Sugar Bricks with the Hot Licks, coming at you like Doc in a Delorean:
88 miles per hour and from Hot July of the ‘Ot Nueva’, but don’t worry McFly, you won’t have to make out with your Mama, so sit back, open your ears bacon grease, and hug the your leopard Snuggie fleece, because Sugar got something sweet for that seat:

The (Ms.) Lora Reynolds Gallery in the uppity downtown Austin had a Show back in July about and entitled ‘Mark Making, Dots, Lines, and Curves’ (so drawing, writing, spitting, & shitting?) which is basically all art except performance. Here is an excerpt from the explanation:

“…This exhibition brings together works that are concerned with the act of mark-making, including drawing, sculpture, video, cut paper, and painted wood. The show considers the primacy of how the pen or pencil hit the page, how the artists have controlled and exploited the possibilities of their mark, and how a line or curve can occupy a space….”

These pieces that Abelman is admiring were quite enjoyable, as records, not as Art, they are too attached to my heart to be anything but.

Sidebar: Why do Musicians call themselves Artists?  They don’t make Art, they make Music. Frank Didn’t. Dylan Did.

Graphed Pencil Portrait of my favorite Kobe Lebron of the Artworld: Francis Bacon, which still has same problem as the records and nude paintings of women, I already like them before I see them reconstructed as Art in a show, so has a crime been committed here? No. Simply pandering, but less specific than Johnny Cash’s ‘I got Stripes’.

If you are like Ol’ Sugar Brickonia, you are probably asking yourself if they aren’t talking about your studio or the bathroom at Lovejoy’s but no, they are seriously describing the art show as the act of mark making. I would have enjoyed seeing a faux lambskin contract with ‘X’ on the signature line delicately showcased on purple velvet behind glass, but instead that honor went to Ed Ruscha’s piece, which you can only guess at the title…

(G.....H….O…S…T…)

Ed Ruscha is a special breed of Sign Painter, or Fine Art Typographer I should say, because what he does is magically considered to be fine art therefore relevant in the modern world of ‘fonts’ and Vinyl lettering on demand. The mental accessibility of his ‘Words’ leads him to be both approachable by the masses (Juxtapoz Magazine for one) and the fine art world through power already instilled in the words and phrases he chooses.

Don’t misunderstand me, I like Ruscha’s stuff, and by stuff I mean well crafted letters (graff!), but that is simply because instead of paying to learn how to hold a Paintbrush in Art School, I set out, alone, and got paid to paint signs as an Amateur all while developing a strong hatred on all letters vinyl which, in the eyes of a sign painter only keep soup out your bowl and your belly bread free, but $350,000 for one word? A Brand new Bentley cost that much.

Diddy told me over bubbly.

The decline of the hand painted sign, however, cannot be blamed on Ruscha, but easy access to mundane technology, the same sting is currently being felt by talented freelance graphic designers all over the world.

Here is a sign I painted around the same time as this show for considerably less than $350,000.

Here is a clip of a film about an Argentinean Sign Painter who cracks up because his craft is increasingly becoming obsolete by kids with art degrees, who in between grants, work as graphic designers in vinyl sign shops.

Love Always,

SugarBricks@gmail.com