Tracy Hicks at the MAC

The McKinney Avenue Contemporary offers several art exhibitions a year in a large space it shares with the Kitchen Dog Theater in near north Dallas. Exhibitions have been of uneven quality -- a gorgeous, lyrical exhibit of David Reed's abstractions a few years back, for example, and a moving retrospective of paintings and sculptures by the late Scott Barber not so long ago suggest something of the place's potential.

But there have been a number of clinkers like the visually unintelligent exhibit of banal photo constructions by the otherwise very smart David Byrne a a while before the Reed show. As a visual artist, Byrne's a good musician. Yeah, I'm aware of the Talking Heads' RISD provenance, but he obviously got his show because of his musical fame, not the visual power and poetry of his work. An early Heads lyric snippet: "All my pictures are confused..." Right you are, David!

This afternoon we drove to Dallas to see the work of Dallas artist Tracy Hicks at the MAC, and true to form it was uneven. I've worked with Hicks in the past. Back in the 90s when I was the pet art writer for the Arlington Museum of Art and Hicks organized a group show there, he and I exchanged numerous emails and I toured his studio as we discussed an essay I was to write for the show's catalogue.

His offerings at the MAC consist of two installations: "still/LIFE" in the modest project room, and "Global Warning" in the largest rear gallery. The topic is ecological decline and species extinction, but I found looking at his rubber cast frogs and cast resin bottles visually pleasant enough (at least in some instances) that the message didn't really matter. Also, I have to say that (his scholarship notwithstanding) a plethora of thermometers scattered about and inserted into assorted cast laboratory-associated forms comes up short as a poetic way to address what we are doing to this planet.

A room full of bottled and jarred rubber frogs glowing in the dark under UV light on the other hand -- well that's something to see.

Burden

There's a review by Randy Kennedy in the NY Times today about a big Erector Set toy skyscraper Chris Burden's made for Rockefeller Center. The piece does a chatty job of glossing Burden's extreme early body art works like getting shot and nailed to a car. Not at the same time, mind you.

After telling us he no longer does things like that. Kennedy adds a parenthetical: "He said he bore no physical infirmities from those years; one of his worst injuries came only a few years ago when he wrestled a coyote to the ground after it latched onto his dog. The coyote then latched onto his left hand and almost tore off part of a finger."

Sounds like a job for the ghost of Joseph Beuys.

Actually the toy skyscraper sounds like an engaging project. I need to get to New York, and not just for Burden's sculpture.

Wandering Around

At loose ends this afternoon, I drove to the Bass Pro Shop to see what was up with the joint. It's a huge boats and guns and hunting and fishing and outdoors-in-general megastore. These are not my people. Except for the smoker pits. A sign at the entrance turn styles: "Please deposit all guns and crossbows with the attendant." I couldn't have said it better myself. I wonder what's to become of their business as unemployment rises now that gas is $4 a gallon? Surely folks will reduce how much they drive out to the woods and shoot shit in the current economic situation. There was only one Hummer in the parking lot.

Obama's still not a Muslim

The New York Times says so here.

It is tiresome and unseemly that opinions published in the paper of record are allowed to orbit a fact-free planet.

Dallas Trip II

Drove back to Dallas yesterday, this time to see the CADD art fair at 333 1^st Ave. It was a pleasure to see works by old friends and many new (to me) artists all together in one display area. A scarlet screenprint brushmark by James Nares at Marty Walker’s booth is still in my mind – active, gestural, painterly, and totally canned to the extent that it’s a representation of those qualities.

And I got a tee shirt for the price of admission. There was a lecture by Paige West, founder of Mixed Greens Gallery and the West Collection. She spoke about collecting to a mixed group of art professionals, gallerists, collectors, and the merely curious. While I didn’t find much of what she said useful, some of the audience appeared to be quite engaged.

I don't need advice about what to buy. What I need is the cash to buy that screenprint.

Dallas Trip I

Tonight I drove the 60 miles or so to Dallas to attend the opening reception for a couple of new shows at the Contemporary. The big show was a collection of photographs by various (mostly female) artists, but my real reason for making the trek was to see a smaller show of works by a former student of mine, Shelley Hampe, who is pursuing an MFA at TCU. She’s working through some tricky iconography involving childish images (teddy bears, assorted plush toys, etc.) rendered in an over-the-top, ultra-fem style. It’s potentially a very cool aesthetic gambit, but there’s the danger that she’ll be casually dismissed as some too sensitive girl artist making sweets. The gauzy thread drawings I saw tonight, though, had the resigned tough mindedness of someone beyond anger. Imagine a girlie take on the Humphrey Bogart character in African Queen as he climbs back into the leech-infested river, knowing he has to do it even though he fears leeches more than anything. Okay, that’s not possible, but I think she may be aiming at something like that.

She still has some progress to make on tightening up her vocabulary, ridding herself of stuff extraneous to the visual statement. It’ll be something to look forward to.

Barbecue II

The ribs were good. We ate very well tonight. That's a picture of some of them above. I smoked them for about 6 1/2 hours at 225 or thereabouts. A couple of times the pit dropped below 200 when the coals burned down too much, but they were most tasty all the same. I also made smoked chicken, a Mexican style coctel de camarones and a grapefruit and avocado salad with mint.

Sal was here. So were Susan and Michael and Vaughn and my sister. Susan brought tons of food that she'd made at her house -- potatoes, brisket, more ribs. Sal brought a young scholar who is visiting Cow Hill from Australia. I don't understand the visit, but it's not mine.

At one point this evening, I did an impromptu demonstration of smoker pit procedures for Sal and Vaughn's SO Carolyn. Well, they asked. Here's hoping it wasn't all error.