If you haven’t been to the new upstart, Seventy Seven Gallery, then you should go tonight for the Nick Morris show. They are located just east of I-35 on 6th St. on the ground floor of some fancy new building.
One upping Domy Book’s destination of ‘Just East’ of 35, Seventy Seven Gallery, is just shy of the Interstate‘s asphalt, so close to the action in fact that while enjoying the night air outside ‘77’, a full scale crack bust went down directly across the street from us. It was by far the best performance piece that I had ever seen at an art show. It included a Crack Dealer, several crack heads, and clown car full of cops, well, it was actually a Honda Odyssey Mini Van with blacked out windows that screeched to a halt in between us and the open air market, from which a dozen or so cops spilled out of and started zip tying the felonious like effing Spiderman. It was an artistic! start to the new space. Remember that just east of I-35 is the essential face of the East Austin that the majority of Austinites and Church goers think of whenever its mentioned, so be glad that the Seventy Seven Gallery hopes to become the apple in the eye of said face while stepping up to fill the shoes of beloved but lost Gallery Lombardi as the new enthusiastic Graff flavored gallery of Austin. Kudos. See you tonight.
Christa Palazzolo paints super dope hyper-realistic portraits of people to “…confront formal aspects of painting with a contemporary voice…”. Boom. Mission accomplished.
My first encounter with Palazzolo’s work was the Ali Fitz’-curated fArt Palace show, Summer Fling, where she had two larger than life sized portraits with one of the subjects wearing a pink almost red but not quite magenta jacket with a sheen that upon seeing it my heart weep and my nose bleed at its subtle yet awesome execution. I’ve been a fan ever since.
So back in January, when we arrived at the Monarch Event Center to take in the sultry sounds of the Silver Pines I was crushed to found out they had already played but elated to find out that one of the Artists showing was indeed Palazzolo, and that she had done some pencil portraits of the band that went along well with soft and richly painted portraits of people we didn’t know, the colorful strangers.
Alongside Jeffrey Swanson, Ryan Davis, and David Lujan, Palazzolo will be showing her work again tonight (June 25th) at the Grand Opening of the Gallery Black Lagoon, which is located in the old video store at 4301 A. Guadalupe St. (ATX, 78751) from 7-10pm.
Lance Letscher’s The Perfect Machine at D. Berman gallery right now, will mess you up, something bad. By that, I mean, that the show will blow your mind—BOOM! It’ll leave you with a nose bleed and handful of goodtime. Ok, that might have been a bit much, but it is really good, simply said, I enjoyed the step up from the already super star work from last year’s show.
Official Release:
“The Perfect Machinefeatures new collages and collaged objects by Lance Letscher at d berman gallery! Letscher’s colorful and geometric collages explore concepts of locomotion, technology, and the creative impulse. The exhibition is in conjunction with the publication of his imaginative children’s book also titledThe Perfect Machine. “
Admittedly anxious upon hearing the title, The Perfect Machine, I was prepared for disappointment. Such a thing does not exist; Machines are not to be trusted. Until the first images for the show began to leak forth, I whole heartedly pictured a beautiful failure similar to the ‘Perpetual Motion Machine’ that Vonnegut wrote about in Hocus Pocus, a beautifully built shiny whirly gig that doesn’t live up the name, but non literary (literal) attempts have been made at building a perpetual motion machine to no avail, or at least that is what Detroit would have you believe.
However, Letscher’s Perfect Machine is actually a book, so in your face Big Three. Or it could have been that sweet ass scooter he put in the show, we don’t actually know. I didn’t get a chance to ask him because he was too busy stacking paper ($!) in the cigar smoke filled back office (cigars that were lit undoubtedly, with hundred dollar bills).
Weary that the bike was done half-assedly with vinyl or vehicle wrap like the few sickeningly uncommitted hot rods that graced our streets recently, I had to get a closer look. Letscher remained consistent and awesome in his execution of the moto-collage. If you are like Ol’ UncleSugar (Bricks), then grew up reading ‘Lowrider’ magazine and know a couple of things about car customization then you know how it could have played out. Letscher went high end road of Rat Fink by recreating the shell of the scooter with fiber glass and then laying dow his chunky soup style chip board collage. Sp–looosh.
You too could own The Perfect Machine (book):
“…A limited edition version of this book will also be available. All proceeds from it will benefit the Superhero Kids Fund, which supports the Children’s Blood and Cancer Center of Central Texas. Please visit www.superherokids.org for more information.”
Other Big Guns showed their support and admiration too:
Here we’ve captured Roi James stumping Shea Little with a humdinger of a Final Jeopardy question.
& D(a) Berman Dignitary: Bazooka Joe Phillips.
All in all, it was a great show from a great showman, but still these words lack what I felt like standing next to that scooter, deep down… in my junk:
Welcome back to Circus Gold, we are pleased to have you here with us on the internet, with that said, please enjoy a new lighter look at an Art Show that we happened across… Ready? Time Machine Clean, this time we are headed back all the way to September of ’09 :
While the new Circus Gold Lighter Look, which is based on our unpublished mission, is less judgmentally influential on the viewer than our contemporaries, I’ll type 2 things:
1)I am weary of drawings that do not bear erasure marks.
2)I like art that features cut stones, gems, diamonds, etc..
“Your Heart is not a Museum” is Levi Dugat and Leah DeVun’s second collaborative gallery show. Taking inspiration from traditional craftmaking, romance novels, daytime television, and Southern kitsch, Dugat and DeVun’s graphite drawings offer fantastical and iconographical portraits of their extended band of family, friends, and favorite soap stars.”
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 canoccupy 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.
Nathan Green’s April Art Palace Austin appearance proved to be his best yet, in this author’s opinion. Following the über child like heart of his expressions, the show was named after what is presumably to be his favorite children’s book classic, ‘Happy Birthday, Moon’, by Frank Asch. This excited me to no end seeing how I own Asch’s other epic, ‘Popcorn Party’, but I digress (back to the show).
After the success of the two man show with Eric Gibbons, Lasers in the Jungle, Green decided to take it up a notch and include sculptures and Mural installation, the latter of which he constructed a wall for which to paint on (photos of which include some sculptures and local dignitaries).
This past year, the Austin Museum of Art (AMoA), decided to interact and invite people to put Post-Its on a wall inside its Downtown location, calling it Austin Responds. In March, they invited Circus Gold’s own, Matthew Rodriguez, aka Briar Bonifacio, to paint on this Wall, in an effort to entice patrons to part with their earliest memories, here are a few of those memories:
“…Orange Carpet and Catfish.”
“Getting attacked by a rooster.”
“…when my cousin Dreyton’s taught me to throw dice behind the Tejas Liquor store off Oltorf and Willow Creek….”
“…I can jump higher than all my friends!”
Feel free to leave your earliest memory in the comments section bellow…
a full scale crack bust went down directly across the street from us. It was by far the best performance piece that I had ever seen at an art show. It included a Crack Dealer, several crack heads, and clown car full of cops, well, it was actually a Honda Odyssey Mini Van with blacked out windows that screeched to a halt in between us and the open air market, from which a dozen or so cops spilled out of and started zip tying the felonious like effing Spiderman. It was an artistic! start to the new space. Remember that just east of I-35 is the essential face of the East Austin that the majority of Austinites and Church goers think of whenever its mentioned, so be glad that the Seventy Seven Gallery hopes to become the apple in the eye of said face while stepping up to fill the shoes of beloved but lost Gallery Lombardi as the new enthusiastic Graff flavored gallery of Austin. Kudos. See you tonight.
at D. Berman gallery right now, will mess you up, something bad. By that, I mean, that the show will blow your mind—BOOM! It’ll leave you with a nose bleed and handful of goodtime. Ok, that might have been a bit much, but it is really good, simply said, I enjoyed the step up from the already super star work from last year’s show. 
like Doc in a Delorean:
