September 03, 2004
The Pride of Phoenix, Part Two: Reading Bad Signs Downtown
I always wanted to pretend to be an architect. -- George Costanza / Larry David
I always wanted to pretend to be an artist. -- Identity-For-Rent Sign; contact Beatrice Moore
by The Tears of Things
[You don't want to miss this mélange, local readers. Using the Grand Avenue art scene as a template, and riffing on the theme of signs, it throws forth confession, challenge, jealousy, anger, folk-psychological semiotics, art-review fisking, breast-bearing, heartfelt tributes to window displays and the lost arts of lettering and sign-making, interruptions for fantasy asides, parenthetical bitch-slaps, fist-shaking at slumlords, name-calling, ad hominem beard-pulling, lots of photographs (of our artworks too), and straightforward analysis. We think it bends the bounds, and distorts the decorum, of the English expository essay. We attempt some organization with bolded sections, and we tell you when we need to trade off authorship. These will help, but you're on your own. Things bob up in a mélange. And look over yonder: we have included this evolving downtown series under the sidebar title "The Burgeoning," turning the ubiquitous adjective of downtown arts boosters into the poufy noun it truly is. And speaking of which, before leaving the house on our tour, we begin by examining two recent articles on downtown arts, one by Richard Nilsen in the newspaper, the other by Amy L. Young in the pseudo-magazine shade.]
(It's a very long piece, so bring a sandwich and a cup of coffee.)
Foghorn Leghorn Is Tired, And Needs To Rest Up For The Cowboy Art Show
Richard Nilsen blunders into it right away, like Sonny Bono into his fateful tree, with the title of his fall Valley visual arts preview story in last Sunday's (8/29/04) Arizona Republic:
Apparently, neither he nor his editor cared about the disparate images summoned by that ambiguous phrase -- ironmongery and counterfeiting; this makes the sweet irony that much more sabrosa, since the latter practice -- artist manqués polishing their resumés -- dominates the scene.
[It's an adventitious and propitious sign, that title -- and yes, that's a pun. 'Sign' appears in several definitions -- as tells, as memes, as pointers, as the physical displays Phoenix artists use, and fail to use, to advertise their professions -- signs punctuate this post in its paragraphs, in pop-up photos, and in embedded images.]
Thanks for making our morning, Richard, you tired, tired writer, you. (Scary thought: you didn't even see the dual meanings? It's possible; you write a lot stupider than you used to. More likely you contemptuously thought others wouldn't pick up on it.) No wonder you didn't want to cover the arts anymore. But John Carlos Villani left for Santa Fe, and now you're pulled off travel essays, photography book reviews, and boilerplate six-ways-to-collect-art-pieces. When was the last time you cared about actually crafting a sentence? And now you have to swallow the sneering attitude you used to have about the whole Downtown so-called arts district, and actually boost these boobs. (What's that music? "Now you don't talk so loud; now you don't seem so proud . . .") This is you on Kimber Lanning:
. . . [she] created an anchor for the burgeoning downtown arts community. At Modified, Lanning mixes the visual arts gallery with music, film and theater for a complete cultural feast. It's a monument to diversity.
Oh, you bought man; you mouthpiece! Modified Arts is a molehill to mediocrity, and it's as plain as the dome on your inflated forehead. [You shouldn't have insulted my wife, mofo. -- JdB]
Other signs of fatigue appear in this one-page preview, on two sidebars. "Behind the Scenes" features five micro-profiles of influential Phoenix / Valley art dynamos. Marilyn Zeitlin is well-known to readers of this blog. We will be covering Kimber Lanning (who we'll call Stenchworth) and Beatrice (Stale Cake) Moore further down. Jim Ballinger, of PAM, is principally responsible for the Cowboy Art Show's perpetual retrograde presence. Glen Lineberry came to art from business fourteen years ago because his wife was an art pro. Standard-bearers. (And what happened to up-and-comer Kathleen Thomas, hmmmm?)
The other sidebar features five art shows to look forward to, and of course the first one listed is the 39th Annual Cowboy Artists blah blah at PAM. Second, a design show from out of state at SMOCA. Painter Anne Coe depicts Gary-Larson-type situations -- bears in a diner -- at Chandler Center for the Arts, and she's been around forever with her boring cartoon imagery. Colin Chillag is the one downtown artist, and he's going to be showing at Modified. The one interesting show might be the stuff the Weithorns will be sharing from their collection at ASU. Note here that four of the shows are at large institutions, but somehow Modified snuck in there -- in the Top Five. Out of all the galleries in all the Valley . . .
The main story is puff. I'll just discuss parts relevant to Grand Avenue and downtown Phoenix development in the last quarter of his piece:
"These artist studios and gallery spaces tend to attract other kinds of businesses," says Phil Jones, head of the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture. "Restaurants, cafes, bookstores, food stores and rehearsal and performance spaces."
As an example, Nilsen points -- or is directed to point -- to the corner of McDowell Road and Seventh Avenue, "where the Willo Bakery and My Florist restaurant have become art-community meccas."
"You won't believe that intersection in five years," says David Lacey, owner of the bakery and restaurant. "It is truly becoming a neighborhood."
Maybe in five years, Mr. Lacey. What about the last five years? Those two giant funky antique stores anchoring both westside corners have been there a lot longer. Also, when I look out the window of your fine restaurant (great biscuits and gravy; excellent coffee) I see, directly across the street, David White's now-defunct New Urban Art, the neatest, cleanest, best-lighted, most walkup-friendly (big windows!), parking-friendly art gallery in all of downtown. The art was inoffensive, decorative modernist abstraction. Wha hoppen? He should have made it, at least this far. And it's been empty for over a year. I know if we were exhibiting, I'd try to grab it. Why has no gallerist or artist snapped it up, what with all this burgeoning energy everywhere?
Energy. Here's Steve Gompf, near the end of the article, speaking of First Fridays:
"What's great about it is energy," says artist Steve Gompf, who sits on the board of Artlink. But he also voices a concern of many longtime Phoenix residents.
"We don't want to be yuppified," he says.
-- I have to interrupt here. First, I have to stop laughing . . . Okay. Steve Gompf has had at least a ten-year, steady career so far as a college art teacher, often in Scottsdale. Talk about the pasta maker calling the kettle beige!
As Phoenix art becomes more successful, it could lose the edgier aspects that gave it character from the beginning.
Gompf and others remember the challenging performance art of the Phoenix Boat People from the late '80s. Or Peter Petrisko's Gallery X, where you were likely to find an artist wearing a coat of raw meat. Gone are Metropophobobia, Radix and deCompression.
Artist Annie Lopez warns, "Everybody is a painter nowadays. But back then, there were so many chances to experiment, to play, to try stuff out. It was very accepting then. I show more out of town than I do here, now.
"I'm afraid the 'bad' type is going to be pushed out by the 'normal' artists."
This is crap. What she's saying is she's tired and out of ideas, and the first generation of lame-asses longs for the good old days. This is a Frank Discussion here. These days, more than ever, the edges of art stick out everywhere. It is not edgy to wear raw meat when a transvestite potter wins the Turner Prize, and when some clown is pushing a walnut down some street with his nose. (Say hello to William Pope L. while you're down there, willya?)
Kimber Lanning Always Wanted To Pretend To Be Gertrude Stein
Anyway, before we even got to Grand Avenue, we decided to check out a couple of other signs. For example, this one, on Camelback and Central, advertising the opening of the second branch of Stenchworth's record store:
I know a guy who would print these words, nicely and neatly, on white vinyl, for about a hundred bucks, and even hang it in the window for you. This is the first new business you've started in six years. What pride! This sign hangs near a fairly upscale neighborhood, with AJ's and antiques stores cattycorner, on the north strip of a fruit loop, Brophy and Xavier private schools just down the street. There are other available spaces nearby, but Stenchworth chose one next to the piercing place, and right behind a bus stop. I'd hate to be a clerk in that store. ("Change for the bus?") But Stenchworth will have the high-school art students lining up to exhibit there.
Catherine: They kiss her ass just the way she likes it. She calls it "business ethics."
Going south on Central Avenue, we pass the Lux Café complex. Hit the brakes! I gotta shoot this.
Could a sign be more astringent, more restrained, more constipated? (I don't know if the menu policies have changed in Lux, but the one time we went in -- to drop off Jerome's portfolio for consideration -- we found out they had one size of coffee, because that's how they do it in Italy, don't you know. And we learned that Daniel went to special classes to make the fern-patterns on the drink surface just so. Tuh-wee.)
This sign is not lighted from within, by the way. I'll get back to the sign. Now consider the building itself, for a moment. Booring. "Pane Bianco," just to drive the point home, means "White Bread."
About the sign. I love and respect letterforms and other ciphers, some of the strongest, most graceful, and most enduring forms on earth. I use them in my own work. So has Catherine. (Catherine muses eloquently on typography further below.) "Martha + Mary" is the inexplicable name that Sloan McFarland, this building's landlord, has chosen for the name of his various businesses. His office is here. It's that "+" that bothers me. He dodged the ampersand, the glorious ampersand, I'm saying, in favor of the simpler yet inaccurate plus sign. The ampersand links, the plus sign annihilates. Martha & Mary are two people, holding hands; Martha + Mary is, at best, Eminem. It was lazy, the path of least resistance; I know two metal sculptors (much less any NC machine) who could cut you a curvey ampersand to make you weep. I guess for Sloan, as for Mondrian, "Curves are too emotional."
On to Grand Avenue. No more distractions.
Three Venues Which Are Better Than Lousy
The three best places we found on Grand Avenue were Perihelion Arts, The Paper Heart, and ICON Studios -- but each has significant flaws.
Perihelion Arts is neat, boasts a legible sign on the wedge of its most public face, and has a nice mural on one side. But it still looks like an occult bookstore / head shop from long ago. (All those Day-Glo Freaks who used to paint the face / They've joined the human race.) Maybe if it said Art Gallery . . .
Paper Heart took over a car dealership in a long, wedge-shaped building. Here is their sign. It's competent, if dated, old-style tagging, and probably off-putting to the folks from Dubuque. Most importantly, though, it's on the wrong side of the building! Really, it's not on Grand Avenue, it's on the off-street side, so you can really only see it from one direction.
ICON Studios is A-J squared away, as befits neatnik Chris Duran, who I worked for briefly years ago. He used beautifully classical iron letters front and center over the door. The rest of the facade is blank, except for the steel door. I understand why he doesn't have windows; the sight of the tool racks and other portable power goodies would be too tempting for some of the neighborhood denizens. But it's too blank. Whaddaya do there? ICON means image. Give us some images! How about mounting a couple of stainless-steel platforms high on both sides, and bolt a rotating show of your metal work to them?
From here, the Diagonal goes downhill.
Miss Amy Young And The Elephant In The Middle Of The Sandwich
We found Amy L. Young's recent Shade article most helpful as a geographical and name guide, although very badly-written. As in --
[Wait a sec. Aside: This writer used to call herself Miss Amy Young. We wonder what happened? Perhaps one day a friend of hers said:
"You know, Amy, you should drop that Miss from your moniker."
"Why do you say that, TrishJusTrish?"
"Well, because Joanna 23 -- you know, Michael 23's wife -- said it was sexist."
"Oh. Okay, then. Thanks."]
-- as in:
Grand Avenue, once the main highway toward Los Angeles, and the lengthy diagonal of Phoenix's paved grid street plan, is a hotbed of activity and spice. Though spice on any level strikes the senses subjectively, it sure is a hell of a lot better than having nothing to smell, so to speak. Much of Grand's aesthetical richness lies in the buildings themselves. Weathered brick and steel allow you not only to see but to feel an honest history of the city. The old motels are reminiscent of some of the remaining bungalow motels on Hollywood Blvd., and much like those, while probably not the first a chamber of commerce representative might reccommend to you, they exude the stuff that many a good tale has been woven from. The rest of the meat (or chosen meat substitute for you veggies, if you will) of the Grand Avenue sandwich is made up of the people.
Catherine says: She gets right to her central point at the end of this submarine of a paragraph, voicing the unspoken assumption of Stale Cake and her band of fakes-- the Grand Avenue Scene is about the sparkling artistic celebrities who live and play down there. Well, no, sweetie -- it's supposed to be about the art. But what if the citizens of Phoenix don't really agree that the artists are more important than the art. Maybe a few of us aren't all that overawed with the Daring Darlings of the Diagonal. Get over yourselves. Most of you will never be worthy of exhibiting.
Stale Cake The Fake Versus American Woman
Catherine: I saw the Stop'n'Look Window for the first time just over a week ago. I confess to being amazed by the long, deep display area. It's astounding potential was obvious even with the blazing eastern sun illuminating the grand scale of its naked grime and neglect.
It seemed so wrong, that incredible space just sitting there all dirty. Couldn't the Arts & Culture Office (Phil Jones, wake up!) and the owner of the building and the people of the neighborhood see how badly this sign of blind wastefulness reflected on the ludicrous lack of imagination in this so-called 'Arts District'?
"So this is the Stop'n'Look window!" I marveled to Jerome. "I can't believe local artists aren't vying with each other right and left to procure this peerless space. Because, I admit, I can hardly imagine a more glorious venue. If it had the mandatory window to curb awning, that is. In fact, if I were Stale Cake, I'd have it all shiny and cleaned and filled with my own new installations every month. I'd keep this window for my own work and people would come from far and wide to see unforgettable tableaux!"
Surely in New York City, many kinds of artists would be clamoring for the exciting privilege to install their best-crafted, most well-thought-out displays in a magnificent window like the one that languishes in front of Stale Cake's cheesy dive. In New York City, artists would be trying way harder and doing their best. But in Phoenix, sloppy, slovenly amateurism passes for the best we've got.
But obviously Stale Cake is setting the tone here: This is good enough for Phoenix. Zero expectations of the arts slumlords and even less delivered. In Phoenix, for reasons they need to explain to me, the culture hustler creative class alpha bitches don't need to take care of their property -- they just need to own it -- in multiples, preferably.
The reader will notice that the proud owner doesn't even keep the windows clean. This slummy community benefactor obviously holds with the No Maintenance Required belief system. Stale Cake, you ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you have thirteen buildings and you can't be bothered to take care of even one. The jewel in your crown of real estate looks like shit.
Yes, there have been times since the end of last October, when we had to stop renting our gallery, that I almost choked with longing to have another window display again. Aren't any other artists inspired by the Stop'n'Look space? Because it doesn't look like it. Reading the signs here, I'm picking up that the space is too big and beautiful for the local wannabe artists. They don't have anything strong enough to say. Their 'work' won't hold up. I'm picking up that it would be a bigger problem for any of the so-called 'artists' to rise to the challenge than it would be to simply ignore the awesome potential of the Stop'n'Look Window. And so, following their Stale leader, they choose the path of least resistance. Always.
I have a detailed tableau all designed and ready to construct, should I have access to another window display. It came to me in a dream and features a life-sized character modeled after a graphic artist that I really know. I call her American Woman in this installation.
The viewer observes the commercial artist at work, while at the same time being able to see through the window behind the woman to the life on the street where she lives. This American Woman is trying to make a living, naturally, from her design work. Yes, the design work represents bread and butter to her, but at the same time, she truly loves each and every great-looking thing she makes. It's fun and it makes her feel proud.
It's almost like her personal mission to Beautify America-- starting with her own funky Southwestern neighborhood. When she looks out her window she sees examples of her handiwork all over-- the signs over the little businesses, posters at the bus stop, there goes a logo on the side of that van. She remembers the care she took in designing all of them, and she knows it shows-- things are looking better. America the Beautiful-- she helps to make it so.
American Woman puts her whole self even into her commercial work. She's always felt really responsible for the objects and imagery that she put out there. Her signs and designs were going to be out in the public for a long time. She couldn't just put shit out there. She's a professional-- she has her professional reputation. But even more than that, she understands that she shares this town and these streets with everybody else-- it just shows respect to all involved to craft her public displays with care.
Now, American Woman is really disappointed that apparently none of the fake artists who live and play along Grand Avenue shares these aesthetics with her. She can tell that these fake artists take no pride in their designs or their neighborhood. Her business is signs, remember. The complete lack of presentation throughout the Phoenix Arts Districts says it all. The galleries and studios are untouched by any Professional Visual Artist. The street looks like the run-down playground of middle-school kids who aren't trying very hard.
I'm also reading from the bad signs along Grand Avenue, that Stale Cake is probably landlady as well as moral leader to these so-called 'artists'. I bet she owns lots of the run-down dives they rent in order to establish their "street creds'. She provides them with play identities and a fantasy avenue on which to live them out. She has taught many of them how to get money from the city and state just to lounge and scribble out a little bad 'art' now and then.
I'm picking up that her fake followers are grateful all out of proportion to Stale Cake for facilitating their Grand Fantasies. It just wouldn't be as fun to live and play at art in some hovel along, let's say Broadway between 16th and 24th Streets, as it is to live and play at art in some hovel along Grand Avenue. Because there you're slumming with all of your friends and it works for you.
But it doesn't work for the (adult) citizens of Phoenix. It isn't good enough. We should try harder and make world-class efforts every time. If the culture hustler slumlords don't agree with that, then the city should stop treating them as if they're doing us all big cultural favors. Because they're not. I'm picking up from lots of bad signs that Stale Cake and Stenchworth have built bona fide hustling careers where they take, take, take in the guise of generous and legitimate community service.
And regarding their fake followers, without whom they'd be nothing, well, one needn't be an art critic to make the judgement that these people have zero talent and even less pride. Just look, for heaven's sake. . . Here, let me read some more signs.
For some reason, I keep forgetting that Stale Cake is an 'artist' herself. I couldn't disagree more with Ted Decker's disgustingly gushy assessment. Ted Decker the connoisseur, collecting Beatrice Moore. Well, all I can say, Mr. Connoisseur, is -- keep talking it up, but you still can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It's depressing what impresses people in this town. Stale Cake gets a zero in my book for her childish signage. I mean, really look at Stop'n'Look.
Can anyone believe that anything serious is going on in there? Can this woman do lettering or did she simply buy a pack of bulletin board letters from Teaching Tools? But first, maybe she thought she'd ingeniously ripped off this old cliché she spied just down the street.
Stale Cake is a fake -- completely unprofessional, after all these years of 'working' public officials.
[Footnote on Decker the Collector. If he collects Moore, which seems obvious from the piece, and boosts her work for the written record (which could increase its value), isn't that dangerously close to conflict-of-interest? And speaking of dangerously close, and something completely different, it might interest you that Ted Decker is the model for Ted Player, the acquisitive art-collector and Cuba-lover of my ongoing serial novel, La Pionera and The New Mango. He'll be showing up soon in Part Three.]
Jaron And Jamal Stepinfetchit Back From The Pre-Post-Black
From Amy Young's article:
Look forward to even more doors opening at the Lumbre Metal Gallery, Pete Deise's new outdoor studio, Triptych Studios, artist Hector Ruiz's Chocolate Factory and Jaron Neal and Jamar Jones' DemNoLikUs; a new gallery featuring a non-exclusive [?] forum for up and coming black artists to showcase their work.
Catherine says: The most pathetic sign along Not-So Grand Avenue's Arts District is on the front of the newest gallery, DemNoLikUs (Them No Like Us). Two African-American males own this establishment. With self-deprecation that I wouldn't have believed possible before I started learning about contemporary art, they proclaim their Black Victimhood to anyone passing by. How could self-respecting grown men chose to present this whining self image-- DemBeBadWhiteys -- on the street? It's almost embarrasing to see, but don't you dare jump into dat dere guilt trap -- ain't nobody makin dem grovel like dat but derselfs.
These guys needn't worry about not fitting in; with their displayed lack of pride, they look right at home on Grand Avenue. I read from their sign that they're just playing at being artists -- they aren't ready for a gallery, judging by the hokey way they dealt with their signage. But like the other entitled wannabes, they're not going to let that defer their fantasies.
These guys can't even prime or seal the cheap plywood on which they scribble their way-too-funky gallery name. You wish to evoke Haight-Ashbury, guys, but you can't get up, much less sustain, the exuberance, and you'd rather cry in the gutter than proudly wave your freak flags high, I'm picking up. The most obvious sign? Look at the ways these losers rendered the word SOUL. Artists are supposed to love the characters of the alphabet enough to work at altering them to convey just the right expression. They way these guys write soul shows they don't got it.
Jerome: That's right. These guys know as much about soul as a hog does about Sunday. (Stole that from Zell Miller.) Didn't you guys get the telegram from Thelma "Freestyle" Golden? Delivered by Mr. PostBlackMan back in 1999? Wake up, wake up, wake up, it's the first of the month: It's a post-black world, and that flag don't fly no more. Kind of hard to whine about being outsiders when you've both got steady gigs with the Boys & Girls Club in Tempe, last I read. Face it, you're wearing whiteface, and this little crib on Grand Avenue is partytime.
As for your paintings -- Mingus, Blakely -- it's as if jazz died a long time ago. As for your Jimi, Jaron -- gaaahhh! Lester Bangs famously said, "When I first heard Jimi Hendrix play guitar, it sounded like heavy metal falling from the sky." You take the greatest guitarist ever, the wire too thin for the power coursing through it, who ripped past the drop edge of yonder in search of the musical uncanny, and you reduce him to a pastel Hallmark card. You sure you're black listening to his music? And I notice you leave out Coltrane, the Hendrix of the saxophone. Art Pepper? Nope, don't see him.
Who don't like U, besides us? You picked an Uncle Tom banner to stand under. Why don't you guys just nail your raisins to the door?
Jeff Falk Doesn't Bother Putting Lipstick On The Pig
Last week we took a picture of the Stop'N'Look window and said some things about it, mainly that it was empty. When we went back for Part Two we found this piece of paper, what turned out to be probably the most telling sign of this whole article, taped to the inside of the window, right next to a splat of . . . ugh:
Study this image, reader, ugly though it may be, because we'll both have a lot to say about it. First, whether Beatrice Moore decided to respond to our criciticism this way -- "Run over there, Jeff, and leave some kind of note" -- we don't know. But it's there. Jeff Falk, a twenty-year veteran of the Phoenix art scene, over one hundred exhibitions -- MacDonald's owns his work! -- recepient of grants and other encouragement, probably the most-mentioned artist ever in Phoenix New Times -- this is how he deals with his "public." Just read the content:
Stop'N'Look is closed for renovations, but will open in September with an irreverent political installation by Jeff Falk.
Renovations: two pieces of drywall slammed up to block off the inside. No sign of work, either week. How's he going to get something done by September 3rd, First Friday? Or even their new thang, First Saturday? But wait, there's another significant date coming up this month . . . maybe he's aiming for . . . as I ruminate, my blood begins to rise. Oh, man . . .
Irreverent political installation.
September 11.
Jeff Falk, boogie out whatever St. Vitus buffoonery appeals to your stunted soul -- masks, gold-painted puttis, inflatable things, Kerry and Bush doing the dirty hula, crayon tutu facepaint hobbyhorse jamboree -- but keep your greasy fingers off The Twin Towers, off the Pentagon, off Shanksville. PLEASE. May the Perpetual Clown with the Stony Heart not touch these wounds! Don't go there.
Did You Bring Your Cone?
One of the newest gallery on the Diagonal is The Cone Gallery. From Amy L. Young's article:
Newcomers Dan Montes and Kathy Cone of the Cone Gallery, who've subsequently taken well to adopting Cone as their last name [WTF? -- JdB], also put the blood, sweat and tears into turning a less than lively property into a cozy, loungy and devoted art gallery and performance space.
Here's the front of the Cone Gallery:
That's right: Christmas lights again! And just plain Cone, and believe us, the rest of the picture gives no clue whatsoever that art, or anything, is sold, purveyed, traded, fenced, or stored here. In fact, the place is so deapan dark and foreboding, it's easy to imagine some night there, you knock, and the guy with the pierced septum and the leather armbands opens the door, looks you up and down, and growls, "Did you bring your cone?"
The Red Door And Nothing More
We thank Amy L. Young for this helpful and sycophantically revealing hyperbolic description of the occupants of another recent gallery / studio "complex," The Red Door:
The girls next door [from The Lodge] at The Red Door are anything but stereotypical girls next door. Indigo Verton is a multi-talented photographer, painter, fashion designer and make-up artist, with a personality you couldn't buy with a million bucks. Laressa Manning is a painter who is moved by the strong community vibe. Her strong colors and ability to capture emotion and expression are reflective of her current interest in realism and the evolution of one's self. [If only! -- JdB] She also teaches art at Saguaro High School in Scottsdale. [But she's not yuppified.] Natalie Borchers came to Phoenix from Chicago . . . As she embarks on new beginnings with her art career, Natalie also works at the downtown YMCA with upstairs neighbor and artist, Luis Guiterrez, and the two are currently working together [public $$$] on a mural program with local kids. Guiterrez shares his studio with ASU gallery preparator Fausto Fernandez.
Let's do a quick count: five so-called multi-talented professionals, and this is their public face:
Go ahead, read their credentials again, while I reexamine Fausto. I mean, an ASU Museum gallery preparator! What did they (not) teach you out there at the Herberger School? You are supposed to respect artworks, and their presentation, from the entrance to the exit. You have four windows; think of the display possibilities. And you blind them with the color of the moment, stale seaweed green. Are you proud to bring people here?
Catherine: Arising from my love of typography and signage, and informed by experiments with paranormal photography, I designed a font especially for a sign for an exhibition we had at our gallery last summer. Ghost Photo Art, The Sign --
-- was designed to be about as evocative as you can get. Because an artist understands and acknowledges the power that is in letter forms. The artist's eye caresses every contour of every letter and the artist's hand bends, stretches, pulls, erases, defines and shadows the shapes until the message is expressed perfectly. Jerome and our friend American Woman can relate to my love affair with letters -- they are also hooked. They understood completely when I was compelled to make the dozens of tiny toothpick and eyelash brushes necessary to paint the Ghost Photo Art Sign.
(Which reminds me, Jerome and I were unable to get our exhibition, Ghost Photo Art on July 4th, listed in either The Arizona Republic or The New Times. Yes, it was almost as if we had pissed off the petty personnel who handle the Gallery Listings. [For an entire year, we were ignored, though we sent advances and showed up like clockwork. -- JdB] Like we were blacklisted, excuse the racist connotations. Everybody else always gets listed. Everybody but us. So don't feel so bad Jamal and Jaron, I don't see what the fuck you're complaining about, my funky brothers-- you know you're fake insiders, Ebonics notwithstanding.)
Our conclusion: All the signs, physical and otherwise, point to stasis and stagnation, not burgeoning and development, along Grand Avenue. To give a single artist or gallerist down here any financial help would be casting pearls before swine. It's as sad and simple as that.