I want me some "renaissance"

I hate this word as much as "juxtapose" but I believe Missoula is going through a little "Renaissance" period. So many people are creating art on soooo many levels. You have a food server who paints in the studio (gallery gig in two months), participates and sews for local fashion shows, makes dolls and earrings for the markets, designs graphics for nonprofits, paints a mural, stenciling inside and outside of their apartments no matter how bad the fumes, shows up to band practice twice a week, plus practice with the Missoula Symphony Orchestra, organizing a dance collective, directing the performance art piece that is due next month, curate another gallery space, and then DJ at your favorite local bar (sigh). I haven't mentioned all of it either. There's plenty of more crackheads to go around.

Missoula artists are now taking on the same role the rest of the art world has taken. You don't strive to be the one and only "original" modernist, mastering one medium, throwing yourself in your room, telling your significant other that she's fat......or he's stupid. Focusing on one art theory is like ordering a cosmo because you saw it on Sex And The City. Fundamentalism in any form is uber cliche. Not kitschy, but cliche. I like kitschy. Discussion and different points of view is a good thing. It's all communication and collaboration now. It's learning the new crafts you need to make the aesthetic and concept sing. Learn to be ballsy enough to try and humble enough to fail. That's what my mother always said. Oh, and don't mix your drugs.

This is why I love Tsunami Toys. When it comes to visual art, this is a great store to hit. This little toy store on Higgins sells edition prints from local artist Courtney Blazon and Bay Area artist Sam Flores among many others. Courtney makes a name for herself in this town with all of her local advertising, city commission projects, greeting cards, along with solo group gallery shows. Sam Flores juggles clothing/skateboard designs, solo and collaborative murals, tours the live art circuit, and does studio work for international solo and group shows. Another Bay Area artist, Alex Pardee can work in just as many mediums. A humble yet hot skateboard, pink with warts, signed by Alex Pardee, sits up on the wall. Everything in this store has an artist stepping behind it with creative and skillful play. Josh Quick (local batty) designed the Tsunami illustration. Vinyl toys done by Artist David Choe sits along with N8 Van Dyke's ape figures. And with that, keep your senses open for the "Dirty Hands", a documentary focusing on David Choe himself. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be part of artist series at the Wilma this summer. The credentials on this one can drop an egg white.

Tsunami among other great local stores lets Missoula know that they are on a good track. Enjoy yet focus on making art. Whatever your hands are on, do something with it. A tortured masterpiece is not always needed. What percentage of a population can buy a masterpiece anyways? Just "The Man", that's who. "The Man" nowadays doesn't even know what good art is anymore. Art market used to be seen as part economic organism, part critically acclaimed art. Collectors in the past at least liked what they bought (even in the 80's), now the economic aspect is the majority of collecting. It's true, you can go to a museum to "see" masterpieces. But why can't a kid, big and little, have both. A lot of the reasons why these artists do so many different forms of merchandising, is so the middle and lower class kids can also enjoy and possess a piece of art. They can "possess" something that they can relate to culturally, not because of the market value down the road. That's motivation for them to be creative. This crackhead generation busts the brains so they can mentor and learn from the little crackheads.

P.S.

Dear Oprah,

Thank you for the exploitive movie "Precious". Please keep producing formulaic, badly montaged, taking a crack at neo-realism movies. I didn't know how middle-aged conservative gospel music associated with the 1987 Harlem coming-of-age setting, but thank god you showed me the way. Your like a corporate hero in Indy disguise. It's beautiful. We should go have a cosmo later. Keep up the good work. My popcorn was really good.

Yours truly,

Mad Stinker

2009 UM Juried Student Art Show by the Madstinker

The greatest thing about walking into this jury show was the quantity of work, mad technical skill, and the well-executed concepts in one show. Every emphasis in the Art department should be proud of their students. With that said, I'm a 2D exhibitionist, so I'm giving a review based mostly in that field. Sorry 3D, I'm going to group counseling and working very hard to improve myself. Soon I hope to give you the mad props you deserve.

Four pieces stuck out to me the most in this show. The work was simple and sweet all the way down to the title. Titles were important in this show, either it was really bad, or it assisted the work like a wench's assistant. Sadly, I think there was a lot of pieces falling into the first category. The work I admired had titles that kept the viewer engaged.

"America" done by Adam Lynn had friction. The rhythm in this work was down right dysfunctional. And I like it. His painting is dirty and nasty. Adam engages the viewer and himself in a conversation with questions and no direct answers. Literally, this guy used dialogue bubbles in pre-elementary handwriting. The color field was off. His spatial plane and figure drawing had no aesthetic anchors. His application of paint along with the canvas itself was so raw and outsider that it imitated the works by Ed Templeton among other Sk8/Punk/DIY kids from the 90's. And why do I find this to be all wonderful? With the title "America", this painting could have easily been preachy, egotistical and just plain annoying. He could have patronized his viewer with a technical high art application. But he didn't do that. Instead he humbled himself as the protagonist, and with that he humbled the viewer.

The next piece that made me want to run into the bathroom with a box of Kleenex would have to be Kathryn Snugg. "B for Best?" with the pop icon of deer had me going. Her canvas was made by recycled bed sheets, quilted together to create it's own modern composition. Vertical stitching broke the space well by being graphically imperfect. She threw in the pop image of John Deere acknowledging the fact that she's trekking worn territory. Deer head drawings were empathetic, but also connoted taxidermy. This was a really smart move on her part. This piece is not just a feminine piece referring to past lady crafts, but speaks to a wider audience. She was throwing all of the images of "Deer" into one big pot, accompanied by a meticulous drawing hand, stitching and embroidery. And like Adam, her materials looked accessible to anyone that has the need to communicate.

The next piece that I loved was an aesthetic bad boy. The character in his story was caught with his pants down, exhibiting greedy consumption with crude imperfection. Richard Evan Holmstrom's "2-1-2-3" is on such a large wood canvas that you are exposed to hairy legs and tighty-whiteys from across the gallery. This character is humorous, misogynistic, and demanding. At the same time, he's a mere simpleton. The great thing that Holmstrom illustrates in this piece is also a sense of vulnerability. The use of color pink is seen more as Freudian reference then aesthetic. He's mixing comic book with Modernism. It's hot! The character and his many egos and desires are all isolated from each other while the background is a generalized abstraction. The painting is ironic conceptually and visually. When I look at this big guy I can't help but think that Richard is thumbing his nose at someone or something. His technical skills is exceptional and up to par in an academic world. Hell, he even made a nice canvas (that was also an obvious fault in this show: badly made canvases). Maybe it's the man getting him down, who knows.

And last but not least we have Sheilah Healow. So many students and artist around this town has tried to tackle the chaos/order subject and has failed miserably. Sheilah makes it look easy. A quaint little drawing "Transition" showed complexity, movement and engineered lines bottled up like an atom bomb in the middle of a raw piece of paper. The multi-media piece reminded me of the work of Julie Mehretu. Color and line patterns along with topography creates a organism made of unlikely elements. But unlike Julie's work who focuses more on engineering and networking as a global technological organism, we see Sheilah making hers more micro than macro. She keeps her organism in a round-up, dead center of the paper as if it's a petri dish observation. She makes it more humanistic with drawings of anatomical imagery like intestines and feet. I've seen Sheilah's work before, and what I like about her is that she is not afraid to try new mash-ups but at the same time she will always have her signature moves.

As you can see there was plenty of more great pieces in the show. So many were reminiscent of styles and movements that are going on this day and age. These four artists just happened to turn me on in that certain way. It takes all types. Congrats to all the ones that submitted their work. Congrats to all that got in. The show is only up until the 20th, so get on over there.

A bunch more photos from the show after the jump.