"Below the Surface: A Different Order"
D Berman Gallery, through Aug. 19

By Amanda Douberley
Austin Chronicle
Friday, August 11, 2006

Jeffrey Dell's latest prints mark a decisive break with "Running Amok," the large-scale mezzotints of Venice he showed at Flatbed Press in 2002 and at the Austin Museum of Art last year. All representational imagery has been cast aside in a new body of screenprints that delves deeply into process. Dell printed layer upon layer of acrylic paint onto sheets of cotton rag paper, then bent, scraped, and otherwise violated this support to get below the surface, as the title for his half of this joint show with Marjorie Moore makes plain. Strata of pink, red, and white paint are hidden underneath the top coat, which tends toward an institutional blue in much of the work. Dell has also broken a few rules of printmaking and allowed fingerprints, plus pushpin holes, to remain visible.

An entire wall of discrete works shows evidence of the same fold or scrape made horizontally down the middle of the paper in print after print, giving the impression of a geological timeline, as well as a sense of time's passage as each layer is built up and eroded away. This awareness of accumulation is accompanied by a feeling of loss, an aspect of printmaking that isn't always obvious – engraving or etching a mark and then scraping and burnishing the copper plate, applying a field of color only to cover it up with another. The erased mark disappears, but it has already changed the plate itself. In the case of Dell's screenprints, the hidden layers are brought back to the surface but only in fragments. This erosion effect is skillfully manufactured and satisfies more thoroughly with prolonged inspection. I am curious to see where this new direction will take Dell. Even if "Below the Surface" turns out to be transitional work, it is surely not a dead end.

Marjorie Moore treads in more familiar territory with "A Different Order." Moore shows parts of the collection of scientific and pop-culture artifacts she has amassed over the years alongside paintings and drawings inspired by these objects in an enclosed space that provokes intimacy – part wunderkammer, part attic. A sense of loss pervades this work, too, but it operates on another level: There is the loss of life endemic to road-killed frogs and taxidermied birds, as well as the passage out of childhood, marked here by a collection of discarded toys. Moore's project does not aim to embalm these artifacts in nostalgia, however, but to reinvest them with new meaning.

Aves, Aves, Aves combines bird toys, dead birds, broken eggshells, and two canvas boxes upon which Moore has drawn birds of various species. The grouping of found objects and drawings adds a layer of organizational complexity to Moore's taxonomy. In fact, in this context we might think of drawing as another kind of ordering, a way of arranging and interpreting the world around us. And the ordering goes further: The boxes and found objects could be actively rearranged by an intrepid viewer. The combination works on a conceptual level, but I have a hard time stomaching taxidermy-as-art. Most successful are a number of smaller cubes, collectively called the Biology Box series, which take the cabinet-of-curiosities idea to another level. These diminutive boxes also bear carefully rendered fauna on each surface, transforming Moore's drawings into something like the specimens they depict.

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Bove's Blanton Works Look Dated For a Reason

By Erin Keever
Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, August 17, 2006

One of my favorite parts of the new Blanton Museum is a single gallery on the second floor next to the eLounge. This area is dedicated to the Blanton's "WorkSpace" series and offers a spot where curators can showcase work by an individual contemporary artist — work like that of Carol Bove.

Based in New York, Bove works in a variety of media. For the Blanton, she created two sculptural installations, described as "sculpture gardens." The larger garden features concrete slabs, pieces of driftwood installed on rods and suspended by string, precisely arranged peacock feathers and what one could call gold metal boxes without walls. One of these boxes serves as a pedestal for a specific sculpture by Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro from the early 1960s. If the other clues aren't enough, the presence of this sculpture secures Bove's concern with the aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s.

In the second, smaller installation, the artist used similar materials, but in a different format. The peacock feathers, Brancusi-type sculpture, rocks and wood are presented within a large box, so that the viewer looks in at them at nearly eye level. The entire work is like a giant receding shadow box or curiosity cabinet. Bove harnesses (by literally enclosing) her interests in history and time, randomness and order, linearity and nonlinearity. The curator of this exhibition, Kelly Baum, says Bove makes "sculptures that function as archives and archives that function as sculptures." So when a friend commented, "It looks dated," I answered, "Yes, that's the idea, or at least one of them."

("Carol Bove: 'Setting' for A. Pomodoro" continues 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays (until 8 p.m. Thursdays), 1-5 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 1 at the Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Avenue. $3-$5, free on Thursdays. 471-7324, www.blantonmuseum.org.)

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"All Dressed in White"
Women & Their Work Gallery, through Sept. 9

By Robert Faires
Austin Chronicle
Friday, August 18, 2006

You can see the appeal: the ceremony of union, the ritual binding you with your perfect mate for life. The presence of those dearest to you. The slow procession, all their eyes on you. The music. The flowers. And, not least, that gown – as elaborate as one for a princess and all white, signifying purity. That blend of pageantry and romance is as close as most ever get to a fairy-tale moment – and, of course, it's meant to serve as the setup for one's own fairy-tale ending, with bride and groom living "happily ever after."

It doesn't matter that our world doesn't feel much like one in a fairy tale. We know the economic and societal pressures on married couples, the incidence of spousal abuse, the divorce rates. But despite all that – or maybe because of it – the image of the traditional bride still pulls at us, still beckons to us alluringly down the aisle. So, with all the shifts in women's roles and cultural attitudes and demographics, do we stay or do we go?

That question seems to lie at the heart of Women & Their Work's "All Dressed in White." Each of its seven video and multimedia works grapples with what the institution of marriage means or should mean in the life of a contemporary woman. While curator Diane Zander Mason includes just seven works, her exhibit provides surprising breadth in considering matrimony across lines of age, race, culture, creed, and sexual orientation. We drop into a cross-cultural firestorm about the decline in marriage among African-Americans (sparked by The Washington Post feature "Marriage Is for White People"), take in competing views of marriage from a young boy and a young girl, witness a lesbian's obsession with wedding her partner of 25 years, listen to fundamentalist Christian wives defend the principle of submission to their husbands, see a 30-year-old Anglo newlywed wrestle with the prospect of motherhood, and hear a Peruvian wife and mother describe the end of her marriage after 20 years.

Now, getting this range of perspectives requires patience. To see all seven works takes about an hour. However, since you can't control when the works start, sometimes you have to wait for one to finish and loop back to the beginning, which, with some works running more than 10 minutes each, can add to your time in the gallery. And as most works have only one set of headphones for listening to the audio, other viewers may lead to additional delays. That said, giving yourself over to the works without regard to time can open a refreshingly contemplative space for absorbing these works. Zander Mason's own contribution, Submit, weds a soundtrack of women describing their experiences of Christian submission to a visual of his-and-her marriage vows projected a word at a time; the slow unfolding of this pledge, with each word landing like a droplet in a pool, lets you weigh fully the meaning and import of every word, of the promises being made. Plus, the longer you spend in the exhibition, the easier you can hear the common feelings among its voices across those divides of history and geography: the desire and the uncertainty. You want to be with someone, but is this the one? Will I still be who I am? What do I give up? What do I gain? Do I stay or do I go?

Don't expect to find many answers here, however. If "All Dressed in White" makes any definitive statement about marriage and women today, it's that our culture is still figuring it out. In Julie Hanus' cheery film Fifty Brides on a Fire Escape, a host of white-gowned young women file out of a second-story doorway and down a stairway outside of what looks to be a church. It's easy to assume that they're all headed to a wedding. And yet, even as these brides descend, as if toward some supersized, 50-ring ceremony, superimposed on them are images of the same women ascending the fire escape, ghostly figures seeming to walk away from that fairy-tale moment. Are these their imagined selves, runaway brides barely escaping a lifetime of marital captivity? Once the last bride disappears through a downstairs door, the brides file out the door and back up the fire escape, while superimposed images of them coming down the stairs float past. Since these brides are so patently divorced, excuse the pun, from any grooms, the film suggests the ambivalence of women toward marriage, at once drawn to it and moving away from it. That image may stand for this show's overall attitude: Here comes the bride; there goes the bride.

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Cartoon Heritage
Food faces, renegade puppets, rainbow purses, and nicotine washes – it's all part of the art of Matthew Rodriguez

By Rachel Koper and Kristin Unger
Austin Chronicle
Friday, August 18, 2006

This is the thing about stripped-down, bare-bones cartoon illustration: It can communicate important safety information or juvenile fantasy proto-political stencils. The outlined character art is clear, transcending linguistic barriers and uniting those who were raised by TV, the kind of people who keep a TV schedule in their minds that's more accurate than their résumés or their diaries. Matthew Rodriguez is a TV kid, but in a good way. Though raised by TV, he is a self-made man and open to city life as it really is. Drawing on typing paper, painting rainbows on purses, drinking Sparks, and making puppet shows. His comical paintings evoke smiles via familiar song lyrics and cheerful imagery. What I call recycling found objects, he calls Dumpster diving. His resourcefulness is impressive.

Rodriguez has enough sense to listen to the people, to listen to his audience. Bums tell him about his painting, and he asks questions. He leaves a box out in the gallery for secret notes, decorated with "I'll write back." People leave him notes, they stuff stickers and drawings in there, and they invite him to parties. For the cartoon heritage, for the shy guy, the artwork speaks, so he doesn't have to. His puppet Coupon dances and throws things, so we can laugh and not throw things.

Rodriguez is a rising star on the national art scene. He's had successful exhibits in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, to name some outside of Texas, and this week he's opening his first solo exhibit, "duck, duck, GOOSE," at Volitant Gallery here in his hometown. He's motivated and ambitious, with boundless energy. I know one thing: When I'm at home sleeping my regular nine hours, he is not. As director of Gallery Lombardi, I have a less-than-objective view of him. Since 2003, I've worked with him on "Language of the Railroader," "Beans & Rice," "Mulligan Stew," and now "Austin Graffiti Art From Birth to Present," opening Aug. 26. So there, is this guy really that funny? Go see his artwork and decide for yourself. – R.K.

Austin Chronicle: You have developed some recurring characters in different works. You create a character and then develop a narrative for him, building traits and a story as in a serial publication. How important is repetition in your work? Do you think of your work as being similar to a comic book?

Matthew Rodriguez: I think of every painting as a single frame in an episode of a cartoon series. In cartoons, you don't "repeat" characters; you develop a cast of characters that interact with each other. All of my characters have voices, personalities, background histories, criminal records, and love interests. Especially Tony Bologna and the Processed Product Gang – they've been having an ongoing feud with the Red Meat Mafia since '99.

AC: Everyone talks about Trenton Doyle Hancock in terms of an artist who creates superheroes, his own personal mythology, in his work. Have you seen his artwork at the Blanton?

MR: I don't know who Trenton Doyle Hancock is, and the only time I've been to the Blanton was opening night, when there was a line wrapped around the whole building. We cut in line by holding up Coupon and yelling that we were late for our puppet show, and they let us in with suspicious eyes.

AC: Who is "Coupon"?

MR: Coupon is a matted-fur puppet I made that I use to put on renegade puppet shows. He's a delinquent, he's a rock-thrower, and he's a heckler. My car has a moon roof that serves as a puppet window for Coupon to heckle people at red lights. One time I got pulled over by the police for having puppet shows out of my moon roof. They made me take a drunk-driving test, and then they asked me a bunch of serious questions about what I was doing with a puppet out my window.

AC: What are some of the materials you've tried over the years? What is your favorite art supply now?

MR: I started with crayons all over my childhood home, and I still have the most fun when using them to make my art. I like doodling something quickly more than taking forever to dip a paintbrush. You can draw with almost anything, but I prefer to stick with crayons and ketchup bottles. My new favorite medium is food. I can't eat a meal without having arranged it into a food face. You know, fake bacon eyebrows, kiwi-slice eyeballs, a fake sausage nose, red-grape teeth lined up in a smile, with a nice big beard of burnt toast. That is my breakfast every morning.

AC: How has scavenging for supplies, by way of recycling found materials, influenced your art? How do you obtain the materials you use to make art on? What are some things you've made art out of?

MR: Most of the panels I use to paint on are made out of recycled materials, but most of the time it's more trouble finding the materials than it is painting on them. I usually have to scavenge abandoned buildings at night with a crowbar, hammer, and flashlight. Also, there is a secret Goodwill, unlike any other Goodwill. It is a huge un-air-conditioned warehouse that uses pig troughs instead of shelves and racks to highlight their wonderful selection of miscellaneous junk. Once a week, I poke through the piles of trash for sale with a long stick, and sometimes I find things like artificial Christmas trees that I can make monsters out of.

AC: As a self-taught artist, you use some interesting phrases to describe your work. Will you define how you paint a "nicotine wash" and what you mean by "old-timey"?

MR: I like my paintings to look like they were painted 50 years ago and have been faded, scratched, bitten by a dog, kicked by a raccoon, and water-damaged. One way I do this is by giving my paintings a "nicotine wash" top coat after the paint has dried. A nicotine wash is something I learned from the Blue Genie – it's when your painting looks like your grandma has been smoking cigarettes in her recliner chair indoors, with all the windows shut, while watching her favorite television programs for the last 20 years. It's the brownish-yellowish transparent look on her teeth and on her ceiling. One time, I sent some paintings to an art show in Canada, and the gallery owner called me all scared, saying they thought my paintings got all wet and damaged on their trip up to Montreal. But indeed, they were wrong. I told them they were supposed to look old-timey and nicotine-stained.

AC: What shows have been the most fun for you lately?

MR: Last year, I made the 16-foot-long cardboard subway train for Deitch Projects in New York. Walking inside of it, carrying it Chinese dragon-style down SoHo with celebrity puppets – such as Patrick Swayze and Arnold Schwarzenegger – was a cheek-hurting smile for me.

AC: Now that you are showing nationally, what have you learned about art?

MR: With all of my travels, I have learned airport security doesn't like it when you try to bring cap guns on planes. Also, you can't buy cap guns in the state of New York, even for the artistic purpose of puppet shows. You have to figure out how to smuggle them in.

AC: What are you working on now?

MR: Right now I'm trying to make enough art to fill my first solo show at this new gallery at Fourth and Congress called Volitant. It's a super-fancy space with lots of hidden rooms and marble floors. There are going to be a lot of bigger pieces in it that I don't usually show. After that, I'm doing a group show the next weekend at Gallery Lombardi.

AC: What are you up to next?

MR: I have a bunch of shows coming up in New York over the next few months. I'm going to curate a show at Factory People after ACL and will have a line of limited-edition T-shirts I designed done by then. I'm also developing a TV show starring my puppet Coupon called Double Coupon Day that involves attempted interviews with stray animals and valuable lessons on the finer things in life, like Boone's Farm and Black and Milds.

"duck, duck, GOOSE" is on display Aug. 18-Sept. 25 at Volitant Gallery, 320 Congress. For more information, call 236-1240 or visit www.volitant.com.

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