opposing headed Hybrid Donkey. Each was stuffed with appropriate materials that added effect to their meaning: Ronald was overfed with frozen French fries, and the others ballooned with red paint. This became a performance of surreal play, the collective of Artists Unanimous hoisted the piñatas, and English ceremoniously took the first couple of swings. The crowd cheered him on in a traditional metric Spanish chant of Dale, Dale Dale, in excited amusement at this violent theatre of bizarre piñata ballet, until a flood of colored body parts, seasoned with what looked like blood and guts, tumbled from the night sky and fell at their feet. English’s crew and the audience quickly destroyed two more piñata’s. Then he invited the audience back into the gallery to make ruin of the most prevalent icon of overindulgence, Fat Super-Sized Ronald McDonald. English handed the spiked staff of revolutionary reward to a svelte and attractive member from the collective, Artist Unanimous, to annihilate Ronald. She did so, swiftly with flair, showering the gallery floor with golden French fries leaving a shredded and tattered Ronald hanging from the ceiling. This aggressive performance mirrored the violence in our backyard – across the river in Mexico – and represents the hostile challenges we suffer because of our seemingly inept government, and consequential failing economy.

The International Museum of Art and Science, under new Director Joseph Bravo, presented English‘s tour de force exhibit, You Are Not Here. The title refers to the fact that only a few thousand people will visit the Museum to see the exhibit compared to the ‘tens of millions’ that drive past the billboards of English’s art that IMAS placed along the Interstate, plus the flux of English’s images on the IMAS website, links, art zines, blogs, news media, and you tube.

You Are Not Here – but you are here – the media is the extended information file format that English utilizes to reach beyond museum and gallery walls. IMAS set the standard for all three of the English exhibits. Bravo spent five days with English, researching his concepts, process and messages; the product of this interfacing labor is witnessed in a sublime selection and display of art. When entering the exhibit, visitors are immediately star-struck by the scale of the work – large billboard sized reproductions of his paintings printed on vinyl. The quality control English demands for printing is outstanding – it is impossible to identify these as digital prints until they are closely examined. No pixilation, superb resolution. The visual premise of these works mirrors that of a circus sideshow, English borrows beloved popular cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse, Barney, Ronald McDonald, Teletubbies and comic hero The  Incredible Hulk. In his piece, Mouse Mask Murphy, English parodies Mickey Mouse, who wears a gas mask, symbolic of warnings from our revered science community, warning of air pollution and it’s ozone destruction. But as a nation of unconcerned citizenry, we choose to disbelieve forewarnings of climate disrepair and air contamination, and corporate manufacturing refuses to curb its practice that worsens this calamity.  In the piece The American Infantile, a childish Hulk illustrates the intimidating expression of a child throwing a temper tantrum at the check out counter because mom won’t give in to his demands for candy. An immature child-Hulk is a clever representation speaking volumes about how we, as such a young Nation, wield our military superiority, often misguided with corporate interests manipulating patriotic discourse. The centerpieces of this exhibit – two takes on Picasso’s Guernica – are magnificent in size: 12’ x 24.’  In X-Ray Guernica English reveals what could be an under painting- exposing the skeletal carcass of each figure depicted. He simultaneously pulls Picasso’s epic horrific of the Spanish Civil War into a contemporary context of the Atomic age, making us see the piece as the fallout from an accidental Nuclear energy fail.  These exhibits demonstrate English’s genius as a multi-tasking Renaissance man; agitate-activist Ad man, conceptual artist, adept painter, sculptor, filmmaker and a surreal performance artist.

The collaborative efforts of IMAS and STC under the bold and spirited leadership of each (President Dr. Reed and V.P. Jose Cruz from STC, Bravo and Board at IMAS), took a risk inviting this controversial agitate-activist artist. This partnership proved itself daring and pioneering, raising the bar and creating an Empirical Order for future exhibits coming to South Texas’ art community; we look forward to more. Bravo! Dale!
David Freeman is the Editor of VOA

In Gary’s Sweeney’s Take a Chance, presented at Three Walls Art  Space, the artist has recycled local political signs, cutting out and arranging the pictures of the candidates.  In smaller signage, written in cut vinyl, are the lyrics of the 1978 ABBA song Take a Chance on Me. The song plays endlessly in the background, its lyrics are repeated across the gallery’s walls in an assortment of fonts made for Word.

With repetition, the political signage has its formula laid bare. Blue backgrounds. White serif letters. Most likely,  a star somewhere. A photo of a blandly attractive person. The signs may seem like nothing more than banal popular culture, but it’s also our current debased version of democracy. Though an empty pop song and uninspired political signs might seem harmless enough, what’s really going on is the work of a machine whose purpose is to limit your options. It’s a coercion to force a choice between pre-selected choices you would not have picked in the first place  – like the same fifteen songs that are on the radio. Sure, I’ll passively accept an ABBA song on the Classic Oldies station’s choice the same way I passively accept the whoever the Democrats select as the candidate.

I  was surprised when I saw the artist use the face of a candidate that I actually did the design for. I liked the candidate and wanted to produce work that was well designed,  instead of the other generally bad work. Although as soon as she won the primary, the campaign’s graphics were turned over to the political party’s machine to look more like what was being produced by everyone else with design as formulaic as an insipid pop song.

Sweeney is a master of re-appropriation. His most well-known works are public art, in the main parking lot of the San Antonio Museum of Art and at the Denver and San Antonio airports. In these pieces, 20th century lettering and signage are chopped up and reassembled and collaged.  Those pieces work because the scale of the signage and outdoor lettering work for large public spaces. Though the boldness and flatness of the pieces gave the space something of a closed  feeling, the size of the gallery space works fine for both these pieces and the message. The viewer walks in and takes in the color, text and sound experience in the small area for about the length of the song and it works.  I think at a public level, however, at the same scale in the outdoor environment  that  the source elements are designed for, it would be something more than what’s on the walls of the gallery. Free the signs, Gary.

Just down the hall from Sweeney in the Cactus Bra art space is Sabra Booth’s short film Slick. The animation is a retelling of the BP oil disaster. Booth finger-paints with oil and petroleum jelly. This way of painting, along with her stop-motion animation technique makes for a very visceral experience. Small finger marks rapidly push greasy, dark material in complex patterns. Hapless shrimp are couched in these complex gooey marks as they ooze material from their shiny bodies. The animation follows the animal’s journey from the ocean to the dinner table.  Clean graphic cutouts of a nuclear family sit around a dinner table, devouring the greasy seafood. The end of the animation promises another segment from this series. On opposite walls, Booth displays the props and actors that she used in her animation, along with elements from what looks to be the next monster movie chapter. They function best as DVD extras for a gallery show. They may not be fully realized pieces, but instead are an interesting look at what went into the making of the animation. Film and video can often be a sealed product, so it was interesting for the artist to open up her process to the audience.
With old techniques such as the stop-motion animation, finger-painting, and cut paper,  Sabra’s work has a deliberate down-and-dirty DIY appeal. It felt like a lot of whimsical ‘80s independent  animation, like Tom Tom Club’s Genius of Love or something more experimental out of MTV’s Liquid Television. Like Sweeney’s room, the piece is well-scaled to its small gallery space. The film is quick and graphic and people steadily cycled through the gallery, watching the film in its entirety. I have to say, I appreciate work that’s timed to a reasonable viewing time. When I uncomfortably give up on an interminable art video, all I feel from the piece is ashamed that I didn’t have the attention span to appreciate an artist’s 25 minute visual poem.  Slick is part editorial cartoon, part complex play of visceral gooey patterns,  and part fun animated funk.

Robert B Gonzales graduated from UT Austin with degrees in Philosophy and Art History. He is a critic, graphic and fine artist from San Antonio.

What are politics other than what we convince ourselves to believe? What ideas do we sell ourselves? Walking through the current Texas Biennial exhibit at the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen, I was drawn to a particular work by Thomas Murray and Donna Sweigart. Murray is a painter, musician and Instructor at South Texas College.  Sweigart is an Assistant Professor of Metals and Jewelry at the University of Texas-Pan American.
Several female dress forms, mannequins with strange adornment, stood in a single row. Directly behind them, on the wall, were an equal number of charcoal drawings of heads; men with perplexed faces. The mannequins were naked of fashion save some otherworldly neckpieces created from a specialized plastic for rapid prototyping. The heads were on plain white paper, competently rendered, floating ominously above and behind the grey, headless forms. What idea was being sold here? What connections were to be made?
Walking around and through the work, a rhizomatic eruption of associations came forth – headless bodies, bodiless heads. The leering white male, looming over the female shoulder. Expectations. The recent beheadings across the nearby border in Mexico. The collage of high and low technology (the necklaces were made using 3D printing, the heads with familiar old burnt sticks).  The mixing of media and technique, tradition and installation. The nakedness of the mannequin and paleness of the jewelry as if pensively waiting to be adorned with meaning beyond the decorative. The participation of my own body passing between the male gaze and the headless under-forms, between the two and three-dimensional, the illusion and the real.  All of these were indexes to potential meaning. I struggled to make connections.

Later, in a round table with the artists, Sweigart and Murray, both native to Florida, were confronted with the question of how had their art changed or been influenced by coming to the ‘Valley.’  His answer: that work need not necessarily be influenced by place; hers: how could it not? Disagreement. Politics. Who would sell whom which idea? The obvious tension in opinion was felt in the charged space of the collaborative work. The ideas were posed, yet left unresolved, in tension. What their work did sell me however was time. I lingered with the piece longer than all the rest, and it in turn lingered upon my mind. In its ability to engage the micro-politics of my own relationship to potential meaning, what I sell myself, the work is a success. My hope is that future works by this collaborative team will retain the same freshness of approach and meaningful openness without getting too bogged down in the sale.
Rob Kolomyski teaches painting at South Texas College in McAllen.

by Phyllis L. Evans

For the past five years, South Texas College, located in the US/Mexico border community of McAllen Texas, has hosted a Human Rights themed exhibition in conjunction with an annual Human Trafficking conference.

The art exhibit serves as an educational event that addresses global and regional human rights concerns. Emphasis is placed on opening both internal and external dialogues to confront the horrors and injustices that occur throughout the entire modern world.  As a border community, through which many immigrants are willingly and unwillingly smuggled each day, this event is especially relevant to the unique problems faced by the people who live in South Texas. “Through the exhibit’s conceptually and aesthetically unique artwork we hope to connect with viewers on an emonal and personal level,” says Richard Lubben, who teaches art at South Texas College and serves as the exhibit coordinator and juror.

As the show gains notoriety, submissions have grown increasingly compelling with each year. The 2010 Best of Show winner, Jim Boden’s Interrogate #42, oil on Mylar, depicts with bold gestural strokes a human backside enveloped in the somber darkness of what might be a windowless underground room. The figure reflects a harsh, singular light source, suggestive of a bright lamp used in interrogation. The paint appears to have been applied violently with large swatches of red paint slicing across the flesh. “I awarded Jim Boden’s oil painting, “Interrogate #42,” the Best of Show award because of its powerful visual and conceptual impact.  The brushwork has a raw and energetic quality that I think effectively conveys the brutality of the concept, but at the same time is controlled where needed.  I also thought the Mylar polyester surface used was an unusual choice. I think it communicated a feeling of shredded flesh better than canvas or another surface, “ says Lubben.

The art exhibit is scheduled each year to coordinate with an annual three day Human Trafficking Conference, sponsored by South Texas College’s Women’s Studies Committee. This conference brings together practitioners, directors of NGOs, academics, activists and law enforcement for the purpose of raising awareness of the crime of human trafficking and to explore the deeper causes and functions of human trafficking. Conference Coordinator Jennifer Clark teaches political science at South Texas College and serves as the Chair of the Women’s Studies Committee. She calls human trafficking a “deplorable crime…. It is an abhorrent, grotesque crime in which millions of people are entrapped. “ Clark explains that the economic globalization of the post Cold War era has resulted in a rise of the buying and selling of human beings. Poverty, social instability, lawlessness, gender biases, and ethnic hostility contribute to worsen the situation, resulting in greater and greater numbers of trafficking victims.

Several works in the exhibit open themselves to interpretations that deal directly with the issue of human trafficking. In Ellie Iranova’s digital photograph Broken, a nude mannequin, disassembled and discarded, wearily rests her head against the edge of the frame. Her vacant, indirect stare conveys a catatonic state of hopelessness. A broken plastic leg clad in fishnet stockings and a cheap red curtain backdrop suggest the sexual use of a human who has been reduced to an inanimate object. Broken recalls Hans Bellmer’s sadomasochistic and erotically charged dolls, but the emphasis here is on empathy for the figure that has been the depleted of her humanity.

Stephanie Meyer’s mixed-media work, Eye of the Beholder, consists of a rusted metal door in which a small square hole, just two or three inches wide, is cut. A realistically rendered human eye peers through the hole, suggestive of imprisonment and the psychological “breaking down” of a trafficking victim. The viewer is left to wonder which side of the door is shown. Is it seen from the inside looking out, or from the outside looking in? Are we seeing the point of view of the victim or the victimizer?

By exposing and shining a light on human trafficking and other human rights issues, the conference and art exhibit combined to provide a unique learning experience for both the students and the faculty of South Texas College. With an audience consisting of presenters and attendees from around the world, the show and conference together reinforce the idea that human rights violations are global problems that concern us all.

Phyllis Evans is an artist living in Edinburg, Texas. She is currently the Chair of Visual Art and Music at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas.

by Nancy Moyer, PhD

Carlos  Barberena   exhibited   two portfolios, “Master Prints” & “Años de Miedo,” at the Art House. The works are all linocuts; both series are relevant. “Años de Miedo” (Time of Fear) is the result of a ten-year project; it is a tribute to victims of war. The works are based on Barberena’s own memories and the collective historical memory of his country, Nicaragua. The violent decades of the 70’s and 80’s in Nicaragua ravaged that nation, environmentally and politically. By addressing warfare and its aftermath, he believes that his work is touching on a reality that presently exists in many countries.

The artist reflects on the effects left by war and how those experiences affect our lives, physically and psychologically.

One group of prints explores facial expressions provoked by fear. Each print shows only the abstracted face of an anguished individual. Llanto portrays the face with tears, while Herido de Muerto captures a face during the final signs of life. With only one exception, these prints are white line cuts against a flat black ground, visually emphasizing the psychologically disturbing message of tragedy.

By injecting the darker issues of modern life into past artistic modes in the “Master Prints,” Barberena riffs off the old Masters. How would they have presented that painting/print today? Believing that they would share his concern for human injustices, environmental issues, and a world in need of common sense, he has reinvented a few artworks by well-known artists. Converting the original images into linocuts with impressive virtuosity, This socially conscious artist has added believablecontemporary political or environmental issues into Master works. In La McMona, Leonardo might have painted the Mona Lisa as a Calavera, or is death the answer to a diet of unhealthy fast food? Venus 2.0 (Botticelli’s Aphrodite) sports a respirator as pipes spewing industrial waste surround her shell. And what really might be causing Edvard Munch’s enigmatic figure to scream? Barberena’s The Scream suggests potential radiation from the mushroom cloud in the distance.

Carlos Barberena states:

“With my work, I seek to be a vector of change, collecting images that pertain to our collective memory and that, in certain form, make reference to painful events in the history of my country and of the world. I hope never to become inactive nor esthetically dead before the period in which we are living. I hope to react without fear in order to say what needs to be said in the moment in which it needs to be said. However, because of this, some, related to the infrastructures that make art a business, will try to curtail my freedom by censuring my work.”

Nancy Moyer is Professor Emerita  of Art at The University of Texas-Pan American.

[Show as slideshow]

Ron English; Activist Artist

by David Freeman

Ron English is a revolutionary who exhibits graphics-based protest artworks that illustrate to the populace how our conventional thinking is upside down. He portrays our popular culture in a stark passionate and real manner, attacking corporate America’s propaganda and its profound misleadings, the government’s atrocities, religious hypocrisy, and our mass media censors and their iron fist   of repression on freedom of speech, with brilliant truthful realism.

Over the years English has systemically developed an inspiring and subversive manifesto, a personal artistic style of “liberating” billboards that depict anthropomorphized caricatures ridiculing corporate America’s food, liquor, cigarette, oil and military conglomerates.

English audaciously lampoons and incites a rebellion of defiance toward our conditioned acceptance of failed and polarized government bureaucracy, immoral corporate privileged entitlement, our nation’s indifference toward false reasons of war, and of our government’s rewarding the failures of banks, mortgage companies and the auto industry.

He and his crew clandestinely and illegally place their political/social artwork on top of  paid advertiser’s billboards. In his “Smooth Character Billboard” he depicts a cute little baby camel being seduced by an adult directly offering her a Camel filtered cigarette. In another he takes a wide backhand to Bush by depicting him as an ape with the text reading, “Evolution it’s not for everyone.” In the billboard titled “We Deceive You Believe,” English has the Fox T.V. News logo as the prominent part of the billboard ad, making a social comment on the fact that Fox T.V. News has no credibility. For all his covert activism aimed at giving the billboards and the power of the manipulation of truth in  advertising back to the people, he has been jailed over 30 times. English truly appreciates the moment when his audience questions whether or not the billboards are real or a hoax. The dialogue these works produce are sometimes more puzzling than what we question of Fox news itself.

English presently is enjoying status as one of America’s premier celebrity-outlaw-street guerilla-activist-artists. He has stated, “Corporate America has all the freedom of speech but…the common man doesn’t have these same freedoms. Our mass media has standards that govern what they allow to be published and they dictate what gets printed and the content of what gets sited in advertising today.” Accordingly, he liberates billboards to afford them their voice. So it’s no surprise that today we find our most subversive and innovative graphic art works of protest on city walls, subway transit platforms, doorways, lampposts, dumpsters, and construction ramparts and walkways. These architectural and street bulwarks offer the public some of the most visible social and political protest graphics by guerilla artists, and English is at the forefront of getting “art back to the people.” ‘Getting art back to the people’ is one of the main themes he is positioning as a theme for a film in the works.

Recently, Ron English visited South Texas for reconnaissance regarding an upcoming exhibit he is planning at South Texas College and the International Museum of Art & Science. Along with his film crew, he shot a plethora of South Texas identifiers such as the border wall, ropas stores, dollar stores, the streets of Mexico at night, and spent two days visiting ranches and farms spray-painting graphics on an assortment of bovines.

Fox Nexs

English is a master at multi-tasking and seemed to be constantly shifting between artistic concerns, always assessing philosophy and materials for future and present projects. While in Texas, he spray painted camouflage on a bull,  midget Mexican roping steers, and a show cow. He shot several short film clips using a surreal, almost Dadaist film style, depicting a Porsche Cayman S running over a stuffed toy bunny gorged with balloons of ketchup, Worchester sauce and tripas. This film short was jarring; it juxtaposed a cute fluffy stuffed bunny against a very real tragic and horrific road kill. The still photos produced from this series possess a visual dichotomy that cause the viewer to take a second look for the purpose deducing exactly what is going on within the scene. The false against the real is very striking in its visual severity and runs a philosophical mirror with English’s subgenres. With this scene English achieves an explosion of style; an avant-garde conceptual performance, a punk theatre, experimental photography, and a film just short of a classical quasi-improvisatory scale.

All of his endeavors are popular commercial successes but are also fine art critical successes also. English’s genius comes from his mixing and remixing iconographic images from popular culture and repositioning them for the express purpose of portraying all their deceit, avarice and greed. The achievement of this activist success requires a certain amount of stealth, grit, impulsive idealism, and a belief in forced vigilance for the betterment of mankind. His art works are high impact, progressive, confrontational, but they are also creative, beautiful, sassy visuals that confront for an improved future.

There is great call for artists to be social activists, political fighters, community minded advocates and fight corporate injustices, government wrongs, and the lies that the media spout, and to do it covertly in the streets. Galleries, artist-run spaces, non-profits and museums are on the rise in exhibiting these concerns; many are popping up with this as a main mission and there is a wealth of galleries that cater to this variety of art today.

Ron English

Anyone who has had the honor of enjoying English’s’ company, will have immediately noticed his quiet wit, intelligence, knowledge of art history, and his succinct cleverness at expressing his feeling about all the above in his art.

“I painted over a thousand billboards over the last 30 years, enough squarefootage to fill every art museum in the US. That’s a lot of art I could havesold, but for me art isn’t a vehicle of personal greed, it is an important intervention in the global dialogue. With the use of billboards established a more direct communication and reached more people than I ever would have from any interior walls.”

I was dumbfounded when he told me he was a first generation college graduate and was almost tossed out of graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin back in the early 80’s. It was only by the petitioning of Peter Saul to his graduate committee that he was allowed to continue his studies. His professors were disgruntled with his work; he was doing commissioned murals and works that were labeled too commercial, his graduate committee deemed them ‘not fine art’. He saw graduate school as a type of an education that would enable him the comprehension of learning the craft or the layman’s skill of painting realistically, but he never did gain this schooling while attending University. This education came when he moved to New York and apprenticed with Larry Rivers, Marsha Gillian King, Catrone and Casabi. He wondered how his professors could so abuse the sensitive minds and talents of all the other graduate students like him, he stated, “the art world was a lot easier to deal with than graduate school ever was.” He also noted that he is the only one of his graduating class that is making a living as an artist today.  English states, “First generation students don’t have the facilities to refer to, such as a parent, to ask for direction with questions of what to do when they hit a road block in our system of higher education.” He has a great empathy for the challenges they face. This is part of the reason he agreed to exhibit and lecture at South Texas College and was happy to share his experience with the students and faculty, in hopes of inspiring them to see the worth in being true to their identity and character. These are the specifics that make up ones disposition and it’s especially important to hold onto these traits in the mist of all the trials and tribulations they face in attaining a college education.

English has an eye for observing  common dilemmas and the uncanny (much like a utopian socialist philosopher on acid), and possesses the creative mastery to present them back to us as a cultural and spiritual intervention – via art.

By David Freeman

Art Professor at South Texas College

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