Marco Badot: Getting in touch with his inner monkey

It's important not to overthink "The Geshe Gorilla Drawings," the new and, sadly, short exhibit by Marco Badot, because you lose the whimsy, the playfulness, the nostalgia of the work, which looks and feels like comic book art, and, perhaps, could, or should, be. It's also important not to take the artist  at his word when he's explaining the genesis of the series, suggesting, essentially, the work is little more than monkeyshines, fleeting, inconsequential, that it's just what comes out these days  and, instead of relegating it to some dark corner somewhere and being somewhat embarrassed by it, he simply decided to embrace his inner monkey and show the work. While there may be some truth in that self-observation — the Belgian-born Badot trained at Ecole nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre, one of Belgium’s leading art schools, after all — there’s nothing revolutional or earth-shattering going on in the exhibit, just a gorilla trying to get by in a complicated inner and outer world, this is more than just empty calories. It's playful, it's fun, it’s nostalgic, recalling youth and comic books, but, at the same time deals with the big three: sex, death and what the artist  calls “our apeness,” our basic animal nature, which we all like to believe we have transcended, but, as we are reminded every day, have not and cannot. 

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Tasty art: Metrano, Monhegan at Carryout

Of course, there are plenty of reasons to attend art openings besides the one taught to every cub reporter on the first day of J-school — that it’s a good place to score a free meal, or at least something to take the edge off, and, if you’re a lucky little ink-soaked wretch, maybe some sort of bracing libations. Mmmmmm, libations. You also get, if you’re pushy enough, some face time with the artist, and, of course, there’s always the art, presumably the reason you’re there. If you’re not a reporter, of course. Now, we’re not guaranteeing that there’ll be a decent spread of anything besides art at the reception for Dylan Metrano’s first-ever solo art show next week at Carry Out Cafe, where the Port native will be showing his excellent paper-cuttings of Monhegan Island, and you don’t really need another reason, but there’s something else in the works, another reason to brave the suddenly snarly season. And that is ... nah, you’ve got to go to the next page to find out.

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Alan Bull’s sort-of guerrilla gallery

Finding Alan Bull in a gallery isn't all that unusual. On the walls, anyhow. The Port painter always has something going on somewhere. But finding him behind the counter, that's something else. And finding him behind the counter of his own gallery, well, that's just .... whaaaa? Yeah, that's right. Bull, perhaps best known for his emotionally charged series on old trucks, has his own gallery, something that seems to have popped up overnight. Or maybe it's some sort of guerilla installation: Here today, gone tomorrow? Yeah, sounds crazy, but, actually, it's not that far off.  The artist will be ensconced in a comfy little Inn Street storefront, at the former Stitch in Time, between the Inn Street Barbershop and the Purple Onion, through the end of the month and maybe, but not definitely, through January. And the name of the place? 48 Inn Street Gallery.  Yeah, doesn’t quite grab you by the lapels, but certainly functional.  At least you know where the place is. And the hours? Weekends approach “regular” hours, weekdays not so much. It’s all rather improvisational. The guy has to paint — and teach — after all. Can’t be standing around the store all day.

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Alan Bull: Little wheels keep on turning

Ever wonder how Alan Bull got started with that edgy, somewhat nostalgic and most definitely, emotionally charged truck series that, like it or not, more than anything, has come to define him over the past decade, despite the Port painter's diverse portfolio? The answer is obvious ... if you have a background in automotive forensic psychology: The big truck thing grew out of his childhood obsession with much smaller vehicles — those little Matchbox cars, to be precise. And, since we’re being so precise, we should make it clear for those of you with fuzzy memories that we are not talking about the much sexier Hot Wheels, which took the air out of the practical-but-kinda-frumpy Matchbox collection back during the Summer of Love when Mattel introduced its series of sports cars instead of, er, the cement and dump trucks favored by its English rival.They may have been stupid little boy toys, but, for many of a certain age, they are soaked in nostalgia, like the truck series — and, the artist says, "definitely the source of my fascination with the trucks. They started the whole thing rolling."

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Sandy Farrier: Telling still-unwritten stories

Marc Clopton’s “Pie Boys” is one of those rare shows that emerge fully formed, that is so clearly a gift from the Muse, that a truly honest person wouldn’t take credit for creating it. And that’s exactly the approach that Clopton, founder of the Actors Studio, is taking. Not because he doesn’t want to bask in the glory, but because he didn’t write it. Because it doesn’t exist, despite the poster advertising its month-long run at Lincoln Center. The poster is a fake. Or, somebody cue the intro for “The Twilight Zone,” maybe it’s a portal to alternative reality, a signpost for the next theatrical stop, because this is definitely a story meant to be told. “I know, I know,” says Sandy Farrier, a graphic artist and self-described “acting wannabe,” whose play posters, both real and imagined, are on display through the end of January at the Firehouse gallery.


We should be clear about that: Farrier is a wanna-be who does it — as an actor and a playwright. For the past few years, he’s been a regular at the Firehouse and Actors Studio. He performed in “The Mediator” and “Coming Clean,” two edgy, sexually charged comedies that won honors at the 2009 Fringe Festival and were clearly crowd favorites at the Actors Studio during a follow-up production in November. His play “Mating.com,” which explores the notion that hope springs eternal and the fact that people lie, especially in the their online dating profiles, was staged at the New Works Festival two years ago. But he pays for his groceries with a paycheck from Endicott College, where he serves as head of the visual communications department, and as a graphic artist. He moved to the city in 2004. Three years ago, Hailey Klein, one of the founders of Random Acts, the Port play-in-a-day series, convinced him to take an acting class. He’s been a “theater addict” ever since. And the posters? They’re like methadone, or maybe piles of candy — something to take the edge off the jones.

But back to the fake posters or, if you will, advertisements for still yet-to-be-written stories. Farrier says the goal is to coax an idea from a combination of images, illustrations and other graphics. Sometimes he gets a clear vision, other times just a clue, a hint. “I start out with an idea and build on it,” he says. ““If there’s a spark, I see what I can do with it.”

With “Pie Boys,” the scenario emerged “in a minute, in a flash,” when the artist came across the photograph that dominates the poster. It shows a group of boys standing behind a long table in what appears to be, or what Farrier imagined to be, a Depression-era summer camp. It feels like Maine. It looks like the photo was taken moments before a pie-eating contest. The story came to him in a flash: He imagined a hazing incident that resulted in a young boy’s death. All of the boys know what happened. So does one adult witness. But nobody speaks about the “incident” until 35 years later, when they have a reunion. The play looks at how they lived with themselves, with what they’ve been carrying around with them. He doctored the image, adding blueberry schmutz around their pie holes. An eerie glow emanates from one of the boys, presumably the one who died. Contrasting type, messy and elegant, names the play while serving up a heaping helping of irony with the Maine state slogan, “The Way Life Should Be,” just above a solitary flying bird (a harbinger?) and the name of Clopton and other local scribblers, which Farrier says is meant “as a kind of homage” to the people who have helped someone who has “timidly observed and sometimes hung around the fringes” of the Port theater scene.

Other posters, other stories include “Lemon Wars,” which, with its combination of old photographs, calligraphy and maps, suggests an old-school imperialistic attempt to corner a particular market, and, a second story line that evolved with the discovery of an intriguing image of a younger woman, a love triangle that could bring the entire thing down. And “False Document,” which could either be a period piece or a modern-day monkey trial smackdown between creationism and evolution, focusing, as the poster does, on Chuckie Darwin but, perhaps, casting some doubt on documents that make up the big book itself.

The exhibit also includes work from real shows, created under a variety of circumstances: Straight-up design work, like the elegant poster for Michael Wainstein’s production of ”Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris” at the Actor’s Studio; work for shows the so-called wannabe actor was involved in, like Michael Frayne’s “Democracy,” which was staged at the York Readers Theater; and in-betweens, like the striking and kinda creepy poster for the 2008 production of Gregory S. Moss’s “House of Gold,” which, if you remember the production, was based loosely on the Jon-Benet Ramsey case, may dredge up some memories that you have been finally able to repress. The work, real or imagined, is all mixed together and only the designer, and perhaps the local theater hardcore, know for sure.

JUST THE FACTS: Sandy Farrier’s posters from real and imagined plays will be on display through Feb. 1 at the Firehouse Center, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The exhibit is free. For more information, call 978.462.7336.

Cathy McLaurin: Letting go, remembering

There's still a couple of hours before the bread people show up to talk, but sourdough is not the topic of our conversation with Cathy McLaurin — not exactly, anyhow. But there are strong connections between "where the arms connect to the body," the bread exhibit, a continuing participatory series that explores memory and the concept of what remains when the people in our lives are are no longer in our lives, through the dispersal of bread made from her grandmother's starter, an almost ritualistic, communion-like exploration, and "daily diminishings," a continuing online exhibit in which McLaurin, a card-carrying pack rat, weeds through the "junk" that she's been carting around with her for years, meditates on the reason she's still hanging on to it, and, every single day, posts a picture of a piece and writes about its meaning, its importance to her, and offers to give it away to anyone in exchange for an explanation of why they want it. If nobody is interested, the physical piece faces oblivion, the memory, presumably, living on as long as the artists draws breath and her synapses fire properly. Both exhibits are ongoing. Both are about memory, which ultimately connects and divides us. Both are nebulous, having no immediately obvious antecedent or application. For now, the work itself is the point. "It's very much about the process, not what comes out of it," McLaurin says.

The project is wrapped up with McLaurin's move from Amesbury, where she lived for more than a decade, to the surprisingly cut-off wilds of southern New Hampshire, and from the 5,000-square-foot Lawrence studio she shared with fellow Carriagetown artists Kai Vlahos, John Schultz and Terese Zemlin. Moves, of course, assume progress, new physical and emotional vistas, and possibilities. But, short of victim relocation, they also require dragging much of the past along with you — a process that becomes increasingly difficult as the years, and their corresponding accumulations, pile up. Every day for more than three months, a little piece of the artist's emotional or actual life is posted in what could be described as a virtual emotional yard sale. Some of the postings are obvious, innocuous — like the Smiths poster from her days at Meredith College, the small private all-girls Baptist college in Raleigh, N.C. Like what self-respecting arty student wasn't into the Smiths and Joy Division back in the day? Some are intimate and moving, like the piece of red satin fabric — a remnant of a dress McLaurin's sourdough-baking granny made for her in 1968, when she was 3 years old, for the wedding of Aunt Shelia and Uncle Buck, her high school sweetie, who was drafted a couple of weeks later and died in combat not long after that. Many of the objects have no value at all, like Day 37's offering: the pieces of the stem of a wine glass, broken in a studio in Paris, and fashioned intoan earring, using a broken shoe lace. "It doesn’t look like much to anyone but the handful of people who were present when the events leading up to its forming took place," she says. But taken together, especially over a long period of time, they begin to reveal something (a lot, actually) about the person, a portrait of the artist. Which is creating just a little bit of discomfort. Which, she says, is the point. A lot of the work is about putting herself into a vulnerarble position, to work outside her comfort zone. "That's part of what I'm doing," she says. "It's also a chance to reflect on why these things are so important to me — and then to let go."


It's Day 103. The piece/memory on "daily diminishing" is a hanging lantern McLaurin the artist acquired during a 2003 residency in Sisters, Oregon — a place, she writes, where "everything seems to be quietly on the edge of something, but there is no fear in what that something might be. For me, this was possibly the most peaceful place I’ve ever been and when I need to escape from life’s challenging moments, I go to Sisters in my head." How long will it continue? McLaurin doesn't know. It's open-ended. She didn't expect it to go on this long, but she never constrained it with a time frame. It's become something of a "daily ordeal" — sorting through things, remembering, deciding and posting, with daily deadlines, no matter how informal and self-imposed they are.

There have been a few takers. Mostly friends. One stranger expressed an interest in the Smiths poster. She mailed it off. It was lost in the mail. The first box of stuff is packed, ready for oblivion. What happens if someone stumbles onto the blog and expresses an interest in something at some point in the future, before "daily diminishings" goes the way of the physical manifestations of the memories, secrets, they contain? "One of the fears I have," she says. "And something I don't have an answer for." She's not worried about losing something precious, her memories, when she no longer has the physical touchstones to remind her by having them. Just the opposite, actually. Most of the stuff has been packed away in boxes for years, decades. They may hold memories, but, packed away like that they are, in essence, repressed. By examining the objects, reflecting on their meaning, the memories become more vivid. Not that, from time to time, she doesn't have one of those "Oh, my God, what have I done?" moments. "That's part of what the challenge is," she says. "The fear of not having them and forgetting is more than balanced by the fear of constrantly having to think about them."

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Check out Cathy McLaurin here. Check out the daily diminishing blog here.

Portraits of the artist as an old man

"Portraits Imaginaires," a late-in-life collaboration between Pablo Picasso and renowned lithographer Marcel Salinas, is a fascinating historical curiosity, a testament to the tenacity of the creative spirit. On display at Endicott College’s Center for the Arts through Aug. 21, the exhibit is a series of 29 "portraits" without real-life subjects, vibrant in execution, whimsical in content, with the artist making playful references to Rembrandt, Valasquez and, of course, himself. It is as intriguing and engaging as it is historically important since it is, essentially, the Spanish master's last work. For the full review, click here.