Coupla Guys Sittin' Around Talkin' About Art Fairs

Robert Boyd

I wrote about Brian Piana's podcast, Spill Some Stuff,  earlier this year, and now I have the pleasure of being a guest on it. He wanted to talk about art fairs. We started by talking about Frieze and the smaller satellite fairs in New York and compared those fairs to the two we have in Houston, the Texas Contemporary Art Fair and the Houston Fine Art Fair. We discuss a lot of specific artworks (Jonathan Monk gets a lot of ribbing), and close with a brief discussion of an art fair that I'd like to see in Houston.

When Brian Piana decides to engage in a new hobby, he goes whole hog. This was evident in the excellent home-brewed beer he served me, and in the podcast set-up he uses. It consists a large chrome-plated microphone (that looked like it could have been used in radio broadcasts from the 1940s) mounted onto a wood plank, with two microphone screens on flexible necks between us and the microphone. Visually, it was amazing! This was sitting on a small table. I sat on one side and Brian was on the other. He was monitoring the recording on a computer screen as we spoke. And all this set up paid off--the interview sounds great. You know how when you hear your own recorded voice, it usually sounds really weird? At least for me, it never sounds right. Up until now, I've always assumed that had to do with the way we hear our own voices. But now I wonder if that's true. I was amazed at hearing my own voice on Piana's podcast--it sounded natural. It didn't have that "off" sound that recordings of my own voice usually have.


Spill Some Stuff's podcast studio

Even though I managed not to sound completely dreadful, Piana as always sounds great. KUHF should give him an hour every week to chat with whoever he likes. (Of course, it's hard for me to be completely unbiased about a full hour of me spouting off on this and that. Because obviously it's great.) Anyway, Spill Some Stuff won't exclusively deal with art in the future, but so far it has really had some great local Houston art content. Give it a listen.

Zombie Formalist Shootout in Galveston

Robert Boyd


William Powhida and Jade Townsend, Map of the town of New New Berlin

This map greeted visitors to New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair, an installation by William Powhida and Jade Townsend, at the Galveston Artists Residency last weekend. Bill Arning is identified as mayor. Given that this entire installation is a satire of Houston and of the art world, it's not exactly a compliment. But why Arning and not, say, Gary Tinterow? Because back in 2012, the following quote appeared in Art in America:

“Moving to Houston four years ago I had no idea I would find an art scene so vibrant, international and spirited,” CAMH director Bill Arning told A.i.A. over the weekend. “I keep telling artist friends that it's the new Berlin: cheap rents; great galleries, museums, and collectors; and a regular flow of visits from the best artists working today.” [Paul Laster, Art in America, October 21, 2012]

Or maybe they were thinking of this quote:

First off I tell artists it's the new Berlin: cheap rent, a global audience, scores of supportive venues. It's an amazing life for art makers.  ["Interview; Bill Arning Director Of The CAMH HOUSTON the `New Berlin`", Maria Chavez, Zip Magazine, August 28, 2013]

First Arning is stabbed in the back by an artist he's exhibiting, now this: Arning portrayed as the huckster selling Houston to the art world, not so different in the spirit from the ad the Allen Brothers placed in newspapers across America in 1836.



The installation makes snotty fun of Houston, but isn't very deep. I'll outsource most of my opinions to Bill Davenport's great review in Glasstire, which can be summed up with one phrase: "simplistic carpetbagging."


entryway to New New Berlin



New New Berlin had privatized security, of course.



A saloon/whorehouse (where the warm whiskey was free if you were wearing a cowboy hat). The bartender was artist Brian Piana.



And David McClain played the reactionary newspaperman, who from time to time came out to read what seemed like a completely unhinged rant. It turned out to be from "The Alamo," Michael Bise's passionate but confusing editorial that ran in July in Glasstire.



And naturally there was a money-grubbing church complete with a Dan Flavin-style cross. The preacher was Emily Sloan, who has a lot of relevant experience given her "Southern Naptist Convention" and "Carrie Nation" performances.


William Powhida & Jade Townsend, ABMB Hooverville, 2010, Graphite on paper. 40 x 60 inches 

It was the "Flavin" cross that caught my eye. As satirists of Houston, Townsend and Powhida aren't brilliant. But as satirists of the art world, they're quite clever. Their collaborative drawing ABMB Hooverville imagined the glitterati of the art world living in a shanty town on the beach, for example. Much of Powhida's solo work spells out (quite literally) his disgust with the crass Veblen-esque corruption that typifies so much of the upper level, blue chip art world. 

Typical of his work is to make a list--"Why You Should Buy Art", "Some Cynical Advice to Artists", "What Can the Art World Teach You", etc.--and then carefully draw it. I don't mean calligraphy (although that is a part of it). What Powhida does is to make a list or piece of text or diagram on a piece of paper and then carefully draw the piece of paper as an object.


William Powhida, What Has the Art World Taught Me

New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair are full of lists and signs.



The newspaper's editorial policy is a satire of corporate media.



The military/police/prison industrial complex gets the works, too.



And here is a map of the Nevada Art Fair.

And you can see Powhida's hand in them. The content is sarcastic and the writing is recognizable. But while the newspaper editorial policies and White Horse Security Services seem obvious and heavy handed, the more art related stuff seems funnier and stronger. Like the fact that you in the floor plan for Nevada (itself a take-off of the NADA art fair), the booth for Non-Profits is completely closed off.



The one building in New New Berlin that really works on this level is the Livery Stable. It reflects a common trajectory of post-industrial structures. First a structure may be a factory or a warehouse--a working building. Then after a while, that function no longer exists (in America, at least). The building becomes derelict until someone has the bright idea of handing it over to artists for studios. The artists move into this shitty but indestructible structure and turn it into a lively space for art. The once derelict neighborhood the building occupied gets a few bars and restaurants and becomes "hip." The owner of what was a white-elephant can now sell out to a developer who will put condos in the old warehouse after giving the artists the boot. It's an old story, and what I like about Townsend and Powhida is that they relate it to the old West (a livery stable being the nastiest building in town, and one devoted to work) and include the whole cycle in a series of overlapping signs--the "Artists Studios" banner that overlaps the "Livery Stable" sign, the "Luxury Condos" sign that is pasted on top of the "For Sale Sign".


Nevada Art Fair shooting gallery

The best part of the installation was the shooting gallery. Several "artworks" were hung on the far wall of the GAR gallery, and visitors had the opportunity to fire paintball guns at them. They were in "booths" for various galleries, such as David Zwirnered and the Joanna Picture Club (to give it a little local flavor).





Participants could fire paint guns at the pictures, which over the evening became encrusted with paintball residue. Shooters were in theory limited to five shots each, but many of these nice, liberal artsy types went hog wild as soon they got a gun in their hands, firing dozens of shots while Jade Townsend yelled "Only five shots per person!" in irritation.


 Jade Townsend firing in the shooting gallery


David McClain takes a shot

Hyperallergic editor Hrag Vartanian was there, and he commented that the paintings almost looked like contemporary abstractions one could see at a real art fair. That made me think of"zombie formalism," the term that Jerry Saltz recently applied to so much contemporary abstract painting. So what do you think, readers? Could any of these paintings go toe-to-toe with Lucien Smith, Dan Colen, Parker Ito or Jacob Kassay?







So New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair weren't entirely successful as works of participatory art, but shooting paintballs at canvases was a whole lot of fun. All art fairs should include a paintball firing range.

Pan is Five Year Old

Robert Boyd

  

I just realized that Pan had an anniversary this month. The Great God Pan Is Dead is officially five years old. Now if you look over in the right hand column, you will see posts going as far back as December, 2006. But that is a little deceptive.

I started a personal blog (initially called Boyd's Blog, later renamed Wha' Happen?) back in May 2006. I occasionally wrote about art on it, increasing in frequency as I made more of an effort to see more local art events and exhibits. Finally, in August 2009, I decided to spin off an art blog separate from my personal blog. My first post official post was posted on August 21, 2009. But I imported a bunch of art posts from Wha'Happen? into this blog, which is why it seems to start much earlier.

The first five posts after that introductory post were:

• An explanation of the title of the blog from a piece by William Burroughs.
• A post on Herb and Dorothy Vogel (with notes on the Menils and Glenn Bray).
• A post relating a dream I had about James Turrell. 
• A description of some of the acts at the Frenetic Theater Fringe Festival, including Jim Pirtle's wine enema.
• A post about James Surls giving a talk at Lawndale (featuring art by Emily Sloan and Elaine Bradford).

Interestingly, some of these are subjects I would return to again and again: two more posts about the Vogels,  several posts mentioning Jim Pirtle (including this one), ditto for Surls, Elaine Bradford and Emily Sloan.

As for Wha'Happen?, it gradually diminished as The Great God Pan Is Dead expanded.

To celebrate our fifth birthday, I'm going to re-post my five favorite posts, perhaps with a little introductory commentary, over this Labor Day weekend.

I want to thank everyone who has read The Great God Pan Is Dead for the past five years, and I especially want to thank the writers who contributed over the years: Dean Liscum, Virginia Billeaud Anderson, Betsy Huete, Brian Piana, Paul Mullan, Pete Gershon and Carrie Marie Schneider. Thank you all so much!

What I Didn't Do This Summer

Robert Boyd

What I haven't been doing this summer is writing. I have an excuse--I moved into a new place, which has been a very time-consuming process. But I've also procrastinated. There have been things I fully intended to write about--the amazing Trenton Doyle Hancock show at CAMH, the ginormous Big Show at Lawndale, the great new artists residency in Navasota and much more--that I just never got around to finishing. Usually I feel consumed with guilt if I'm not producing. But this summer, only a little guilt. And that's a little troubling for the future of the blog. After all, I don't get paid to do this--so without guilt, what's my motivation?

But slightly guilty introspection is not the purpose of this post. Just because I've dropped the ball this summer doesn't mean you need to deprive yourself of quality online art commentary. Obviously Glasstire is still going strong, and recently has been pissing people off a lot, which I like. People getting pissed off means people actually care and engage. Houston's art scene can sometimes feel like a warm soup of complacent consensus (with a lot of "off the record" backbiting, natch). But several Glasstire pieces recently have inspired a lot of contentious comments (which can often be pretty deadly, but I think Glasstire monitors its comment sections to weed out the obvious trolls). For example, check out "How Tight Is Texas for Artists" by Christina Rees, which asks "Why would anyone who is truly creative stay in this city or this state if they could live elsewhere?" Bill Davenport hit one out of the park with his two-fer  "Painting on my Planet" and "The Top Ten Painters In Houston", in which Davenport responds to a somewhat puzzling top 10 painters list in the Houston Press. Davenport proposes that that list is from another planet ("Planet A") while he prefers work from "Planet B." Part of me thinks Planet B should have been called "Planet MFA," but his list was not only pretty good, but it inspired a deluge of reader-generated lists.



But everyone who reads The Great God Pan Is Dead already reads Glasstire, right? What else should you be paying attention to? A new project by Houston artist Brian Piana is Spill Some Stuff. Spill Some Stuff is a podcast, which is a form of internet communication I have to admit that I don't like all that much. My problem is that you listen to them thinking you can be doing something else at the same time, but I can't really simultaneously do anything else and pay attention to the podcast. It's too hard for me to divide my attention. But that's me--obviously there are a lot of multi-taskers out there who can work on some project while still actively listening to a podcast. The success of Bad at Sports proves this.

Spill Some Stuff is very new and has had only two podcasts so far--but they are both pretty meaty. The podcasts last about an hour. Piana has promised that Spill Some Stuff won't be exclusively art-focused, but his first two interview subjects, Emily Link and Elaine Bradford, are both well-known members of the Houston art scene.


Emily Link, Steinmann, 2011

The first episode was an interview with Emily Link, and they discuss Link's art as well as her work with Lawndale Art Center, focusing particularly on The Big Show, which was about to open when this interview was conducted. Piana is a little nervous, and he has a tendency to hog the discussion. The word "awesome" pops up too frequently in this interview. But these quibbles aside, it's an impressive debut. Piana, it turns out, has a fantastic radio voice and is a natural radio interviewer. There's never "dead air"--if he talks a little more than his subject, it's in the service of moving things along. It never feels awkward and he's never at a loss for words.


Elaine Bradford, I See You, 2014, ceramic figures and crocheted embroidery threads (from the Big Show at Lawndale)

And his second interview with Elaine Bradford is even better. They discuss her career and recent work, as well as her work with Box 13 Artspace. And practice makes perfect--Piana's interviewing is even better in this second installment than in the first. This is good stuff. I look forward to hearing more.

Another bit of online art commentary I've been consuming is Art vs. Reality, a series of videos written and starring Peter Drew. Peter Drew is a young Australian artist and critic whose previous claim to fame was to be almost kicked out of the Glasgow School of Art in 2013 for doing illegal street art.

His six-part video series, Art vs. Reality, features him taking on the persona of an extremely pompous art critic doing the kind of "explains it all to you" TV show that reminds one a bit of Robert Hughes. It has a satirical edge, but it aims to address real issues--art galleries (using "galleries" in the English sense of any place designed specifically to show art, including museums), art schools, conceptual art, street art, artists as "geniuses" and art critics. Each episode is followed by a mini-episode in which he responds to viewer mail. (In the first episode, he asks for feedback on the role of galleries today--but warns viewers, "By all means, challenge my opinions, but I warn you: my education cost more than a Blue Period Picasso, I've dined with the world's greatest curators and ruined careers of over a thousand artists. To destroy your argument will be my pleasure... And your privilege. So in other words--let's have a healthy debate!"

This series reminds me a bit of the great series Art Thoughtz by Hennessy Youngman, the alter ego of artist Jason Munson. Youngman and Drew both address their viewers as "internet" ("Wassup internet!"). They both address serious issues of art lightly. Their styles are totally different, but their willingness to use humor to engage the art world marks them as related projects. Given the dour seriousness of much of the art world, they're refreshing.

Here is the first episode of Art vs. Reality:

Texas Contemporary Art Fair is a Texas Fair

Dean Liscum

Whether it's a state fair or a county fair or a contemporary arts fair, in Texas, a fair is a fair. So when I went to that big pole barn on the east side of downtown, I wasn't looking for the best art or even how well the local folks were represented, I was looking for fair fare and with my MeeMaw in tow, I found it.

Right up front they told us like it was, All Sales Final. No swapping (except maybe partners in the VIP lounge), no take backs, and no refunds.


All Sales Final 

At every fair I've ever been to there have been political workers and surveyors who eagerly swoop down on my gullible MeeMaw for a few minutes of her time. This one was no different. Of course, a few minutes of MeeMaw's time was a few minutes of MY time. I doubly resented it because the exploitation of MeeMaw's gullibility was not only eating up my time it was also interfering with my exploitation of her gullibility. Luckily, the Fotofest's Political Bowl Season electronic poll was quick and didn't promise to save anyone's soul ,so it was also free. The vote count was mighty lop-sided for Romney. He had 61 collector votes. Obama only had 147 artist and convention support staff votes and at  a 1:99 ratio, team Obama had a little catching up to do.

 
Brian Piana, Political Bowl Season

For some reason, it ain't a fair without flags. May be it's because most of the peoples walking and gawking and working the booths don't look nothing like the people setting up and serving. They, them that throw fairs, want to reassure everyone that if they got enough money and they want it we will metaphorically wrap it in a flag and slap a price on it.

 
Andrew Schoultz, Made in China (Extreme Melt) and Snake


Skylar Fein, Black Flag for Voltaire (All Murderers are Punished), 2012, acrylic and plaster on wood, 43.5" x 71"

Now, I love me some horses (but not in that Equus kinda way) and so does MeeMaw, so we always gotta swing by the horses. We liked this horse, Ruby, but we thought it could use a little more "meat" on its bones. MeeMaw said it was probably from a fundraiser about abused horses or the artist just ran out of money because bronze is expensive. I told her I didn't think it made out of bronze. She told me to quit back talking and lick it if I doubted her. So I did. Before I could tell her what I discovered, an art fair cop stepped up and asked us not to touch the art. MeeMaw looked him up and down. "You a damn fool." She said and then gave me a look that said do it again or else you will walk your ass to Sugar Land. So I did. "Or LICK the art!" he said and walked away in disgust.

I was little disgusted inside my mouth. The horse was not made of bronze; it was made of rust.

 
Deborah Butterfield, Ruby

Not long after the licking, we stumbled across a beautiful blue horse. While I was thinking about Franz Marc's Large Blue Horse, MeeMaw couldn't quit fingering the stitching on it. Her actions attracted the attention of another art fair cop, but before he could utter a word, she grabbed his pale, thin hand and rubbed it over the stitching. "I haven't felt needle work like that since the 1970s." "You're so right." He chimed in. "I got these plaid pants at Texas Junk and they must be at least 40 years old, but feel the stitching on the inseam." MeeMaw did what the art cop told her to do.


Eric Beltz, Revival Wall

She eventually quit rubbing on the young man's inseam when I promised to find her some quilts or rugs to view. We passed these pictures of automobiles, which I quite like. She said that the paintings were dangerous to impressionable young minds and might influence teenagers to try and imitate those automotive arrangements. Not wanting to get into the perils of arts influence on the impressionable and idiotic, I said, "I think I see the rugs over there."

 
Jeremy Dickinson, Thirteen Rears (with silverside), Twelve Rears (greyhound history), Tramway Station

The rugs were beautiful but not very practical. One was made from packaging tape. MeeMaw was in my face with "What's up with that?" She thought she had me until I simply said, "It's waterproof in case it floods."


Mark Khaisman,Antique Rug 1

MeeMaw then found an even more objectionable piece of art than the "parking dangerously" paintings. It was Eric Beltz word pieces, I welcome the dead into my soul. She exclaimed, "I would not darken the door of a house with that hanging in it." So of course I thought real hard about buying it to hang in my room.

 
Eric Beltz, I welcome the dead into my soul (Revival Wall)

But I couldn't afford it, so we wandered on.

Not to get too OED-deep into the meaning of the word fair, but a fair is market is a garage sale without a garage. The phrase quilt had kick-started MeeMaw's appetite for consumption. When she saw Rice University's booth, she gasped, "Ahhhh! You didn't have to. Gewgaws for MeeMaw." But after 30 seconds of scanning the merchandise, I could she her ambivalence set in. She was thrilled she could afford something at the prestigious art fair. However, she just wasn't sure why she would want to buy what she could afford.


Rice University Gallery 

Elsewheres there were some mighty fine teeth. "Organic gewgaws" with fine stitching, which MeeMaw said that she would have bought for Uncle Buck if she liked him more.



MeeMaw had to shake the dew off her lily, so I took that opportunity to find the holy grail of every fair: the games and the side shows.

I stumbled upon this one game. At first I thought it was a take-off on the build-a-bear theme only for the art fair kid crowd (age 20 to 40, with trust fund attached) of oil barons from Baytown. Wrong. Next, I guessed it was a game in which the object was to knock the crap off the top of these deer heads and win a prize. Problem was I couldn't find a gun or a ball or dart to throw at them. Sans equipment, I was just about to just walk up and bitch slap one of those colorful palm fronds off when one of the booth workers told me the price. Damn! Was I surprised to learn that it was one of those VIP games that cost more than I could get for MeeMaw's Buick LeSabre.


Contemporary Deer 

Disappointed, I walked over to see what was all the fuss at the Glasstire bar. From the excitement, you'd have thought they were giving away spray-paint damaged Picassos. When I got closer, I realized it was just the art world's version of "touch my lizard" for people in business attire. Never have I seen such finely clothed people holding lizards. Only they was using alligators with their mouths taped shut instead of lizards, but it's the same thing unless of course you happen to be the lizard.



I like to touch lizards as much as the next art fair patron. Nevertheless, I passed. I didn't want to have to explain to MeeMaw why I was caressing a crocodile and how that was art or in any way, shape or form related to art. I sidled up to the bar to bar to hob knob with a celebrity du heure. It must have been shift change because no one was there except Bill Davenport. Although he's whip smart and all he don't have any gold teeth or date a Kardashian, so in MeeMaw's book, he don't count.



Time was running out, so I headed straight for the side show section of the art fair. None of the maps or signage pointed to it and they didn't have a crier, but when I turned the corner, there was no doubt in my mind that I had hit the art fair side show. Behold! photos of Basquiat, breasts, and blind folds.


Basquiat photo orgy 


Blind Folds and Breasts 

I stood around ogling the three until a booth worker asked me to quit fogging up the glass on the Basquiat or he'd have me removed from the fair. As I was leaving, a woman approached me and offered to show me what I wanted to see if I'd meet her by the water fountains.

Let me just say art fair types frown on running through their hallowed halls yelling "whoopee!"

I was elated until I got to the water fountains. There wasn't just one water fountain. There were 6, each for separate ethnicity: Muslim, Latin American, African American, Native American, White, Asian American. I was in a conundrum. I wasn't sure which ethnicity she was. Furthermore, I wasn't sure which one I was. After all, my ancestors where sluts. I look white but if those water fountains collect your saliva and then run it through one of those CSI machines, I might be accused of going to the wrong fountain. I waited. I wavered, but finally I wandered off in dismay.

The last thing I needed was MeeMaw to find me at the wrong water fountain with the right girl.

 
Travis Somerville, Well Division
  
Travis Somerville, Well Division

  
Travis Somerville, Well Division

  
Travis Somerville, Well Division

MeeMaw found me staring at some white guy quenching himself at the fountains. "You been staring at him the whole time? It's time to go."

Now it ain't a fair and it ain't over until someone propositions you in the parking lot. As we was walking toward our car, this gawky guy in a white PAN ARTS FAIR t-shirt comes over, blocks my MeeMaws path and says. "Psst. You wanna go to real art fair?"

"We've just come from one. Cost my grandson and famous art blogger $40 a ticket."

He looked at us. "You was robbed. See that building. It's the Embassy Suites. In Room 307 is the Pan Arts Fair. That's a real art fair."

"You mean a whole art fair in one room?" MeeMaw said skeptically.

"Totally. They've even got art in the drawers."

"I'm sure they've got all kinds of MIRACLES in their drawers. And as far as we're concerned, they can keep them there!"

She pushed the young man a side and made a beeline for the car.

But later that evening, I overheard her telling her friend Mabel on sky, "if I didn't have that brat with me, I just might went to look in those drawers."

May be next time MeeMaw. May be next time.

When Was the Last Time You Had a Heapin' Helping of Links?

Robert Boyd

Don't tell the IOC, but Brian Piana is making unauthorized Olympics art. In his patented style, he is using the conversation about the Olympics on Twitter to create these Frank Stella-like concentric squares. He writes:

Medals (After Stella) pulls its composition cues from Twitter, presenting a changing array of concentric squares in gold, silver, and bronze. The piece searches Twitter for recent tweets containing the words “olympics”, “medal”, and at least one of the three medal colors. New qualifying tweets appear in the outer-most ring and are subsequently pushed towards the center.

You can see the latest permutation here, and Piana posts some recent versions here.

San Antonio's Loss is Houston's Gain. Look, running a gallery in Houston is no bed of roses. Bryan Miller Gallery didn't close because Bryan Miller couldn't handle all the success he was having. And yet, we get galleries moving here from other cities. First Art Palace flees Austin for Houston, and now David Shelton is moving his gallery from San Antonio to Houston. As tough as the gallery environment in Houston is, it may be worse in Austin and San Antonio. ["David Shelton Moves to Houston," Rainey Knudson, Glasstire, July 26, 2012]

Roger Langridge has excellent taste and staggering mimicry skills. And Tripwire, a magazine that I've never read and that at first glance doesn't really seem like it's aimed at me, has excellent taste for publishing Roger Langridge. That is all. [Hat tip Fantagraphics]

Rockwell Kent in Philadelphia. This post from the always-interesting Printeresting makes me wish I had been in Philly last month. The great print-maker/illustrator Rockwell Kent had a big exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Kent is less well-known than he should be--his story doesn't fit in with the standard modernist narrative of 20th century American art. But he was one of the greats. ["Rockwell Kent at the PMA," Printeresting, July 30, 2012]

 Monitor Man Bartlett's daily expenditures in excruciating detail at Occupy Man. Man Bartlett doesn't do anything short of obsessive. Anyway, here's a very nice video about Man Bartlett. ["VIDEO: Artist Man Bartlett Turns Social Media Into Playful Social Critique," by Kyle Chaka and Tom Chen, Blouin Artinfo, July 25, 2012]

The Big Show Opens Tonight

Robert Boyd


Pan's gonna be at the opening tonight, and we look forward to seeing as many of you folks as we possibly can. Look for the big bald guy in the crazy paisley shirt. The opening is at Lawndale Art Center on Main St., just a few blocks north of the MFAH. And don't worry if you miss the opening--it'll be up through August 11.

We've already done extensive coverage of The Big Show here at Pan:

• Brian Piana's personal Big Show history
• What happened when Piana entered a piece this year
• A preview of some of the artists in the show. 

(And over at Glasstire, read Rachel Hooper's account of volunteering at The Big Show for the day of judgment. )

And if you are feeling nostalgic, we covered The Big Show in 2011, 2010, and 2009, as well.

The Big Show 2011


David P. Gray, The Question, 2011, oil on canvas

• Retina Burn
• Braniacs
• Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Weird
• Epilogue

The Big Show 2010

 
Hayden Fosdick, Sorrow and Despair Grip the Moon, 2010, collage

• Part 1
• Part 2

The Big Show 2009


Mindy Kober, Contemplating the Universe, 2009, crayon and gouache on paper

• The Big Show at Lawndale

See you at there!