By Jim Duncan
A marvelous month for alternative spaces
Alpha art collector Kirk Blunck explained his presence
at a coffeehouse art show recently.
“
Everybody starts out as a local artist. I bought an
entire box of photographs once, mostly as a favor to
a friend, for $100 a piece. The photographer was Anna
Gaskell,” he said, alluding to an artist whose
prints start now at around 75 times the price he paid
and go up to $35,000.
This month Blunck purchased three works on paper at
a Mars Coffeehouse exhibition of Jeremiah Elbel, which
runs through April. Elbel is a monstrously talented
young artist who had a painting in a Saatchi Gallery
show in London last year that drew the largest crowds
of the year in the U.K. He works in black and white,
metaphorically and literally, painting with tar and
drawing with charcoal. His subjects in the new show
are portraits of decapitated humans — some Mexican
drug war victims, some victims of Islamic terrorists,
others of Shari’a or French law. They are rendered
in charcoal, with curved vertical lines dominating
and reminding one of Egon Schiele, an admitted influence.
Danny Pearl is one subject that didn’t make Elbel’s
cut.
“
I tried but I couldn’t. I watched the video (Al-Qaeda’s “The
Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl,” in
which Khalid Sheik Mohammad saws off the head of the
Wall Street Journal reporter) but it was too disturbing,” Elbel
explained.
For now, Elbel remains a local artist. The father of
two young children, he works a full-time day job plus
several nights a week bartending at Sbrocco. He still
makes time to build a repertoire that continues to
impress international collectors.
Other extraordinary artists are also showing in alternative
spaces this month. Lindy Smith moved back to Iowa last
summer after 35 years on the road. During the 1990s,
she documented the people and horses of the American
west (“Straight West: Portraits and Scenes from
American Ranch Life”) in photographs she took
between Mexico and Wyoming. In the last decade her
work documented the flora of the American prairie.
For that, Smith revived Kallitype, a 19th century alternative
photo process that involves iron salts and silver nitrates
on paper exposed to ultraviolet light. Sometimes called “sun
printing,” this process allows Smith to produce
life-sized images of native plants in a range of tones
partially created by sunlight interacting with decomposing
plants.
“
I rarely know what the end result will be, and that
in itself holds my interest,” she explained.
Smith has done quite well in galleries in Santa Fe
and New York City. She has also completed commissions
for Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge in Iowa and similar
places in Illinois and California. This Friday, she
opens an exhibition at The Mansion with Madai Taylor,
an original Iowa artist who paints with dirt, mixing
different soils with gesso and scratching layers as
they dry. Both artists work large. Each will show around
20 big works requiring a massive amount of wall space.
With over 3,000 square feet in several rooms, The Mansion
has more than many galleries do.
In more traditional galleries this month, Chris Vance’s
annual exhibition continues in, and outside, at Moberg
Gallery. This year’s Senior Thesis Exhibition
at Drake’s Anderson and Weeks galleries is the
strongest in many years: Lucca Wang and Rachel Crown
translate big personalities into paintings, and Hannah
Boom demonstrates stunning mastery of several different
media. At Heritage Gallery, “Lovers, Mothers & Their
Dreams” features two sculptors, Annick Ibsen
and Linda Lewis, who channel whimsy into profound,
ironic statements about the human condition. That show
opens April 25 with a reception on April 28. At Olson-Larsen
Galleries, public art specialist Mike Baur shows small
scale works along with clay vases and clay paintings
by John Beckelman and abstract landscapes and still
lifes by Stephen Dinsmore. That exhibition runs through
May 28. CV
Caption: Beheading 02 by Jeremiah Elbel.
