el monstro

"Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices." –Oscar Wilde

The recent flap over at jaxcal has got me thinking. Not about monster art per se, but about the grotesque/monstrous/malformed in a historical context.

Art historically, the term grotesque originally referred to the various decorative arabesques, interlaced garlands, and fantastic animal figures discovered in ancient Roman ruins in the 15th century. Later, the word was used to describe the forms often found on/in Gothic churches, and in contemporary parlance, the word is understood to mean the strange, fantastic, ugly or bizarre.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes grotesque as: (n) 1561, a. A kind of decorative painting or sculpture, consisting of representations of portions of human and animal forms, fantastically combined and interwoven with foliage and flowers. b. A work of art in this style. Chiefly pl., figures or designs in grotesque; in popular language, figures or designs characterized by comic distortion or exaggeration. The Italian form grottesco (pl. grotteschi) is sometimes used.

Monster as: (n) 1375, Originally: a mythical creature which is part animal and part human, or combines elements of two or more animal forms, and is frequently of great size and ferocious appearance. Later, more generally: any imaginary creature that is large, ugly, and frightening. The centaur, sphinx, and minotaur are examples of ‘monsters’ encountered by various mythical heroes; the griffin, wyvern, etc., are later heraldic forms.

The use of fantastical forms has a long and storied history in art. Hieronymus Bosch famously used twisted and disfigured forms to illustrate the innate evil in man. Odilon Redon used the monstrous and grotesque in his work to “place us [the viewer], as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.” While closer to home, the artist John Casey (a.k.a. Bunnywax) says “…the physical malformations my characters have are the result of biomorphology. My theory is if one could distort one's body based on one's emotion or psychological state, what would that look like? What if the body formed strange huge club-like limbs or a floating head on it's own, without the control of the owner? Whether the figure is in control of that morphing, I'm not one hundred percent sure. I think it varies from work to work.”

And when the word “monster” is applied to his work: “I'm actually okay with the word if it is used in the complex sense of the concept as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a being who is ostracized from society but a being who also has complex emotions and a desire to belong, to be loved. The more simplistic idea of the monster being evil is what I reject. There is no such thing as pure evil.”

However, I might float the opinion that this contemporary work is a cultural reaction: these artists might be attempting to synthesize the increasingly extreme and horror-filled world we live in with the creation of literal monsters?

Then there is our shared (mostly) Judeo-Christian heritage that has a huge history of monsters, from the Biblical Leviathan to the Devil himself (based, we now know, on the Roman/Greek god Pan). Whether or not these devils, deities, and monsters were based purely in the imagination, or on objects discovered by ancient people (like dinosaur’s bones), they are ingrained in our psyche, even if they only make a fleeting appearance as the thing that goes bump in the night.

Are these a cultural manifestation a la Carl Jung? Shared terror that gets denuded with a “cute,” perspective? I.e. if we draw them, then they cannot harm us?

Or is it something simpler? A use of humor, whimsy, and imagination to create visual contradictions that are at once sympathetic and provocative. A break from the maxim to create art about “real” issues like poverty, war, and famine. Categories so broad as to be rendered virtually meaningless by non-specificity.

Jesus Loves You and I Do Too

Al Letson

Willie Evans Jr.

In the book The Corner, writers David Simon and Edward Burns chronicle a year in the life of the McCullough family—DeAndre and his divorced parents: Gary and Fran. The book is wrenching in its unflinching look into life at the nexus of drug life in Baltimore. The Corner acts as a chronicle of events, neither condemning nor endorsing the actions of its principle characters. In approaching the book from a neutral angle, the authors convey the endless cycles of hope, addiction, despair, and crime that is a reality for tens of thousands of people. Really it’s a glimpse into another (hidden) culture.

So perhaps it was providence that poet Al Letson launched his newest piece, Summer at Sanctuary in Baltimore, a city not unfamiliar with grinding poverty. “Letson is a powerful performer who tells his story by moving fluidly from one role to the next . . . A show full of gems,” The Baltimore Sun.

Summer at Sanctuary is described as a choreopoem, but in truth Letson does very little dancing. What he does do is take the story of his time at spent at Springfield’s Sanctuary at 8th Street, and use it as a lens through which he tells fragments of his life story, and the lives of the children he was working with.

Though he tells us that the consensus from the kids was that “Mr. Al” was corny as hell, the larger story he is telling is one where grown men confront children in the street, with guns drawn. A story where the 15 year-old boy, Biko, must seriously consider whether or not he’s going to kill the man who threatened and shamed him in the street.

These are the kind of dilemmas that most adults are never forced to deal with, let alone a child. So without proselytizing or beating his bear breast, Letson opens the lid of Springfield—and by extension poverty-stricken neighborhoods across the country—and shows the audience how truly bad things are, yet they are not without hope, its just a different and much reduced kind of hope.

The success of Sanctuary rests largely on two things, Letson’s own observations turned into brilliant wordplay, and the production skills of Willie Evans Jr. Consider this: in describing his initial forays into performing in Jacksonville, he cites Stephen Dare as a huge supporter, “one part Beelzebub and one part St. Luke.” It’s as perfect a description as one could desire for the omni-controversial Dare. While Evans, a member of the A.B.’s (formerly Asamov), a producer, and solo artist, brings a light touch to the score that accompanies the work. In fact, it was because his name was attached to the project that my interest was piqued.

Though there are places where the work runs a little long, overall it is a highly cohesive show that does more than memorialize a middle-class poet’s stint as a do-gooder. Indeed, Letson plans to return to the Sanctuary this summer. One wonders what his days there this time around will be like. Will he once again find himself and another staffer holding on to a thrashing eight-year old girl who wants to die, promising her over and over again that “Jesus loves you and I do too?” Or will he, once again by the grace of fate and the universe, be able to hold his own on the b-ball court against a 13 year-old who makes lay-ups look as easy as the simple, laconic flick of a wrist?

Of the piece, Letson wrote on his blog: “Government can’t change the story of Springfield, of poverty, of lost children. Only people can. God may work through governments at times, although evidence of that in recent times is slim to none, but I think it’s in the heart of man, where he whispers his providence. I hope this piece will soften some hearts so they can hear that whisper and do something.”

Though I am not sure when Summer in Sanctuary will be staged again, I suggest that those people who read and listen to David Sedaris, get out and support Mr. Al when it next goes up.

*apologies for the sorry pics. I promise, I am working on getting a better camera.

Perfect Coffee, Every Time

Coffeemakers are ugly. They sit on kitchen counters like cranky gargoyles that are good for only one thing: infusing the senses with a clanging energy--a bullet in the brain.

For most of the Western world, I’d hazard a guess that a morning cup of coffee looks less like watery, bitter mud, and more like salvation in a cup. However, as a confirmed non-drinker of the stuff, I see the coffeemaker perched on my counter less as harbinger of the day-as-yet-unfolded, and more like an assault on the already limited aesthetics of my kitchen (a former crackhouse we’re trying to restore to wholeness).

So when I wandered into Nestliving a few days ago, I was thrilled to discover that they carry the Chemex brand coffee maker. I’d been researching this product for awhile: in addition to the wonderfully simple lines of the mid-century-esque carafe, it supposedly makes the best cup of coffee in the world. And for those of us who like to support good design but have limited means, the 6-cup version (which is for sale at Nest) is a reasonable $33.00. The same price as the website, but sans shipping.

Since I was so pleased with my find, I got to chatting with the owner Shaan Batten. Though admittedly I was a little suspicious as well: the shop seemed to be very similar to Roost, which was in 5 Points a few years ago. I felt a little defensive for Roost, not least because I count its former proprietor, Tonya Lee, among my friends.

However, after Shaan let me wave my arms around and shout about ideas of authenticity and opportunism (okay, I just did that in my head, in reality I brought up the similarity to Roost in a very civilized manner), it turned out I was being ridiculous (a condition I'm pretty used to). Shaan said that he’d taken pains to not carry the same lines as Roost had, and, that his impression had been that the Roost space had been more experimental than what he was attempting to do. And I had to concede the point, in fact, Tonya herself once said, “The shop was never to generate revenue…it was an extension of my obsession with paintings; just more disposable decorative objects.”

Plus, it is really nice to have a shop selling modern-wares in the neighborhood again—it feels like a commitment not just to design that for purely aesthetic reasons feels contemporary, but to design that functions with people. That’s really the crux of good design whether contemporary or Modern: design that functions within the rubric of its time and place.

Sometimes, there is also hope that thoughtful, deliberate, design can begin to permeate other aspects of life…if we were to all become more present and aware, who knows what changes could be wrought? Maybe just golden tiger wallpaper in the dining room…maybe a whole new way of thinking.

So, does that coffeemaker make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted? I don’t know. But it does look wonderful with cut flowers in it.

Incidentally, there's a Grand Opening party at the shop on the 24th. Go out and show some love.

*click on the title to go to Nestliving's webpage.