“Do Yourself a Favor…”

If you like Daniel Johnston, you will like this video of two kids on the street in Brussels (I guess) singing Daniel Johnston’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grievances,” complete with mispronunciation of “grievances.”

If you don’t like Daniel Johnston, this won’t mean much to you.

But, if you do like Daniel Johnston, and you watch the video, be sure to stick around until the end for a cool surprise. Also, you’ll have to turn the volume up a little.

Juan Miguel Santiago - Featured Artist

At Peace With Others

Juan Miguel Santiago is a sculptor based in Oakland, California. Santiago’s ceramic figures, like religious idols rescued from the “House of Wax” just as the flames began to rise, combine religious and cultural associations to an effect that is eerie, attractive and personal.

Some of Santiago’s sculptures resemble religious idols, such as statuary of the Buddha or the Madonna. This resemblance traffics in associations of worship, reverence and ritual, which Santiago handles with an individual stance. His idols appear to be in a suspended state of melting, or covered in ghostly layers of whitewash. Any type of idol is covered with layers of references, associations, histories and superstitions. Such narratives adorn and comprise religions and art worlds. That which seems to cover the features of one of Santiago’s idols is the idol itself.

Invisible Immigrants

From St. Peter’s Basilica to the Rothko Chapel, art and religion depend, now and then, upon the ability of an artist to manipulate the material of the physical world to the point of describing some quality or condition of a metaphysical realm. Culture selects which physical stuff will become the language of metaphysical realms. Complexity can be gained when individuals choose that stuff for themselves.

Ultraman

In a work entitled “False Idols…Obscure Objects,” multiple figures of Ultraman, each approximately 20 inches high, appear to battle one another on the gallery floor. Ultraman is a Japanese television character from the late 1960’s. Appropriately, Ultraman is only able to spend a few minutes on Earth at a time, lest he die.

Burmese Idol

As in the work of Katharina Fritsch, the formal devices of repetition, color and scale complicate the classification of Santiago’s Ultraman idols. Certainly this work says more about the artist, and art in general, than it says about Ultraman specifically.

Much of the power of Juan Miguel Santiago’s work is the elegant way in which it reminds that any type of idol is a physical material dependent upon context found in an array of narratives, from the Old Testament to obscure television shows, for meaning and relevance.

Juan Miguel Santiago teaches ceramic art at Chabot College in Hayward, California. He recently curated an exhibition at the Basement Gallery in Oakland, California. See more of his work here:
http://juanmiguelsantiago.com

Thanksgiving, and We’re Not Jiving

This year has been a disorienting whirlwind for us, but it’s been great. Like Snoop says: “Ups and downs, smiles and frowns.” There have been way more ups than downs and we have a bunch of folks to thank for that.
We are truly thankful for all the new and old friends that we have. We want to say thank you for all the love, support, encouragement, inspiration and blinding brilliance these people have so generously given us this year. Here they are, in no particular order, the coolest, most gifted group of people ever:


Justin Romito
Bryan Jones
Melanie Phillips
Marty Vaughn
Skip Vaughn
Bees' Family
Erik Groff
Erica Sheets
Ben Pederson
Humphrey Bilger
Justin Horne
Randall Friedman
Paola Nazati
Paul Celentano
Liz Scott
Danny Heller
Daniel Hipolito
Brandi Strickland
Jen Zahigian
Tracy Jager
Allison Newton-Durham
The nice guy from Chattanooga who sat beside us at the Phish show in Knoxville

Mutual Admiration Society

Imagine my surprise when trawling the internet I came upon this:

And this:


on The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Myspace blog. I have no idea how these guys found me, but I’m way flattered. If you are unfamiliar with The Brain Jonestown Massacre don’t admit it to anyone, and check this out:

Norman Mingo, the Manet of MAD Magazine, (or MAD for Modernism)

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Norman Mingo

Norman Mingo is one of my favorite painters. His work has a lot in common with that of Edoaurd Manet, another favorite. Both Manet and Mingo convey much about their subjects by depicting them with only a few specific details, the backgrounds are minimal and flat.

Edouard Manet, Dead Toreador, 1863

Manet’s work depicts styles and attitudes at the cusp of the twentieth century. His technique basically founded Modern painting.

Mingo’s work pretty much just uses a lot of visual puns to attract kids to spend their allowances, and remind us that Alfred E. Newman is an idiot born under a bad sign.

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

Manet employs his fair share of visual puns too. All those cats, flowers, and fish, aren’t fooling around. They represent exactly what you think they do. And, certainly it’s not missing the point to think that “Dejeuner sur l herbe” is sort of funny. It’s at least uncommon, even now, in it’s balance of technical merit and raunchy sense of the absurd.

Edouard Manet, Dejeuner sur l'herbe, 1863

Norman Mingo

Norman Mingo’s MAD Magazine covers have a way more obvious context in the Saturday Evening Post covers of Norman Rockwell. Both artists use narrative to convey a certain attitude and cultural position. Reading Mingo’s work as parody of the mainstream manners of the Saturday Evening Post, (except when it’s blatantly a parody), while accurate, feels reductive.

The way Manet and Mingo deal with comedy is similar.

Norman Mingo

They both have a fondness for lowbrow jokiness, which makes sense in both cases. Manet is only funny sometimes; most of his work isn’t funny at all. Manet and Mingo depict their subjects in strange world’s of their own, worlds that have their own physical laws yet are superficially similar to ours in the fine details. The subjects are presented in odd, stagey circumstances, and frequently they regard the viewer with an attitude of bemused nonchalance. “What, me worry?”

Norman Mingo

Edouard Manet, The Ragpicker