BLACKSMITH BOUNTY
People get stupid around Jeremy Thomas' sculpture. The slight bulge in their eyes and the slack-jawed lean of their faces give it away. It must have something to do with the candy-coated puffiness that his inflated steel forms exude; a soft, Oompah-Loompah-meets-O'Keeffe sexiness that urges indiscriminate squeezing and zealous
fondling but for the embarrassment of being allured by
such a flatulent bloat and the fear of being caught in the act by gallery staff at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art (200 W. Marcy St., 989-8688,
; through May 28). Plus, there's the straight-up stupefying indecision of what to make of a thing that is bright, bulbous and silly from one direction, pure sex from another angle and anime robot pontoons from a third. Thomas cuts sheet steel into petal forms, tubular sections and buxom spans, welding the edges together to create something like a metallic pastry that, once made red-hot in his considerable furnace, readily inflates with nothing but air pressure into a form a little like a high-gloss caterpillar getting it on with an accordion. If you're getting the sense that one could exhaust a helping of absurdist imagery trying to suggest what Thomas' work actually looks like, it's because comparison is a bit pointless. The objects are singularly wonderful things, wholly their own and as malleable to personal interpretation or theory wonking as they are to heat and air. Named for their sumptuous industrial design finishes-"Branson Red," "Ford Super Dexta Blue"-the best works are the largest, knee-to thigh-high collusions of arcs and swells, unapologetic and gloating on the floor. The work is clean and good-looking enough for corporate lobbies, but suggestive and sordid enough to subvert any such use-it's juicy beauty with a blowhole. These are Thomas' most complex works yet, but the principle remains the same. "You've got to get to the point with steel that it's actually plastic," Thomas says-something any blacksmith understands but most of the rest of us have to take as a koan of sorts-which just adds to the cosmic joke/Zen wisdom of the stupid look people get confronting the contradictory nature of this work. What art could be more successful than one that equalizes viewers in common, anti-intellectual dumbfoundedness?
NO ASS
It ain't just the deep-fried, peanut butter-stuffed jalapenos served in cute little paper cones that keeps me lovin' Albuquerque's Donkey Gallery-it's also the fact that it's a freakishly good place to discover what fiendishly weird Santa Fe artists are up to. You know, the kind who are always around, making crazy things in their basements, kitchens and bomb shelters but can't really be arsed to beg for attention from Santa Fe's sometimes overly insular scenesterism? Chocolate whores and Marzipan mainliners will have encountered the baffling Franken-folk art of Rick Phelps at chocolatier Todos Santos in Santa Fe's Sena Plaza, but anyone who fails to make the trek to Donkey (1415 Fourth St. SW, 505-242-7504, donkeygallery.org; through May 28) for
Yellow Brick Road Kill: A Show of Souvenirs, Decorations and Artificial Artifacts
(or other objects of trivial intent) will miss out on the true transformative power of pseudo-souvenirs and quasi-spiritual crypto-quackiness that Phelps carefully arranged for a Cinco de Mayo opening soiree. Phelps' world is one in which your carefully chosen Mimbres pot might chide you with tangled tourist slogans like "Here Were You Wish"-his paper pottery send-up on a pedestal slathered with recombinant maps aligning, say, Colorado and Russia, and limned by four walls of David Lynchian snapshots suggesting both the lost and the found.
The remainder of the intimate gallery space is given over to the obsessive placement of
papier-mâché
objects and
piñatas
, including several large birds representing alchemical stages of transformation and festooned with what may or may not be accoutrement such as Voodoo necklaces and flaming pine cones, a spray of flowers, a grand trophy cup, some bacon, an RV and, duh, a winged monkey god. On a
big picture,
Yellow Brick Road Kill
is a symphony of possibility in which the banal becomes exalted enlightenment, the artist gently but expertly chiding us for thoughts of achievement and selfishness that forget the real essence of daily life and struggle and the materiality of such an existence. In detail, the same metaphor carries through as Phelps' constructions are themselves pure glory wrought from mundane found paper such as calendars, newspapers, placemats and the like. Repetition and meticulous placement of each component means not just a beautiful object, but an overlay of personal, cultural and deep magical symbolism echoing with rhythmic regularity-a true elemental macrocosm. Phelps' easy handling of so weighty a subject as our very search for meaning, enacted through common craft, common materials and entirely democratic icons, makes this exhibition the least pompous and most refreshing of the year to date. But then, it's just life for Phelps. As one of his friends said at the opening, "You should see his house."
If you go, stop in next door at Bivouac (1413 Fourth St. SW, 505-385-2717,
) and see Margaret Carlson's strangely compelling wall scribbling, where one gallery-goer with perfectly pressed pants, manicured hands and $500 eyeglasses was heard to exclaim "This is super-obsessive-I love it!"
