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
Emigr� 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
This article appears in July 14 • 1995 and July 14 • 1995 (Cover).