Treasure Hunting

For as long as I can remember caring at all, I've gravitated toward a lean aesthetic. Canvases chosen carefully, displayed with plenty of clean wall behind them, each one treated like royalty in his or her own court. I'm not a scavenger, happy to peruse back rooms in search of the forgotten masterpiece, the mislaid treasure hidden amongst the trash. This is not necessarily good. I'm just saying, it's my way. Which is why visiting Alternate Current Art Space on South First Street is such a problem for me. I've been there three times now in search of visual pleasure and always come back confused. On this last trip, however, standing in the middle of their summer group show of gallery artists, I had to concede that one person's trash might indeed be another's treasure (I'm just paraphrasing the old saying, not casting aspersions), and in fact, tucked within the consummate clutter of that place - amidst the hub caps and wire-webbed front porch, traffic noises, plaster figures imbedded with shiny flotsam and jetsam, salon-hung canvases interspersed with photography, collage, montage, sculpture, and god knows what else - are some pictures and objects worth looking at if you've got the time and the patience to do it.

But the place defies the traditional art review, at least by this critic.

I first visited Alternate Current last summer about this time, where I spoke at length with proprietors Susan Maynard and David Lee Pratt. They were gracious and forthcoming about the enterprise, which is at once their home, their workspace, and a gallery, where a consortium of their friends display work earnestly if not coherently. Sometimes there are typed labels identifying artists' work, sometimes not. The various art objects are loaded randomly on the walls the way tourists are loaded into elevators at the base of the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. Not everyone speaks the same language. They each have a different style. Sometimes these random pairings produce an interesting dialogue, one that couldn't have happened any other way. Most often, not.

Maynard and Pratt gave me a video they'd made about the gallery, which I gratefully took home and kept too long. I've watched it a number of times. Maynard holds the camera first on Pratt, who is standing in the gallery. "The light is really beautiful just now," he says. The camera reveals that the door to the Watts Tower-style front porch is open allowing light, noise, and the grime from South First Street to infiltrate the space. It's Mother's Day, Pratt says, so you should "buy something cheap and beautiful for your mom." I am always touched at this point in the video.

The pictures in the gallery tend to be small-scale and hang in clusters on the limited wall space. The wall to the left, as you enter the room, is broken by a draped doorway that leads to what appears to be a living area. We get to peek through the curtain. Panchine Sainz's paintings are the first ones on the left when you enter the space. On the video tape, you see and hear the Cuban Emigré with a gentle accent. He explains he is a musician who makes art as well as music, because art can be made alone while music seems to require a partner. His images include angels, sprites, clown-like figures. They are thinly painted, sometimes badly painted, but always complex , colorful, and quick to bring a smile.

Maynard's paintings hang on the one long gallery wall. They are narrative pictures, fairy tales that have gotten mixed up with other stories, like "Beauty and the Beast on Their Way to Bethlehem." Ancient myths gone awry. It is the kind of work you can't forget or forgive. If only, I want to say, if only they were a little cleaner or a little messier, if the painting were equal to the imagination and sense of style. The protagonists in the little painted vignettes are women, and I am drawn to their mysterious circumstances.

Maybe a half-dozen more artists are represented on the wall to Maynard's right. Sometimes there is one representative picture (a beautiful drawing by Sam Yeates), sometimes more (several paintings by David H. Elliott hanging on the wall and others leaning against the side wall). One picture is a representation of Vince Hammond's "Yard Space 11" which is visited at length on the video tape. Hammon tells the camera that he manages a recycling center, a perfect vocation to enhance his ongoing project, a high-trash assemblage and (sort of) theme park. He has created a convoluted step-inside sculpture in the backyard that is now larger than his rent house in front. Maynard and Pratt have interesting friends.

The video does not record the exterior of Alternate Current, which is too bad. Just now, the parking lot outside is covered with a hodgepodge of sculptures in an assortment of traditional and not-so-traditional media. They loom, they tease, they taunt, they entertain, they disgust. There is something for everyone. Additional artist work spaces behind Alternate Current appear to be the source for some of these creations. The front of the building boasts the hub cap porch I mentioned earlier. It is the La Zona Rosa aesthetic (or perhaps La Zona employed the Alternate Current aesthetic), variations on the front yard altar, junk rearranged and turned into something else. In any event, driving south on South First Street, past the clutter of used-car dealers and Mexican restaurants, you'll have no trouble picking out the gallery. But call first, to see if they're open. The hours are variable. Once inside, I would challenge you to prowl through the main gallery with the thoroughness I seem to lack in such circumstances. To ignore the over-warm, cigarette-smoky, dark atmosphere of the place and enjoy the possibilities. Take a friend. Pick through the canvases leaned against the wall, ask about the sequined pink costume on the wall, the assorted works in progress by the artist/owners and the odd knickknacks that dominate half the space.

Susan Maynard was enveloped in cigarette smoke, sitting on a sofa in a darkened corner of the gallery when I visited recently. I was unaware of her presence at first, until she startled me by speaking. "I didn't see you there," she said as she peered across modest-sized rectangular room. Alternate Current swallows up whole people in its crowded dark corners.

"I didn't see you either," I answered. Think about what else I might have missed amidst the clutter. n