June 8- July 7, 2013
Opening reception Saturday June 8th, 6-10pm
Room 1:
Jerry Therio
NEON GRAFFITI: TCHOUPAZINE
New Orleans native neon artist Jerry Therio uses the magic of neon to bring to life graffiti painted by another local artist Jonathan Shaw. Therio will transform Room 1 of The Front gallery with neon tags inspired by a little bit of local bar lore…..Bar owner Fred Laredo of Tyler’s Beer Gardens, a jazz night club, bar owner Jed Palmer of F & M patio, and Nasty Ned owner of Le Bon Temps Bar late one night while holding court proclaimed the area between the bars............THE TCHOUPAZINE TRIANGLE.............. AND THAT'S A FACT JACK..............how about that...........?
Room 2:
Christopher Deris
Peripheral Harvest
A memory stays with me of an influential professor during graduate school that came from a family of farmers. During one of our class discussions he told an allegory of the way a farmer tends his main crops. A good farmer is always allowing a little natural experimentation to take place on the edges. Never cutting this back, but instead, watching what happens. You never know, what you learn from that experimental growth around the edges can someday be vital to your main crop.
Drawing is immediate by nature; it is a process that allows your hand to stay one step ahead of your head. It is an important tool for experimentation in the studio, quickly capturing fleeting thoughts that are passing through; never seeming that important at the moment.
The drawings presented here are collections of work that span a decade and have all served their purpose as experiments that fostered larger crops. Although they have existed on the periphery of more cohesive bodies of work, each has a value and beauty of their own.
www.christopherderis.com
Rooms 3 & 4:
Claire Rau
Bonfire
After the series of devastating wildfires throughout the Unites States last summer, woodworking changed into something darker in spirit for me; the material itself is tinder for conflagration. This particular work is constructed of different types of plywood, an incredibly strong and economic media that has an innate feeling of the incomplete as it is rarely used in isolation. The veneer that provides the surface appearance of a more luxurious wood, the visible process of manufacturing raw pine plywood, and the delicate striping on the edge of each form combine to give a deep aesthetic pleasure. These aspects of beauty and irony mesh with the underlying idea of the work, the character of worth.
Conceptually Bonfire is linked to questions of value. The objects within the pile are a mixture of the precious and the mundane. Function and ornament serve diverse purposes depending on the need and motivation of the user. Rare items have both an inherent status and a connection to history while everyday things are measured by what and how well a purpose they serve. With the dawning failure of austerity plans and stimulus packages, problems remain in defining imperative requirements for people, businesses, and governments. I believe this heap of objects connects to these questions on a basic level, such as deciding a household budget, managing the sale of superfluous items, and what to save when an emergency arises in a fiery tornado.
www.clairejanerau.com