Alison Elizabeth Taylor is a child of Las Vegas - the peripheral Las Vegas rather than mirage of neon, fountains and faux cities that attracts tourists to the Nevada desert. She simulates painting in marquetry and intarsia, which involve the cutting and piecing of wood and wood veneer to form designs. Taylor’s wooden narratives meditate cynically upon the culture of the most treeless landscape in America. Two works in the DMAC show are set in Bombay Beach, an infamous “oceanfront property” in the Colorado Desert that is half sunk in salt or dried mud.
Another work, “Roadside” studies two “hunters” shooting deer in the suburbs with automatic rifles from their woodie station wagon. “The Breeder” is a portrait of a character from the pages of the dark humorist T. Coraghessan Boyle. A sinewy man stands before used furniture he has converted into kennels for chinchilla, the breeding of which became an impractical effort at self employment during Las Vegas recent employment crisis.
In Boyle’s story, the breeder flees his rental when his inventory dies after the air conditioner stops working. A small air conditioning vent appears in Taylor’s work, looking quite inefficient as her human subject gulps Corona wearing a wife beater. Two other works in the DMAC show inhabit more darker haunts. In “Tap Left On” and “Multiple Shots with Knife Slashes” Taylor portrays houses vandalized by their owners, after Vegas‘ worst-in-the-nation mortgage crisis.
James Gobel is a child of the other Las Vegas. He credits his high school and college years amongst the kitsch icons and neon mirages for forming his aesthetic which found its true milieu in San Francisco’s bear culture. Bears are hyper masculine gay men, fond of dandified beards and long eye lashes, flannel shirts, boots, leather and alcohol. In “The Problem with Leisure; What to Do for Pleasure,” three stylish bears play musical chairs with earnest intentions. Gobel, a constituent of Nancy Pelosi, compares his sub culture to that of Weimar Republic Berlin, fostering a “golden age of open and radical dialogue before the rule of the Third Reich.” It’s hard to tell how serious he is. He “paints” his subjects in felt, “a cuddly material for a cuddly subject,” and exhibits nothing more radical than clashing argyle with camouflage.
Mickalene Thomas’ preferred medium is rhinestones. She clashes those with textiles and patterns in an unbearably gaudy manner that comments on the “power and convolution of fashion and aesthetics.” Her subjects, thrust into classical poses reminiscent of Matisse and Manet, are highly stylized African-American women, many family members. In “Sweet and Out Front” she mimics Andy Warhol’s Marilyn (Monroe) prints, by featuring the women from the film “Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,” the original blaxplotation movie that celebrated militant black men but did little for black women.
Open House
James Ellwanger, sculptor of Shattered Silence on the state capitol grounds, is busy designing interactive sculptures for Des Moines and its sister cities. With technology from Fair-Play scoreboards, visitors to town centers here and in Kobe, Japan or St. Etienne, France will be able to converse with each other by passing by his sculptures. You have to see the drawings to understand the project though, so Ellwanger will begin opening his studio one Friday each month for that purpose, and also for mini-exhibitions of his other works, which include multi-dimensional paintings and, for the first time in his career, traditional abstract paintings. The first open house exhibition is scheduled for May 20, at 304 15th St., Studio 100, (the former Fitch Gallery).
For that, Smith revived Kallitype, a 19th century alternative photo process that involves iron salts and silver nitrates on paper exposed to ultraviolet light. Sometimes called “sun printing,” this process allows Smith to produce life sized images of native plants in a range of tones partially created by sunlight interacting with decomposing plants.
Smith has done quite well in galleries of Santa Fe and New York City. She has also completed commissions for Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge in Iowa and similar places in Illinois and California. This Friday, she opens an exhibition at The Mansion with Madai Taylor, an original Iowa artist who paints with dirt, mixing different soils with gesso and scratching layers as they dry. Both artists work large. Each will show around twenty big works requiring a massive amount of wall space. With over 3000 square feet in several rooms, The Mansion has more than many galleries do.
