EDITOR’S NOTE: Excuse me, while I barge into the blog with a notice of interest to area artists.

Applications are now being accepted for the 2009 FestivALL Charleston Capitol Street Art Fair. The fair, now in its fifth year, takes place June 27 to 28, as part of the citywide FestivALL arts and culture event, which runs June 19 to 28 in indoor and outdoor venues across the city. The fair is dedicated to fine art and craft across West Virginia and outside the state. The postmark deadline for early applications is Feb. 1. The final deadline is March 2. Download a 2009 application packet at www.festivallcharleston.com. For more information, contact Betty Rivard at 304-364-8972 or e-mail bettyrivard@yahoo.com.

So I know I’m supposed to just be representing Chucktown, and I do for most the time. I mean, i figure the newly minted Rabble Rousers do enough of that so I can give some mention to what it is in the cities I’ve been to. And it truly feels like I am a man of many cities. (hint: it takes a landlord who understands the plight of an artist). Recompence is coming I promise.

Minneapolis has more younger artists doing public art interactions, street legal art, well followed and media supported good art shows than West Virginia, and places like this:

When I come back to Murderapolis one of the few traditions my fam-fam has is a trip to the Walker. Mainly to ask the talking porpoise who’s going to win the World Series. When I went I saw shows about Eero Saarinen, Joseph Beuys, and from Tetsumi Kudo. Photos were limited: Minneapolis is cool but art-security guards are haters by nature. Saarinen is an architect who is okay to like, his tent-like hockey stadium at Yale University is ultra hyphy. So are his pornstar chairs.

One of those amazing representations of a true artist, encompassing all the of inherent weird, outsider, probably delusional traits most artists have to channel in order to keep it trilla in the underground and academic art world, was on exhibit.

Tetsumi Kudo has taken the entire later portion of his artist career and explicitly devoted it to exploring the chrysalis and all it’s metaphors for life and discovery. As most of us don’t know, a chrysalis looks like a penis. There were penises everywhere! I mean they were taken and made to mean something about things, like the time the artist legally and commissioned-ly hijacked the awards ceremony of the Munich games and created his OWN rendition of the winners’ stand. Penises there too. And crude sculptures of disembowled humans.

My blogging mentor pointed out a worthy image-blog to me this morning. It’s a site that allows users to post their own images, mainly photography and digitally-manipulated work: http://ffffound.com/about

Vin Diesel is the best.

I got back like 3 days ago from driving through In Cold Blood territory, crazy black ice storms (and not in the Outkast song variety) and dope trucker food joints. I made it alive but my girlfriend did almost slip and break her hip when I asked her to step out and touch the black ice on the highway with her feet. Had it not been for the fifteen 99 cent cappucinos we’d been drinking she may have not had the energy to grab the “Oh Crap” handle above the door, and I would have had to just leave her there, stranded, in Evansville, Indiana. Thank goodness, I like having her around.

Denver is a great arts city with a great new museum of contemporary art aptly named the MCA which I like to refer to as the MOCA even though there’s already like 12 MOCAS out there. But MCA can’t be said as a word like DIA in Detroit or the MOMA or the MET. They are all the same anyway, smaller cities with big egos that like to glamorize some of the bigger names in the current art world to show that they are “with it” and not just yuppied-out, fusion-restauranted, suburban-transplanted meccas.

Charleston welcome to a snippet of my first rant, it feels good.

Here is an image of Damien Hirst’s installation at the MCA. It’s described wonderfully here by a museum-goer, who’s testimonial I pulled off the internet and most likely works for the museum. They say it’s just biting but I say it’s enlightening to quote Weezy.

Monday Oct 27 · 1 pm
@MCAmember: I asked a nice volunteer to explain Damian’s baby calf piece of work and she was nice enough to explain that this calf was killed at a slaughter house and then deemed unfit for consumption. You can see the blue dot on his forehead and the incision on its stomach is from the slaughter house. The calf represents St. Sebastien who was sentenced to death by archers for teaching wounded soldiers Christianity (tied to a poll like the calf) and survived and only after being sentenced to death again by stoning was he given a proper Christian burial. I was at first slightly disturbed by the work of art but now it all comes together and you can see the calf at least now has some sort of an artistic purpose rather than be discarded by a slaughter house. Very interesting exhibit, worth going to see.

Well, this may be a no-no covering myself, but I think this is OK. I mean, I am an artist from Charleston doing his thing nationally, and this is a Charleston artblog. I am in Denver right now installing 21 digital paintings of Denver’s cityscapes into a brand new fitness center opening up in downtown Denver off of 17th and Arapahoe.

Here are some photos taken at Ragbone Studio, occupied by designer/artist Jaysond Neill of the finished product. I PUT ON FOR MY CITY.

ONE.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This one came in after Gazz’s Thursday deadline this week. So, please excuse me, Dane and Andrea, as I barge into the blog with an artistic update - ED.

 
Artworks by Chet Lowther. Click images to enlarge them.

Chet Lowther, Dave Thomas and Ian Bode will show new works this weekend at the Chet Lowther Studio, 223 1/2 Hale St. , in Charleston, W.Va. The studio will be open from 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, Dec. 12 and at the same hours on Saturday, Dec. 13. Above and below are two works by Lowther. For more information, call 304-444-0481.

Young kids, old kids, art students, professors, Santa Claus and undercover ballers were all in attendance at Friday night’s opening reception of Buswater on the Boulevard.

The bottles were poppin’ all night long.

Buswater is unique because it truly places art from every kind of artist you can imagine in our surrounding area. While most of the exhibiting artists fit the bill of the microwave-burrito-eating, spend-my-tip-money-on-the-new-indie-dance-record kind of profile, there are established (if you can call WV professor’s wages established) art professionals, and area artists who have been at it a while also in the show.

Buswater happens twice a year, coinciding with FestivALL and to fit the holidays. It’s the only art event of it’s kind in Charleston for several reasons. While Buswater tends to sell a lot of work for artists, the pure nature of the show is not of any commercial value and stems from entirely a grassroots agenda. Every artists pitches in their small fee to exhibit, and the funds go to all the expenses. It’s decidely an academic show, with a refreshing blend of high and low art. Of all the varying styles and mediums exhibited, it’s amazing how a cohesive element to the exhibit begins to form.

While it takes a village to put a show like this together, the original three are Todd Griffith, Jamie Miller, and Betty Gay. The house is available from Todd’s grandfather Doran Frame, in attempts to rustle up some awareness of the availability of all three properties on the boulevard. For upcoming holiday shows, the crew likes the idea of exhibiting local artists. For the summer FestivAll exhibits, the crew would like to expand to include a combination of local folks and national artists who haven’t shown in Charleston.

Todd Griffith supplied the upcoming photographs for Fresh Paint. His work can be seen at www.ToddGriffithPhotography.com, as well as photos from past Buswater shows. Jamie Miller’s work can be seen at JamieRMiller.com.

Installation Shots:

Shannon Pierson’s ceramic sculpture, Mark Earnhardt’s petrified cat litter box:

Bo Ballard’s mixed media paintings, Stacy Leech’s prints-turned-stitched sculptures:

Joey Elswick’s collages:

a Jamie Miller painting:

Metro, archival photograph taken in Prague, Todd Griffith:

Rob Cleland, framed painting (housepaint) on BFK, grid of 12 x 12 inch paintings:

Jeff Pierson’s reconstructed action figures AKA C3PO’s head on He-Man’s Chest with Austin Power’s agents’ legs:

Art-Goers:

Amanda Jane Miller, Meaghan, and Young (pre Milwaukee’d out):

This little girl just had to wait her turn; Santa was busy:

Big ups to Trader Joes:

Please note - we just turned on today the counters for posts on the “Fresh Paint” blog.  They had not been activated when we relaunched this arts blog several weeks back, so all the posts are currently at, like, “1,” for number of viewers. You may be no. 2, 3 and so on. Blaze a trail.

If you tell people you support local artists you need to go to Buswater opening this Friday. It’s an alternative exhibit, meaning no relation to any galleries in Charleston, just done out of the goodwill of several local artists, but definitely made possible by the hard work of one Todd Griffith, or T.O. Double as I like to call him. The address is 1520 Kanawha Boulevard, and Todd usually balls out with a huge banner of the logo.

Food and refreshments are free but be cool man, and try to bring your own drink if you plan on getting crunk, which kind of seems to just “happen” at these shows.

All of the artwork is for sale and the exhibit places artwork from up-and-coming artists next to seasoned artists as well as art professors.
The space is an empty historic house overlooking the Kanawha River.

Artists in the show we know about are:
Todd Griffith
Jamie Miller
Betty Gay
Joey Elswick
Jay Fish
Mark Slankard
Andrea Anderson
Rob Cleland
Bo Ballard
Mark Earnhart
Jeff Pierson
Shannon Pierson
Vasilia Scouras
Stacy Leech
Jamie Ferguson
Nik Botkin
Mike Andrick
Rebecca Holbrook
Heidi Richardson Evans
Amanda Miller
Ashley White