July THird

The idea for the tittyshow hatched in the hours following its predecessor (like most great kitschmobile themes); also like most great km themes, it is markedly crude (enter own risk). First off, Golden Scissor award to Billy Guess. Not only did he conceive the ball show, his grandfather invented a lap size topographical sheet of breastisus. For real, he showed us the picture, which struck me as oddly nostalgic. SO here it is, the thanks-for-the-mammories show, the not rough trade but walls-of-chest show; the ('your momma' show).

 location tbd

The breast is yet to come.

heydy yalls in the ether,

  A recent study found that women who sniffed men's boxer shorts were later more likely to make risky financial decisions. So many of us can't make it to New York this season to catch Neue Galerie's reexamining of the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibit, or the Sigmar Polke retrospective at MoMA. On Main street, May 1st, The Kitsch Mobile (running diminished capacity) salutes our German sybarite forebearers. In the "air" of 1920s Berlin, and in the wake of Woody Allen, we present for your delectation morally compromised art.  We need your help to cover all forms of perversion. If debauchery isn't in your modus operandi, then come delight in hurling insults(or ricocheting glow in the dark bouncy balls) at art or artists you find insulting. Once you are down conflating Michael Jackson with modernism, we can delve into how much of humanity is depravity. Only some of us can pronounce neue sachlichkeit, but we can all go balls to the wall.

Show IV: Ritual

     Our fourth show was held on April 4th 2013; the theme was Ritual.  Sarah G. had dreams of a giant truck with individual altars.  Each person could perform his or her most sacred ritual in complete privacy- provided that one of the artists featured something that was relevant to each attendant.  Then, over pizza and beers one night, Sarah B. mentioned a man who disciplined himself to only draw lines- not really lines, but a particular line... for years.  Ritual gained new meaning as more than a eucharist, a mantra, a prayer, or a tradition.  It is purposeful discipline, and it is probably so popular because that kind of discipline has to be good for us.

We continued to use the genius of flyers to advertise our comings and goings. 

Design thanks to Sarah Bethea

       Sarah B. went for it intensely, creating several giant cardboard flats of imitation Turkish tiles using graphite and turquoise oil paint.  Daily she would wander out to the front yard with hair tied up and re-create, re-create, re-create until we were able to fill 128 square feet with the tiles. These were the foundation for the theme.  Another ritual that Sarah B. engages in daily is the collection and sublimation of compost.

The most beautiful compost in the world

     Our artists understood the theme intuitively and created lovely and relevant works of art.  Nina Dugan-Heydt  painted the zodiac- that addictive ritual tied to time and birth.

Nina's neon zodiac

For months our dear friend and neighbor Pat Mitchum had been serenading us with his saxophone practice from across the hall, and we were able to convince him to bring the wine of his labors to our show.  He made real magic causing strangers and lovers to stop and dance in the streets to the sweet swill of "The Girl From Ipanema".

This was his space... U-hauls have surprisingly good acoustics

John D. Monteith contributed his beautiful salvaged photo collages and his fascinating book of webcam images.  It provided an exciting perspective on the fairly recent preoccupation with "selfies" and the (unintentional?) intimacy of webcam photography.

A sampling of John's salvaged photo collages

John's books were a bestseller at the show

     Julianne Goddard took a tribal perspective and contributed painted masks that bordered on the talismanic.

And Sarah G. decided that her Pez collection was the closest thing to ritual in her life, and made a mosaic out of it, it took so long to make it was her only contribution. (1 million hours)



The weather was terrible, but the show was lovely.  And we were invited to make a  Ritual of the show on April 6th at the Art Bar, so we did it all over again!

Friends of The Kitsch Mobile perusing

Sarah Bethea's paintings and collections

A view of the whole truck with Sarah B.

Show 2: MIA and Show 3:Norkitsch

So, the Sarahs are not are very technologically savvy and not very good at keeping in touch. We asked a wonderful photographer to help us out, but forgot to ask for the pictures and didn't take any of our own. In conclusion,we have almost no pictures of our second show, Microcosms.  It was, however, very interesting to research (we are pretty good at that).  In my Reader's Digest Encyclopedic Dictionary a synonym for Universe was "man"; I mean how do you reduce that?  We didn't really know where to go from there, but we tried our best- and received a lot of valuable help from other local artists.  Hopefully we will find pictures soon, but I am going to go ahead and skip to show #3... February 2013.

The original concept for the Kitsch Mobile came from Sarah Bethea's mother, Louise.  There was a vague goal of combining art and anthropology, and her idea to have a themed art truck was the best there was!  In the spirit of anthropological research, and the hermeneutic problem of art reflecting or being interpreted according to an artist's experience, the third Kitsch Mobile was Norkitsch.

 

We finally realized that flyers help with turn-out, go degrees in the Humanities and not Marketing!

 

Sarah and I are both Southern born and Southern raised, in fact- we were both born in Texas, so we were faced with a true hermeneutical problem.  Could we understand the North enough to create relevant (albeit kitschy) art about it?  I have to admit that there were many clichés, but that is the fun of exploration in a safe environment with KITSCH splattered all over the nameplate, eh?

 

After making lists of stuff found in the North: Aspen glades, the light at night when the moon reflects off of pure snowfall, Aurora Borealis, dry skin- insanely wrinkled elderly and sub-cutaneous fat, walrus/ seals/ penguins/ polar b's, and the breath of mammals is visible.  It kind of turned into an Aleutian/Pacific NW Native American paradise.  We studied form lines, totems, and ovoids and ovoids and more ovoids (I still sometimes want to draw them as a meditation).

 

One of the highlights was a Styrofoam interior, thanks to Sarah Bethea who gathered and studied Styrofoam for 2 months beforehand.  The U-Haul became a primordial ice cave, and a wonderful backdrop for small oils of Aleut landscapes, animals that we rarely see in real life, textilian ovoids, rubber and foamy costumes that allowed our guests to dress in snow and look like sexy Vikings, and  of course icebergs. 

 

This time our contributors were Sarah Bethea, Sarah Goddard, Julianne Goddard, and Tanja Keller.

 

 

The ice cave from the outside

 

Sarah Bethea's Aleutian oil paintings

 

 

 

Tanja Keller with her acrylic arctic animals

 

 

Sarah Goddard's oily iceberg

 

Julianne Goddard's calendar with moon cycles and built in zodiac

 

All costumes by Sarah Bethea

 

South Carolina honored our tribute to the north with one of the coldest days all winter- upper 30's Fahrenheit with sleet (I know true Northerners- this is not really cold).  We were excited for the great turn out despite the weather, and built a flower campfire in the middle of the U-Haul for huddling.

 

Brrrr... time for spring themes

I found a few daytime/set-up photographs from the first show, enjoy!

Making sure the sign was straight

A curious observer

General Grant and a fancy necklace greeted patrons, much to the chagrin of our southern audience ( Not too sure Ulysses would have loved it either)

Show I: Concepts of Time

The whole journey began when we decided to explore "Concepts of Time".  Is it a cone? Is it an artificial construct?  Is it used to control?  We struck out with fear.  Our artists consulted German philosophers, science textbooks, a real live physicist, astronomy magazines, old people, children, and mystics of all religions (not all really, but many).
The result was a gauzy show, one without conclusions, but presenting many questions.  Vito Acconci was consigned (via video) to the back corner where he pointed at the guests until most of them didn't care to look anymore.  Confederate soldiers were transported back and forth in time, wearing Shakespearean garb at one moment and basically a banana at another; their stately profiles fixed.  No music played from two turntables featuring cloth records.  Nebulae sat suspended, caught in a canvas and prevented from flinging out their stars.  Also there were cones aplenty cause honestly the cone idea makes a lot of sense. 

This show was held on the First Thursday in September 2012, and featured art by Sarah Bethea, Sarah Goddard, Jeanne Biega, and Loretta Goddard.

Outside of truck  Main St. Columbia, SC

Inside- Thanks to Tom and Andrew for helping with set-up.  The shelves were lovely

                                                      

Peeking out from behind Vito's room- cloth records thanks to Sarah Bethea

 

Pictures of individual art will follow...