Bless the Beasts

ANOTHER good show at Nonesuch... Bless the Beasts. This is maybe the best gallery in town, along with ADA... but this one is a little more relaxed. I think they are/were featured in a recent issue of The Drama.


Scott Eastwood. Scott was in my show. He is just raw natural talent.


Tyler Thomas, in collaboration with Chad Middleton.

They are only asking one hundred dollars for it. It's really good, and it's KITTIES!


Travis Robertson. He helps put out The Drama, or did. Sadly, The Drama is no more.

These two pieces are only twenty-five dollars each.


Adam Juresko. They grow on me the more I look at them.

Also pictured is work by Oura Sananikone, Drew Liverman, and Travis Robertson. Drew and Oura were also in my show.


Melissa Roberts, she owns Nonesuch. This was moving in the sunshine.

Also in this show are Jules Buck Jones chimeras, Shawn Creeden drawings, Kate Horne treasures, Lynne Hassell relics, Ryan McLennan... a lot of good artists.


Boo and James playing at the opening.

blast from anaba past: Plush Art at Nonesuch, also featuring Boo!

Travis Conner

Travis Conner is showing at Nonesuch this month. This is the second show of his that I've seen, and this one is as rewarding as the first.

The beautiful young girl rising up out of the water above is the daughter of the woman in the smaller picture.


These two are maybe my favorites. The one on the left is very hard to see, even in the gallery. It is of somebody jumping on a trampoline, but the trampoline is not in the picture and the person is bent over... with the sun in the background you can only make out arms and legs. It is just a blurry glimpse of an anonymous person, mid-air, enjoying life. The mostly bare trees and sunlight are very specific. I keep thinking about time and the passing of time with these works, especially this one. I like that it is a struggle to see.

The one on the right looks like cherry blossoms. In Japan we have hanami, everybody goes to spend the day admiring the cherry blossoms, they bloom and fall so quickly. The newspapers and tv even follow the "cherry blossom front", the wave of blooming blossoms from down in Okinawa up to Hokkaido.

Nick Kuszyk at Nonesuch

Wall of posters and fliers at Nonesuch, mostly made by Scott Eastwood and Drew Liverman (and anyone else?). Scott Eastwood is the guy with the glasses standing at the center of this picture - THE PICTURE WITH THE GOD IN IT!!!


Wall of Nick Kuszyk's robots.


Big beautiful wall of robots.

(here is the broad street robot dance.)

results of... CASTLE MASTERS!!!

Last night was the Castle Master Sand Castle Competition, at Nonesuch.


Castle #2, by Team Best Friend's Day. I think this is my favorite castle.


Castle #3, by Team Houseband. They were my picks to win. I'm not actually sure who won, I left before the awards ceremony. Who won???


The Castle Master trophy. Made by Melissa!!!


Castle Master!!!!!!!

CASTLE MASTERS!!!!!!

Nonesuch will be hosting a sandcastle building competition Saturday, July 29! That is TOMORROW!

starring....

TEAM HOUSEBAND - they did the domeshow! they are geniuses! i think they will win.
vs.
TEAM DRAMA - of... THE DRAMA!!
vs.
TEAM BEST FRIENDS' DAY - i don't know them. they are the sleepers.

they will be working on their castles all day, with votes cast between 7-10pm.

PLUS!!! - the VCU Summer Studio people will have an opening Saturday, July 29th from 7-9 pm. very close to Nonesuch. YOU CAN DO BOTH!!!

stills from Baron Prasil

Stills from last night's showing of Baron Prasil, at Nonesuch.









They are showing movies every Wednesday night at 8pm. Here's a look at the current show at Nonesuch.

plush art at nonesuch

Dateline: Richmond!

I've been travelling so much I feel like I need to say where I am talking about. Still didn't finish posting my Upstate NY stuff or the Richmond stuff before that, and then I went to Miami. Here is some CURRENT Richmond.

Oura Sananikone and Travis Robertson have curated a show of plush art at Nonesuch. Oura is the painter whose work I (thought) I had first seen at Gallery 5... but I've since discovered that he's the one who made the magnets I bought at Chop Suey's Bizarre Market. I was writing about his paintings and didn't know I already had his work on my refrigerator! Now I know that Oura makes all kinds of things, including dolls and "soft art".

This show is a lot of fun, and most of the stuff - especially Oura's - is very cheap. It is a GENRE BUSTER.


Dana Carlson - These five pillows are my favorite works in the show. I sort-of know Dana, but we have never met, and I am so glad to see these LIVE. Here is a shot of the other two.

Below them you can see some of Oura's sock-monkey prints.


This installation by Oura is another favorite.


Maggie Smith


Bad photo of a good print by Allyson Mellberg. More by Allyson Mellberg and Jeremy Taylor here.


A display of plush art creatures, I think all by Oura. That one on the left has two guns or something.


I tried to get a better photo of it but the dog thought we would play instead. Look at the fear in that doll's eyes! So expressive.


A shot of the other room, with some of Oura's robots on a wild wall. This wall is great.

MORE!! Nonesuch is continuing their 8:00pm Wednesday movie nights with animated fantasies all through December. This Wednesday they will show Karl Zeman's 1961 Baron Prasil and Harry Smith's 1964 Mirror Animations.

Baron Prasil is a precursor to Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Look at this. I didn't know there have been so many Munchausen movies.

Check the website for all information, including next week's movies. Bring your own refreshments.
.

new acquisitions

Peter Corrie, originally uploaded by Bromirski.

Above is the scrappy Peter Corrie drawing I bought from his show at Nonesuch last month. It was only $30.00. This demon ghost cloud is tearing the artist to pieces, I think it came from the rug - or maybe it is the demon from the artist. It looks like my frustration.

Also, Mike Martin and his NEW WIFE Billie stayed with me last weekend, and Mike gave me a painting! They left before I could give them one also, that is the plus side of sleeping until 2pm. Mike recently finished a residency at a place in Kentucky called Artcroft. It's small, run by an older couple, he had a good time. He made this outdoor sculpture, a roller-coaster drawing amongst the trees. It will stay there until it falls down or some kid jumps on it.

P.S. Nonesuch is having Psychoterror Wednesdays!!! every Wednesday at 8pm. Horror movies. Bring your own refreshments. FREE.

Nicholas Kuszyk

Nick Kuszyk, originally uploaded by Bromirski.

Nonesuch, currently showing Peter Corrie, also has work by a number of other artists, including some of Nick Kuszyk's small robot paintings.

Nick is well-known among young artists in Richmond for his robot paintings and t-shirts; he has made hundreds of them. The one pictured above is dated 2005 on the back and is numbered something like 353. Does that mean it is his three-hundred-fifty-third robot painting or the three-hundred-fifty-third from this year? In any case, it is still working. There are good ones and boring ones, some have more personality than or a different mood from others, the backgrounds are becoming more involved. What I'm trying to say is that it seems like he is still working at them, enjoying making them, they aren't yet being made by rote.

This sort of method, discovering an artistic building block like these robots seem to be, is sort of like nanotechnology with it's aim of design and creation from the molecule up. All of these little robot paintings of robots building themselves (and fighting, playing, etc) may be adding up to something. What's crucial is that the artist, once he reaches eventual critical mass with these little robot paintings, breach the Kuzyk quantum gap, defined as "the failure of of real materials to live up to their theoretical potential". Next time you see a bad something by one of those "lots of" artists, doing that "lots of" thing again of taking lots of something and piling it all together until they have a bigger something, just say, "how unfortunate, they weren't able to breach the Kuzyk quantum gap" (Tara Donovan usually breaches the gap).

Okay, now for the more jealous bitter negative part of this post. If this type of talk bothers you stop reading.

Nick was recently awarded a Pollack Prize for Excellence in the Arts, which honors artists in the Richmond metropolitan area. They give out prizes in a number of different artistic disciplines, including two in the visual arts: one to an established artist and one to an emerging artist. Nick received the prize for an emerging artist. Nick moved to NYC about a year ago! Even VCU's own website announcing the awards states -

"Kuszyk’s paintings, drawings and murals of robots have attracted significant attention in the Richmond area. Kuszyk, who lives in New York, also has had two well-attended shows at the McCaig-Welles Gallery in Brooklyn"

C'mon! I know he used to live here, is deserving, and has certainly made a positive impact on the local art-scene, but what about supporting the many artists who are living and working here? Isn't that the idea of the award?

Peter Corrie

Peter Corrie is showing a collection of scrappy (not crappy) drawings and paper sculptures at Nonesuch. Corrie's drawings collected here are, for the most part, more than just another collection of doodles.

Corrie made most of this work while living alone in his recently deceased grandparent's very large house in rural New York and it must have been more than a little spooky. His imagination has run wild in these cartoony drawings featuring a demonic rug and carnivorous ghost/clouds tearing the artist to shreds. The source of all the evil seems to be the round throw-rug. A few of the drawings don't quite relate and are waaay too Ray Pettibon.

The oddball piece here might be the morbid black skillet sculpture with a cast of the artist's face. It's like a cartoon prop except for the face, which is very realistic; a meeting-of-two-worlds kitchen death-mask.

Nonesuch is a great little place. I had thought it was a shop that hung some art but the gallery part is the front room with the clothes in the smaller back room. I went to this opening last week immediately after the opening at whatever the Hand Workshop is now called - big generational difference. Mostly "adults" at the Hand with all bicycles and cool kids in front of Nonesuch, completely different crowds. Both shows are worth a visit.

OPEN INVITE MASK SHOW

Nonesuch is seeking work for an open invite group show consisting entirely of handmade or found wearable masks. The deadline for entries is Wednesday, Sept. 28th at 6pm. The show opens Saturday, October 1st 7-10pm.

For October the gallery will temporarily converted into a fully functional dungeon complete with iron maiden and they are going to show horror movies every week. Go to the website and click around for more info.

Peter Corrie Trivia - he is in a movie!