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!

My Examiner.com feed  -  San Antonio area art and events.

Low World   -  My Personal site.  Short Stories, photography, project updates, stuff…

Voices of Art Magazine   -  an archive of my articles for VOA.

Flickr  -  My photostream, includes works in progress.

Facebook  -  For networking, art, fun and strangeness.

Google+  -  My profile.

LinkedIn  -  Professional profile and networking.

Azaceta’s Oklahoma 4 is a large wall-mounted assemblage made from acrylic and enamel paint, photos, found objects, tape, plastic fencing, metal studs on wood.  On the wood support, the artist painted an explosive abstract pattern and included images of a severed leg and his own somber self-portrait. Metal scraps refer to the ruins of the destroyed building, while attachments include objects that could have been found in the rubble—such as shoes, stuffed animals, a toy car, and a baby doll. The wreckage is further alluded to in attached photos of old and broken mattresses and flowers. Throughout the composition, these various elements are tied together with caution tape, normally used by police officers to keep spectators away from a scene of violence or disaster.
Azaceta has commented on his emotional response to the fact that so many children were killed in the explosion.

According to the artist:

“I saw on television the devastation of the building, the killing of so many innocent people and children – a lot of children! Seeing  toys, tricycles, stuffed animals, etc., scattered all over the perimeter . . . that was like a loud scream emanating from the wreckage. That made me start making works of art reflecting this horrendous act, with the hope of silencing that pain and creating compassion and visual beauty to counter such an innocuous act of violence against humanity.”

As a youth in Cuba in the 1950s, Azaceta witnessed shootings and bombings firsthand during Fidel Castro’s overthrow of the government led by Fulgencio Batista. Since moving to the United States in the 1960s, he has addressed many social themes in his paintings and sculptures. Most notable are works devoted to raising awareness about the plight of the Cuban “boat people” (who in the late 1980s-early 1990s attempted to escape from Cuba on rafts), the AIDS crisis, gang violence, and Hurricane Katrina.
In Plum’s installation, the artist addresses ongoing problems at the Texas/Mexico border.  Specifically, she has responded to the sad statistics regarding the numbers of women and girls who have been killed or have disappeared in Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso. Many of the victims were raped, mutilated, and tortured, and little has been done to provide protection for the women of Juarez or to bring the perpetrators to justice. To represent the victimized women, Plum created monumental-scale black brooms that are knotted in the middle as a symbol for the cutting off of female energy.  To either side of these hanging brooms, she has placed metates—domestic implements for grinding corn, with a cast-glass Virgin of Guadalupe inserted in their centers, thus giving the overall presentation the appearance of a memorial altar.
Plum believes in the shamanistic and healing potential of art.

Reflecting upon the creation of Solidaridad, she has commented:

“I have come to look at the Rio Grande as an open wound. As a bicultural artist, healer, and activist I see this as an opportunity to bring awareness to these horrible acts of violence, as well as a healing or limpia.”

In addressing some of today’s atrocities through creative endeavor, Azaceta and Plum join the many artists of note—Goya and Picasso, for example—who throughout history have contributed emotionally charged or poignantly poetic commentaries on the issues of their day.  In so doing, they demonstrate the enduring potential of an artwork to awaken the apathetic, to stimulate the mind for reflection and discourse, and to confront with grace the socially relevant problems of our time.

David S. Rubin is The Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

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.

My Examiner.com feed -  San Antonio area art and events.

Low World -  My Personal site.  Short Stories, photography, project updates, stuff…

Voices of Art Magazine -  an archive of my articles for VOA.

Flickr -  My photostream, includes works in progress.

Facebook -  For networking, art, fun and strangeness.

Google+ -  My profile.

LinkedIn -  Professional profile and networking.

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.

One Nation Under God

Although Tea Party folk haven’t defined an artistic style to accompany their movement, visual imagery certainly has been put to political purpose. Search the internet and you will find designs for t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers that mock President Obama, howl over taxes, and trumpet individual freedom. There are posters too, the most famous of which is Sarah Para Bellum by the political cartoonist “Dale.” Here, Sarah Palin’s likeness replaces Rosie the Riveter in Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post cover from 1943. Sarah cradles a shotgun in her lap, instead of Rosie’s rivet gun, and holds a Blackberry with the words “Death Panel” on the screen, rather than a sandwich for lunch. The image of Sarah prepared for war (with whom?) speaks to the defensive posture of the Tea Party movement and appears to thrill many, more so because it irritates Liberals than for its iconography. In any case, appropriating Rockwell does not make for original political art.
Historical imagery of the American Revolution is prevalent in Tea Party visual sensibilities. The Liberty Bell, Continental soldiers, “Indians” of the Boston Tea Party, and generous use of red, white, and blue adorn websites and tchotchkes. It is reminiscent of the cheerful public art that accompanied Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, but with a less genial attitude. Most didactic are the historical fantasies painted by Jon McNaughton that depict the Tea Party narrative in original, artistic compositions. In One Nation under God, Jesus, with Constitution in hand, steps out of a pantheon of American historical figures who reverentially gaze upon him and the viewer through the mists of time. In the left foreground, kneeling in awe, are a teacher, a mom, a marine and others representing various mainstream walks of life. On the right, with their backs to Jesus, are the damned: Satan, a professor, a supreme court judge, a liberal news reporter, a politician, and Mr. Hollywood. Reactionary historical pieces, unlike compelling artistic expression, require a lot of explanation; McNaughton does not disappoint. Slide your mouse’s pointer over the internet version of the painting and a text box pops up to explain the symbolism of each figure. Who’s the fellow “lovingly counting his hundred dollar bills”? A corrupt lawyer.  In Forgotten Man, McNaughton captures brilliantly the Tea Partiers’ fetish for the Constitution and disdain for Liberals. President Obama stands indifferently with one foot on the Constitution while all past presidents look on and react in a tableau that brings to mind Disney’s animatronic Hall of Presidents. Madison reaches down to pull our founding document from the dirt. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Reagan gesture toward the downcast, average Joe seated in the foreground, forgotten. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Bill Clinton, applaud Obama. McNaughton’s work, delivered with historical polemics, is as compelling as an overly elaborate joke followed by an explanation of why it’s funny.

The Forgotten Man

 
Do Tea Party folk present a danger to art? Yes and no. Their efforts to diminish public institutions for the sake of reducing taxes will lessen public funding for the arts in schools and community endeavors. Yet art is spared, for the time being, from the ideological framework that is so damagingly applied elsewhere in the public sphere. Take for example, the most recent cultural battleground in the state of Texas, public school curriculum guidelines. Social conservatives with Tea Party sympathies on the State Board of Education made national headlines over the past two years with revisions to the kindergarten-12th Grade Social Studies TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). Despite vigorous opposition from the public to a narrow interpretation of the American past, a majority of the Board enshrined constitutionalism, Christianity, and capitalism (the Board prefers the term “free enterprise”) as the guiding themes for U.S. history courses. A reverential catechism devoted to “American exceptionalism,” rather than guidelines promoting critical thinking and expression will be the order of the day in Texas social studies classes.
The Fine Arts TEKS are currently undergoing revision. The recommendations of review committees and appointed experts will become available in fall 2011, and the first public hearing is scheduled for January 2012. The fine art guidelines since 1998 emphasize four themes for K-12 Texas students: perception, creative expression/performance, critical evaluation, and historical/cultural heritage. The heritage category is apolitical at present and guides curriculum planners to include diverse cultures along with those of Texas and the United States. Tea Partiers may well try to politicize the revised Fine Arts TEKS by defining narrowly what “heritage” includes, while diminishing or eliminating attention to “diverse cultures.”
Tea Party folk have contributed little so far to political artistic expression (except for public theater, of course). They could yet do great damage to public funding for the arts and to art education in the public schools. It may well become necessary to stand against Tea Party efforts to limit or demean artistic expression. Perhaps you could earn a spot among the damned in McNaughton’s One Nation under God. There’s room for an artist next to the professor.
References:
El Lissitzsky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, http://www.designishistory.com/1920/e-lissitzky/.
Dale, “Sarah Para Bellum,” political cartoon, All Right Magazine, April 27, 2009, http://www.allrighmagazine.com/political-cartoons/daletoon-of-the-day-sarah-para-bellum-2424/.
Jon McNaughton, http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/.
Texas Education Agency, “Social Studies TEKS,” http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=3643.
Texas Education Agency, “Fine Art Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills,” http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=2147499973.
Texas Administrative Code, Title 19, Part II, Chapter 117, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Fine Arts, http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter117/index.html.

David Fisher is a historian teaching at the University of Texas-Brownsville.

Cande Aguilar - Slice - multimedia painting panel - 75x72 inches

If we look at the title piece of the show, Cande Aguilar’s self-titled “Slice,” we can see what is, in effect, a truly contemporary hybridization of styles which could be called Pop Expressionism, or Abstract Pop, or Graffito Salsa for that matter. The image itself could be a back alley tag figured as a banana split whose smell is a rainbow, and whose cherry-on-top might be Count Dracula in his muscle red armor. This piece signals a fun, happy, associative theme, which connects and unites the show. On the other hand, Michael Blair’s pieces, like “Untitled 3-1,” and “2-3,” while ostensibly more visually sombre, seem to perform almost a bass-line in the show’s overall referential fuzz-box, bringing in things like Duchamp’s “Chocolate Grinder, “Sir Arthur Evans’ Minoan “Horns of Consecration,” Mid-Century Modernism, and perhaps a minor keynote for the collective styles of these artists, Albert Oehlen. There seems to be, at least in Blair, some definite arcing to the Neue Wilde movement in Germany. In Jesus De La Rosa’s work “Utopia Almost,” I found a deep homage to process, but a process whose result somehow arcs between director Byron Haskin’s 1964 “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” and Max Ernst’s epic frottages, like  “The Eye of Silence.” All of the works seem chatty in various ways. Jorge Puron’s “Sexiest Elevator” evokes memory and subtly approaches an abstract landscape through an urban lens, which evokes a wryly reflexive subject matter. Are we looking at a painting of a little store front in some anonymous south Texas neighborhood? Is the elevator that penetrates the roof and continues up into the huge unlikely billboard atop its roof somehow akin to the artist’s aspirations? It is an odd, dark question, and it seems to be put to you by a swatch of cloth cut from a hammock. “Sexiest Elevator,” for me, had a second title, namely black humor siesta. These were, more or less, the kinds of thoughts I had as I looked at the show.
When I asked Michael Blair what he thought, he seemed to feel that there was still a lot of baggage to this kind of painting. I thought to myself, “I like an artist who’s wary of what he is doing,” but for some reason, I wasn’t very wary. I immediately embraced the show, and it felt like something closer to Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker jamming, than to clearly defined art-historical categories. I could see sci-fi and neo-geo, and graffiti, and pop, and just really a sort of free-for-all orchestration of materiality that ended up looking like an avatar of the title, namely, “Slice.” As if a wide swath of recent art historical styles and precedents, or some of them anyway, and discourses, had been thrown together willy-nilly in a big torta sandwich made like a pie, and then cut in different places to reveal the gooey weird contents. For me, the show ended up being more about savor and sapidity, or sabor, than dry category. And since they say that Painting will never die, then I suppose what the old Ab-Ex Pop-wild monster in the cave was cooking up was edible zombies, Frankenstein confections that wink and snicker and just start talking to you like an old friend…

[Show as slideshow]

 
Lanny Quarles is an internet artist involved in writing-as-performance, blogging, and making images in various ways. He lives in Dallas.

Stephenson’s work is amazing and the online samples simply do it no justice.  These pieces need to be seen in person to appreciate.

Stephenson, an educator and professional working artist for many years, has brought together some amazing examples of his recent work together for what is sure to be an impressive display.

The work explores, in the artists own words, ” aspects of the infinite through contemporary abstraction”.

Stephenson has such a deeply running knowledge in the workings of color layers and depth that the title of the show need not be explained at all.  The works are all several feet in height and width, and demand that the viewer gaze deeply into the worlds Stephenson creates.  His pieces express experiences, landscapes, places, sounds and concepts such as transcendance into what he has called, in older shows, ‘visual occurances’.  This show, and all Stephenson’s work for that matter, is a must see for painters and art lovers in general.

From the press release:

ARTIST RUSSELL STEPHENSON TO EXHIBIT AT ANARTE GALLERY

Abstract Artist Explores The Sublime & Transcendental In Exhibit “Aproaching Infinity”

 

SAN ANTONIO, TX.– AnArte Gallery is thrilled to exhibit the stirring and meditative abstract works of artist Russell Stephenson. The exhibit, “Approaching Infinity”, will be on display from August 3, 2011- August 31, 2011 and will open with a cocktail reception on August 3rd from 6:00 until 9:00 p.m.

A native Texan, Stephenson studied multiple mediums throughout his education, receiving a BFA from College of Art, Portland, Oregon and a MFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio. He has exhibited profusely throughout North America and currently paints full-time while also working as a professor of drawing at the The International Academy of Art and Design.

Russell Stephenson Studio

Stephenson’s Approaching Infinity Facebook Page

Anarte Gallery

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.

Exhibit by Benito Huerta  at LAG, South Texas College, McAllen

By Nancy Moyer, PhD

[Show as slideshow]

Huerta’s works overlap and continually redefine his commitment to express issues. He engages his viewers with ideas about politics, movies, and dualities as he moves us through a summary of his artistic and social concerns spanning the past decade. Intriguing aspects of these works are the multiple layers of referencing that occurs in each work. Political, historical, artistic, and moral issues are orchestrated to produce complex, yet focused, visual statements.

At the core of this exhibit is the progression of Huerta’s artistic development, which is documented by a seletion of paintings and prints. Huerta’s ability to interrelate previously disparate images/entities and bring them to a common cause or point of view is impressive. In several works, he carefully orchestrates images to communicate a complex idea that speaks of the reality of power.

The painting, The Eyes of Benjamin Franklin, displays a print of a $100 bill in its center. Money is power, and this painting is all about power. Money also corrupts. Handprints representing seven powerful countries that met for an economic conference surround the $100 as if paying homage. Behind that image, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is referenced. Huerta believes that this painting evokes monetary power, not only from its subjects, prostitutes, but the value of the painting itself. One would need the power of money to own it. Picasso’s painting itself has power through its ability to command a high purchase price. Huerta’s painting speaks of the desire for power through wealth from an individual viewpoint as well as political partnerships. The reference to Franklin connects a national desire for monetary power back to the Founding Fathers. We all, consciously or not, desire that $100 bill. We all desire power. And as for Franklin’s eyes, they’re glancing just past the viewer – has anyone else noticed that on the $100 bill? What is he watching?

Hands of Fate revisits this visual discussion of power. “For me,” said Huerta, “there’s a sense of arrogance that seven countries had so much power that they were directing the economics of the rest of the world. The snake represents this arrogance of power.”  The large snake image, coiling in contact with all sides of the canvas, dominates the space. Forming an overlay on top of the seven hands that are overlaid on a map of the world, Huerta uses the snake symbol to expose this arrogance of power that binds these nations and our world together.

The snake symbol also appears in the painting, Dos Mundos. In this work, two sides of the earth are shown as separate spheres, as a duality. Although they are one, they are separate. The sphere showing our hemisphere is placed within the slithering shape of the blue and black striped

snake; it has the head of a viper. The focus and action seem to be happening here, although the feeling is not necessarily positive. The African and Asian side drifts in isolation. A geometric background grid holds the composition together. It suggests a higher order that shuns the predictable; this painting also speaks of the duality of the haves and have-nots.

Works honoring past subjects, such as his Cast of Characters painting, visually credits his subjects and images from earlier works. In this and other works the snake image is redefined as infinity in the form of the ouroboros rather than arrogant power. The ouroboros, an ancient symbol representing cyclicality, constantly re-creates itself.   Huerta recreates existing images in his own artistic likeness. Just as the cyclical snake sheds its skin and becomes new, the paintings The End and Fin also express completion of an idea and the pending new direction. They are all seg  ues into the next.

Yahweh is a mixed media work with straw and acrylic. Huerta used the Hebrew word for God, which holds the belief that we are all God. Under the heavy texture of the straw is a map of the earth. A swirl is created over the map image by using a torch on the straw; it represents the unraveling of the ozone layer. So if we are all God, maybe we should respect the place that we live in. It’s a good statement for today.

Huerta’s work effortlessly combines powerful aesthetics and intelligence.

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