Tonight I did two reports. First was this one on Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home
Showing posts with label Charlie Stagg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Stagg. Show all posts
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Robert Boyd's Book Report: Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Waxahachie Postscript
Robert Boyd
After Friday and Saturday in Dallas looking at art, you would think I'd be satiated. Wrong. I found out that a gallery I had heard good things about was open on Sunday. This was the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, which is between DFW and Houston. So I programmed my car's navigation and headed there.
Ellis County courthouse
Waxahachie is the country seat of Ellis County and has a beautiful courthouse. (I kind of goosed up the "haunted house" look by adding an Instagram filter.) The town is pretty rural and has a population of a little over 21,000. The downtown is quite beautiful, but unfortunately it seems like most of the commerce takes place on highways in big box stores. Still, there were plenty of small businesses downtown. I ate at a nice Mexican family restaurant there. And then there's the Webb Gallery.
The Webb Gallery
Many small towns have antique stores and junk shops, and from the outside that's what Webb Gallery looks like. But it is something altogether different on the inside. The objects they have inside include outsider art, folk art, super-weird items picked up in flea markets, unclassifiable art by contemporary artists, lowbrow art, carnival art, etc. It is similar in some ways to Yard Dog in Austin, but much bigger (real estate in Waxahachie must be cheaper than on S. Congress Street). And the size of the gallery permits it to show some amazing large pieces.
The Webb Gallery interior
As befitting its merchandise, the Webb Gallery eschews the standard "white cube" model. It goes for clutter, and clutter encourages browsing and discovery. The gallery is owned by Bruce and Julie Webb, but unfortunately they were in Fort Worth for the day. Manning the store was Brian K. Scott, an artist from Dallas who worked part time here. He showed me some linoleum blocks (for printing) he had done that look incredible! I can't wait to see them printed.
Brian K. Scott and his linoleum blocks
Obviously Webb Gallery doesn't depend solely on the good people of Waxahachie for income. It needs collectors from Dallas and Fort Worth (and the occasional Houstonian like me) to make the trip. I assume that's why they are open on Sunday so they can catch these weekend day-trippers.
Webb Gallery interior
The current exhibit is called Big Hair and Sparkly Pants, a Texas-oriented group show. The contents ranged from Stanley Mouse rock posters for the 13th Floor Elevators to somewhat conceptual sculptures by great Texas songwriter/musician Joe Ely.
Joe Ely, The Songwriter
I also liked Ike E. Morgan's paintings of Sam Houston, which were displayed underneath his huge portraits of George Washington.
Ike E. Morgan, Sam Houston and George Washington
What made them work was not just the crude, Dubuffet-like paint handling (which is what caught my eye first) but the repetition. Morgan seems to fit the classical definition of "outsider" artist--self-taught and socially isolated (because of his mental illness). In this way, he resembles Adolf Wölfli or Martin Ramirez. I think there are a lot of problems with this definition of "outsider," and it's hard not to feel a whiff of exploitation with such artists. On the other hand, these paintings are great and Morgan appears to love doing them. The repetition of images may suggest some kind of OCD, but to me they seem completely congruent with how we actually view presidents and leaders like Washington and Sam Houston. Their images, by being repeated, turn them from people into icons. Andy Warhol certainly recognized this fact--why shouldn't Ike Morgan? (Intuitive Eye has a really good account of how performance artist Jim Pirtle first encountered Morgan and his art while working at the Austin State Hospital.)
Another artist included in the exhibit was Campbell Bosworth. Webb Gallery had several pieces by the Marfa woodcarver. I had a small piece by Bosworth already--a stack of drug money carved in soft wood and painted. But I had just gotten a bonus from my company and saw a Bosworth sculpture that was making me thirsty:
Campbell Bosworth, Thunderbird, the American Classic, 2012, carved wood
So I bought it. But I wasn't through browsing--as I said above, the cluttered nature of the gallery encourages searching through its nooks and crannies. I had noticed the large Charlie Stagg sculpture (see below).
Charlie Stagg sculpture
The price tag was a little rich for my blood, alas. And even if I could afford it, where would I display it? It's significantly taller than my ceiling. But as I continued to nose around the shelves, I came across this piece:
Charlie Stagg, small blue sculpture
This tiny desk-top sculpture used Stagg's standard triangular helix construction and then added an extra twist in on itself. Stagg (1940-2012) unlike Morgan could not be considered an outsider artist. He had a MFA from an elite art school (the Tyler School of Art at Temple University), taught art, was represented by East Coast galleries, etc. But in 1981, he moved back to his hometown of Vidor, Texas and started producing works like these as well as building his visionary art environment on a large wooded property his family owned. I had seen some of Stagg's work at AMSET, but was astonished to find it for sale in Waxahachie. The price couldn't be beat, either. So I ended up buying it, too.
After I bought these two pieces, Brian Scott pulled out the celebratory beers and we spent an hour or so chatting about Charlie Stagg and the art scene in Dallas while playing with the gallery's two dogs, who craved attention.
One of the Webb Gallery's guard dogs
That, I have to say, was the perfect gallery experience. If you're driving to Dallas or Fort Worth, swing by the Webb Gallery on the way. It's well worth the small detour.
After Friday and Saturday in Dallas looking at art, you would think I'd be satiated. Wrong. I found out that a gallery I had heard good things about was open on Sunday. This was the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, which is between DFW and Houston. So I programmed my car's navigation and headed there.
Ellis County courthouse
Waxahachie is the country seat of Ellis County and has a beautiful courthouse. (I kind of goosed up the "haunted house" look by adding an Instagram filter.) The town is pretty rural and has a population of a little over 21,000. The downtown is quite beautiful, but unfortunately it seems like most of the commerce takes place on highways in big box stores. Still, there were plenty of small businesses downtown. I ate at a nice Mexican family restaurant there. And then there's the Webb Gallery.
The Webb Gallery
Many small towns have antique stores and junk shops, and from the outside that's what Webb Gallery looks like. But it is something altogether different on the inside. The objects they have inside include outsider art, folk art, super-weird items picked up in flea markets, unclassifiable art by contemporary artists, lowbrow art, carnival art, etc. It is similar in some ways to Yard Dog in Austin, but much bigger (real estate in Waxahachie must be cheaper than on S. Congress Street). And the size of the gallery permits it to show some amazing large pieces.
The Webb Gallery interior
As befitting its merchandise, the Webb Gallery eschews the standard "white cube" model. It goes for clutter, and clutter encourages browsing and discovery. The gallery is owned by Bruce and Julie Webb, but unfortunately they were in Fort Worth for the day. Manning the store was Brian K. Scott, an artist from Dallas who worked part time here. He showed me some linoleum blocks (for printing) he had done that look incredible! I can't wait to see them printed.
Brian K. Scott and his linoleum blocks
Obviously Webb Gallery doesn't depend solely on the good people of Waxahachie for income. It needs collectors from Dallas and Fort Worth (and the occasional Houstonian like me) to make the trip. I assume that's why they are open on Sunday so they can catch these weekend day-trippers.
Webb Gallery interior
The current exhibit is called Big Hair and Sparkly Pants, a Texas-oriented group show. The contents ranged from Stanley Mouse rock posters for the 13th Floor Elevators to somewhat conceptual sculptures by great Texas songwriter/musician Joe Ely.
Joe Ely, The Songwriter
I also liked Ike E. Morgan's paintings of Sam Houston, which were displayed underneath his huge portraits of George Washington.
Ike E. Morgan, Sam Houston and George Washington
What made them work was not just the crude, Dubuffet-like paint handling (which is what caught my eye first) but the repetition. Morgan seems to fit the classical definition of "outsider" artist--self-taught and socially isolated (because of his mental illness). In this way, he resembles Adolf Wölfli or Martin Ramirez. I think there are a lot of problems with this definition of "outsider," and it's hard not to feel a whiff of exploitation with such artists. On the other hand, these paintings are great and Morgan appears to love doing them. The repetition of images may suggest some kind of OCD, but to me they seem completely congruent with how we actually view presidents and leaders like Washington and Sam Houston. Their images, by being repeated, turn them from people into icons. Andy Warhol certainly recognized this fact--why shouldn't Ike Morgan? (Intuitive Eye has a really good account of how performance artist Jim Pirtle first encountered Morgan and his art while working at the Austin State Hospital.)
Another artist included in the exhibit was Campbell Bosworth. Webb Gallery had several pieces by the Marfa woodcarver. I had a small piece by Bosworth already--a stack of drug money carved in soft wood and painted. But I had just gotten a bonus from my company and saw a Bosworth sculpture that was making me thirsty:
Campbell Bosworth, Thunderbird, the American Classic, 2012, carved wood
So I bought it. But I wasn't through browsing--as I said above, the cluttered nature of the gallery encourages searching through its nooks and crannies. I had noticed the large Charlie Stagg sculpture (see below).
Charlie Stagg sculpture
The price tag was a little rich for my blood, alas. And even if I could afford it, where would I display it? It's significantly taller than my ceiling. But as I continued to nose around the shelves, I came across this piece:
Charlie Stagg, small blue sculpture
This tiny desk-top sculpture used Stagg's standard triangular helix construction and then added an extra twist in on itself. Stagg (1940-2012) unlike Morgan could not be considered an outsider artist. He had a MFA from an elite art school (the Tyler School of Art at Temple University), taught art, was represented by East Coast galleries, etc. But in 1981, he moved back to his hometown of Vidor, Texas and started producing works like these as well as building his visionary art environment on a large wooded property his family owned. I had seen some of Stagg's work at AMSET, but was astonished to find it for sale in Waxahachie. The price couldn't be beat, either. So I ended up buying it, too.
After I bought these two pieces, Brian Scott pulled out the celebratory beers and we spent an hour or so chatting about Charlie Stagg and the art scene in Dallas while playing with the gallery's two dogs, who craved attention.
One of the Webb Gallery's guard dogs
That, I have to say, was the perfect gallery experience. If you're driving to Dallas or Fort Worth, swing by the Webb Gallery on the way. It's well worth the small detour.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Charlie Stagg, 1940-2012
Robert Boyd
When I went to AMSET in Beaumont a few weeks ago, I lamented that they didn't seem to have much work by local Golden Triangle artists. I also suggested that the best artists from the area (based on my own limited knowledge) were sculptors. I now realize I wasn't completely right about the first statement and that the second statement was more true than I realized, because AMSET had sculptures--spooky, somewhat skeletal sculptures--by an artist from Vidor named Charlie Stagg. Stagg died Monday of burns he suffered he suffered in a fire. When I saw the photos that accompanied his obituary in the Houston Chronicle, I instantly recognized the work.
Here are photos taken from the obituary and several other sites. They give you an idea of Stagg's sculpture and architecture. I am saddened that I had to learn about this remarkable artist this way. I hope an effort will be made to preserve his house and studio--it's a place I'd like to visit to pay my respects to someone who was an extraordinary artist.
Charlie Stagg's studio (Vitreosity)
Stagg's glass bottle house (Narrow Larry)
Inside Stagg's house (Narrow Larry)
Charlie Stagg's house (Narrow Larry)
Charlie Stagg in 1987 (Houston Chronicle)
Stagg in 2005 (Scott Eslinger/The Enterprise July 31, 2005, via Vitreosity)
You can see many more photos at The Beaumont Enterprise and the Houston Chronicle. One of the commenters to the Chron's obit wrote, "I never thought I'd see the words 'art' and 'Vidor' in the same sentence." It's a miracle when you find art in a place like Vidor, but tragic to find out about it this way.
When I went to AMSET in Beaumont a few weeks ago, I lamented that they didn't seem to have much work by local Golden Triangle artists. I also suggested that the best artists from the area (based on my own limited knowledge) were sculptors. I now realize I wasn't completely right about the first statement and that the second statement was more true than I realized, because AMSET had sculptures--spooky, somewhat skeletal sculptures--by an artist from Vidor named Charlie Stagg. Stagg died Monday of burns he suffered he suffered in a fire. When I saw the photos that accompanied his obituary in the Houston Chronicle, I instantly recognized the work.
Here are photos taken from the obituary and several other sites. They give you an idea of Stagg's sculpture and architecture. I am saddened that I had to learn about this remarkable artist this way. I hope an effort will be made to preserve his house and studio--it's a place I'd like to visit to pay my respects to someone who was an extraordinary artist.
Charlie Stagg's studio (Vitreosity)
Stagg's glass bottle house (Narrow Larry)
Inside Stagg's house (Narrow Larry)
Charlie Stagg's house (Narrow Larry)
Charlie Stagg in 1987 (Houston Chronicle)
Stagg in 2005 (Scott Eslinger/The Enterprise July 31, 2005, via Vitreosity)
You can see many more photos at The Beaumont Enterprise and the Houston Chronicle. One of the commenters to the Chron's obit wrote, "I never thought I'd see the words 'art' and 'Vidor' in the same sentence." It's a miracle when you find art in a place like Vidor, but tragic to find out about it this way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
