Tire Iron 56: Stomping Around

Thursday, September 8, was this year's Downtown Stomp Around, a less extensive and more upscale version of the infamously sweaty warehouse art crawl.

I stomped a few venues near Diverseworks, and here's what I found:

Chris Sauter has constructed an enormous fake gallery inside Diverseworks, then cut pieces of sheetrock from its walls to build benches, from which one can view the cut-out holes as if they were geometric abstract paintings. It's a witty idea, given weight by Sauter's six variations of the same piece, and the sheer effort that went into building it. The first time I saw this piece was in Twang at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, where Sauter cut his wallboard patterns directly through an existing gallery wall, creating a viciously sarcastic satire of a modern art museum by tearing apart the museum itself. The second time I saw this piece, at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Sauter was not allowed to cut into the walls, and settled for drawing the patterns onto them in pencil, as if ready to cut. Wimpy. Museum, the piece at Diverseworks, is in-between. Sauter constructs temporary walls made specially to be defaced, and cutting holes in a big room-sculpture doesn't have the same punch as cutting holes in Diverseworks itself. All three incarnations of this piece intend to transform a solid wall into a transparent screen, and use gallery-goers as animated paintings. It's fun to peek into or out of the piece, but aside from a heightened awareness of the traffic patterns within the gallery, there's little insight to be gained. Museum is better appreciated for its hard work than its soft concept.

Further down the docks was The Art of Dr. Seuss, a traveling show of framed prints generated from work of the late Ted Geisel. Here is art marketing at its most grotesque: reproductions of Seuss" drawings, in mega-editions, were being hustled onto innocent fans for thousands of dollars. A squad of black-clad sales associates hovered. If you want a lithograph of Sam I Am, you can buy the book, cut out the image and frame it for a fraction of the $525 they're asking. From their bandit sign to the plywood bar covered with sticky granite-textured vinyl, it was the epitome of fly-by-night sleaze. If you missed it, the whole show packed up and traveled to Dallas on September 18th in search of fresh suckers.

Around the corner, under some scrubby trees by the railroad track floated Aimee Jones and crew's Feel Better 4 Ever Club, a magical grotto of colored lights, glitzy trinkets and music. After the Dr. Seuss sell-a-thon, it seemed like heaven, and I felt better immediately. Part party, part sculpture, part performance, the piece had a beautiful, trashy glamour. Hidden, but easy to find, the piece had the ephemeral serious/silliness of a child's tea party. The Feel Better 4 Ever Club made the hopeful assertion that prettiness, sprinkled like fairy dust, can overcome ugliness anywhere, anytime. And for a few hours, it did.

At Fotofest, the oddly-named “Hey, Listen to me!” Writing Pictures offers a fascinating glimpse into the minds of young people through hundreds of poster-sized framed collages. Each collage places a sheet of student writing with several snapshot-sized photos on the themes of self, family, community, dreams. After reading twenty, I had had enough of reading standing up, but I wish the other 80% were in a book I could take home. The collage style of most of the pieces is bizarre school-project modern, that disjointed mishmash of images, captions, stickers and drawing familiar from bake sale posters and science fair projects. At first, I gravitated towards the most outré, but quickly began looking for interesting snapshots and reading the texts. Again and again, the life stories, attitudes and aspirations of the students were gripping. If this is what has replaced “On my summer vacation . . .” as subject matter for student writing, then Literacy Through Photography, the Fotofest program which generated this work, is working.

In a place where even the shortest errand starts with getting in the car, it's great to see art with such a diversity of purposes in walking distance of one another. Enlightenment, money-grubbing, fun and education, all shoulder to shoulder… just like in a real city.

Images courtesy DiverseWorks.

Bill Davenport is an artist and writer, and was the first contributor to Glasstire.