Love & Hate & Sex... If you include exploding car chase sequences you have the formula for a typical Hollywood movie. This vision is what we have been exporting for decades and somewhat explains our balance of trade deficiency. Definitely explains  our juvenile delinquency. In sum, a speecy spicy meatball of artistic inspiration in a mirror image Bizarro-land. As R. Crumb once said, and I paraphrase, "would you rather I do it instaed of drawing pictures about it?"

 

 

Enfant-terrible Scott Ackerman's greasepaint roars in "Wake Up."  A self-portrait? Charles Bukowski on Cray-Pas? Good night and good luck!

 
Michael Bishop provides the iconic wallpaper for this web page and cleverly reflects the idiosyncratic duality behind the singularity that is "Love Hate." I guess if you add sex to the mix it becomes a triality.

 

 

Julian Caso mixes an American love affair with corn flakes and hate affair with populist freedom fighters in "Cereal Che." A big bowlful that stays crunchy even in blood.

 

 

Jude DeFalco's painting is "Footloose and Fancy Free... in Hell." A Picasso on Romilar with a dash of Thalidomide added for good measure.

 

 

Bronson Eden celebrates the theme with a tribute to "Dickheads." Truly the kind of work I'd expect to happen in the gifted arts and crafts class at the penal colony.

 

 

 

Mark Kessler has a thing for thong- as evidenced by his pubic peek-a-boo moonlight sirenade, "Girl by the Sea." What you sea is what you got.

 

 

Babette Kiesel dashes off a quick line in "Guess Who?" Is that a Timex on his wrist? (takes a licking and keeps on ticking...)

 

Erica Minglis does a dab of dazzle in this mixed-up media montage with reverse painted glass titled "Entranced."

 

 

Ze'ev Willy Neumann is a real stand-up artist. His big woodie "Mr. Dick Head" is really a dick with a dick next to a wigged-out chick with a double broom-brush bush.

I used to watch these cartoon characters in the wee hours of dawn before packing off to first grade. Robert Ricard takes me down memory lane in a rafter-wobbling "Cartoon Mile - The Barn Dance."

"Vera White & Green" is the apple of my thigh. Braddy Romero quenches the itch in what looks like a black magic scratch off.

 

 

Tom Waits sings of a love-lorn fellow who "remembered the words but forgot the sheet music." Anique Taylor remembers the tune in a picture worth a thousand words -  her very lovingly romantic assemblage, "Earth Altar."

 
At first, I was reminded most unpleasantly of a hygiene video I saw while juvenile delinquentizing in Campbell Junior High. Then I read the title. "Squish Squash." Ha ha, Kenn Whyte really had me going for a minute.

 

 

Fred Woller adorns the solo room with pleasingly pulchridudinous, Reubenesque, and otherwise zoftig objects of desire. Here is one that really brings home the Francis Bacon called " Seated Figure."

 

 

Mighty Xee, the enigmatic mercurially monnickered landscape artist, must have one seriously tormented soul... if you take "Night w/ Michael" at face value. I just learned that Dick Cheney's murder-for-hire mercenary Blackwater corporation just decided to rename itself "Xe." Maybe it's time for Mighty Xee to morph her muse once more.

 

 

So that wraps up another stimulating Art Safari. See you at the next opening of Arts Upstairs! - GO HOME -