On Sept. 16, R.A. Washington, formerly a columnist for the Free Times, launched a new zine Fair Trade, and also a new bookstore, Viva Libre, in a back room at the gallery located at 2699 W. 14th Street. This evening had a five-dollar benefit for Fair Trade with live music provided by The New Lou Reeds, J.J. Magazine and Real Knife Head.
Unfamiliar magazines are clipped up along one wall of the small bookshop and bins of old LPs line another. A few hundred hard and softbound books line the shelves. The shop provides an eclectic set of titles that brought at least one sale. A patron excitedly announced, “I read most of this in French,” holding an old edition of an illustrated volume by the exuberant 19th Century French novelist Honoré de Balzac. Now I want to see how it reads in English.” She purchased an 1874 edition of Droll Stories (Contes Drolatiques) for $5 and before leaving showed pages of fine illustrations in her book to other patrons.
A week before, on Sept. 9th, this correspondent first visited the Derek Hess small drawings show at 1300 Gallery on W. 78th Street. Hess’ struggling characters bore the world’s burdens as only Hess’ characters can. I asked a woman looking at a piece with me, “Rather glum, wouldn’t you say?” “Yea,” she said and added, “I can think of a place for George Bush in several of them.”
Then, on bicycle I rode to the Tremont Art Walk and the current I/O show: Life Trumps Philosophy. Thoughtful tunes wafted through the quiet gallery ─ written and played by pianist Martin Geldhon, Dan Site’s nephew.
At this show a heart wrenching collage of apparent wayward commercialized U.S. patriotism was shown in the large “Get a perspective Contra Johns – Democracy does not equal capitalism,” with President George W. Bush and a small U.S. flag as the central characters.
The focal point was a photograph of our President with a menacing twinkle in his eye mounted aside of a small U.S. flag laying flat with an apparent signature by George Bush across its stripes. The photograph and flag are in an official setting, arranged within a red-white-and-blue display. This display shared a larger frame with several other outlandish stars-and-stripes products.
While the collage caption states that this is a flag that was actually signed by our current President, a skeptical viewer may wonder if Dubya is really so tacky to write his name in black magic marker across the stripes of a U.S. flag. After all this is defacing the U.S. flag. Some Americans brought up on the Pledge of Allegiance are likely to doubt that any President did this.
And the array of stars-and-stripes products that Sites has placed around the Bush/U.S. flag shrine is also likely to be unnerving for those familiar with the P of A. There is a pack of Sniff tissues printed in U.S. stars-and-stripes mounted close to the Bush pix and flag. Does Sniff really have a line of U.S. flag Kleenex? A Google search of the Sniff product line shows none among its offering of facial tissues.
While the piece harbors some incredulity the line of products displayed are fascinating. Stars-and-stripes bikini top and bottom are strewn about. Stars-and-stripes men’s boxer shorts are also strewn. A cute stuffed Mickey Mouse as Uncle Sam and an obese Beanie Bear cop in red-white-and-blue hang side-by-side from their backs. All is under an open Estée Lauder stars-and-stripes umbrella hanging above.
Unlike the Hess show, the pieces in the Life Trumps Philosophy vary wildly in size, shape and color. The gun slinging movie star and patriot John Wayne, a.k.a. “Duke,” peers at viewers from a small piece titled “Dupe.” Presumably Wayne was duped by patriotism. Wayne did die of cancer along with many from the cast of “The Conqueror” many years after it was shot on location in Utah at a site contaminated by a U.S. nuclear bomb test held in neighboring Nevada. Was Duke a Dupe?
“Grand Old Illusions, Totem Pole of False Profits” is red, black and green and is pictured on the show’s promotion card. It has red background, black boxes outlined in narrow green lines and a stack of glowing green faces floating in the center of a vertical black cross. The faces are all a bit warped as if Cleveland 1960s horror movie host Goulardi showed them. They are of current day TV preachers. The easiest to make out is Pat Robertson. The green edged black fields sit in a background of bright red in a disconcerting mix of symbols.
The title card of the piece in the front window that looks like a field of sunflowers under the shadow of a B-2 stealth bomber states: “Wealth = wealth; Capitalist equality: 400 = 2.3 billion. The Wealth of the 400 richest people in the world is equal to the wealth of the poorest 2.3 billion people in the world.” A view may wonder, “Who’s philosophy is being trumped by life?”
Inside Outside and Viva Libra, (which takes books, records and publications for sale on consignment), can be reached at 216-623-8510, or via gallery director Erin Kray ekrayATkent.edu or R.A. Washington feeqrastationATyahoo.com. Find the gallery on the Web at: http://www.fjkluth.com/inside.html
From Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Batdorff batATadva.com
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