Hereandtherecard2
On Saturday night, I went down to Cherokee; my specific errand was viewing Here and There, a photography show at Snowflake City Stock curated by Justin Visnesky. One of the things I like so much about Justin's work is that its imagery is so unapologetically Midwestern. The other photographers in this show - Greg Barth, Elizabeth Fleming, Jacob Koestler, Laura McAllister, Ed Panar and Michael Worful - are of the same school. And when I say "Midwestern," I don't mean corn fields, et cetera. I mean heart-shaped Mylar balloons tangled in powerlines, lawn Marys, a Lustron flanked by a clothesline with one sheet hanging on it, 1960s brick fireplaces, parking lots frozen over in winter. All of these photographers have figured out how to shoot such seeminly mundane things and make them look electrified, archetypal and sometimes, just unbearably sad. There is a peculiar Midwestern sadness that has been artistically documented for a long, long time but Justin & Co. have a deadeye for its 21st century incarnation.
There was one image in particular that summed this particular aesthetic for me - do you know how really sheer curtains will throw a transluscent shadow? Well, there was a picture of one of these see-through curtain shadows projected onto a white wall, in what looked to me to be a Southside bungalow. From the quality of the light, I'd say it was late afternoon, and though I have no way of judging if it was a Sunday or a Wednesday, I'm going to say it was about 3 or 4pm on a Saturday in August. There's something about late summer, late afternoon, late in the week that really makes me feel wistful for no particular reason at all. It's as if being in the the middle of the day/week/year, in the middle of the country, sinks you in this hole where you can't get away from yourself. I'd say it's a kind of bleakness but that's not quite it either. I usually deal with this uncomfortable feeling by taking a long nap, and when I wake up at around 6:30, that weird uncomfortable melancholia has passed. I don't like experiencing that emotion personally, but I think Justin's photograph of it is really beautiful. The show is still up, and you can swing by next Saturday between 9 and 2 to see it yourself.
Of course, being there on the night of the show's reception is ideal, because you get to mill around and shake hands with the artists and drink canned beer or bottled wine (whatever the case may be) and eavesdrop on conversations about the art. On the 3400 block of Cherokee, the scene's even more expansive, especially on nights like this past Saturday when Typo, Fort Gondo, Beverly, All Along Press and City Art Supply are open, too. There's a really nifty synergy that occurs, with people sitting on the sidewalk in orange 1950s lawn chairs, dodging in and out of storefronts and darting back and forth across the street. There was a traveling show from Brooklyn at Gondo, and Galen Gondolfi had decked out Typo for the political season: there was a boom box out front broadcasting vintage politcal speeches and the front room was filled with red and blue balloons, which, which one by one, drifted out the front door onto the sidewalk. A pair of very small kids, who live around the corner from the gallery, were watching from their front stoop, and would take turns running down the sidewalk every time another one bobbled out the front door, snap it up and then run back to the safety of their front lawn. As I was leaving, one kid (who was not even as high as my knee) had a blue balloon under each arm, and was strutting confidently up the street towards his brother, totally showing off. To be honest, I'd been feeling that awful Saturday melancholy all day (despite, or maybe due to, an afternoon nap), but that scene cured it completely.
