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Well before Kilburn Mill became a commercial complex of shops and services, many of the tenants were visual artists who rented workspace in which to paint and sculpt.
Among them was Jim Charette, who referred to his studio as “The Abattoir” (a slaughterhouse). That designation itself obliterated any possibility that a visit to his Bolt Gun Gallery, within the studio, might mean seeing a charming bucolic landscape or a sweet little still life of a bouquet of black-eyed Susans.
In 2014, Charette put on an exhibition there called “Sad Little Boys” in which he displayed a series of work depicting young lads, crying and pouting and fighting as they navigate their way from boyhood to adolescence and beyond. And the navigation was flawed, as their own feelings and apprehensions and poor choices led to some very bad places.
In an era of marathon bombers, Trenchcoat Mafias, gang bangers and incel misogynists, it was a powerful and provocative exploration of toxic masculinity.
By 2018, Charette had married and gained an extended family that he referred to as his step-tribe. In the street level Frederick Douglass Gallery at Gallery X, he displayed “An Orderly Chaos,” and it was clear that a level of joy had taken hold of his imagery.
Far more optimistic but not entirely benign, the show featured bright fantasy paintings of purple elephants, silly vampires, and giant moths chasing people down the street.
In the summer of 2023, Charette showed at the Ignition Space, sponsored by the Fall River Arts and Culture Coalition (FRACC). The exhibition was called “Still Playing with My Crayons” and it suggested a certain level of defiant confidence, as if to say “Hey, look … I’m still at it and I’m not gonna stop.”
“Still Playing with My Crayons” actually included real playthings, in the form of superhero action figures, Barbies and baby dolls, toy animals and vehicles, all of them dismantled and Frankensteined back together and monochromatically repainted to make engrossing and mildly disturbing junk sculptures.
And at present, “The Art of Jim Charette: Four Decades of Chaos and Creation” is on display in the gallery space, hallways and several offices at GroundWork. Paintings and assemblages from the three previous exhibitions are included in the ambitious retrospective, as well as a series of new paintings, which functions as a fourth installment of sorts, called “All Growed Up.”
Charette happily and readily notes that “All Growed Up” is a form of confirmation. It is a revelation of self-reflection. From sad little boy to orderly chaos to still playing to the present moment, it all makes sense.
He notes that “…one quiet Sunday afternoon while I was sitting at the gallery, I started to see the connections. As I looked at samples from 40-plus years of work, I could see all the shifts in direction (that) the work had taken. In my mind’s eye, the images began shifting around, moving and coming together as a cohesive body of work. I was seeing it as I never could before. At that moment, the answer became clear, simple and painfully obvious … I make the art of Jim Charette in all of its various incarnations … I was hit by an immense tidal wave of creativity that still pushes me harder every day.”
It’s been a long path from the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons, when a kid could be 10 and sprawled out on the living room floor eating Lucky Charms or Cap’n Crunch while watching Daffy Duck, Space Ghost and The Jetsons. For folks that are of Charette’s generation (like myself), that Saturday morning ritual was the awakening to the universe of pop culture, with its own codes, rituals and mythologies.
The cartoons inspired him to draw anthropomorphic coyotes, spinach-munching sailors and costumed super-friends. As he grew older, he moved on to Mad magazine, underground comix, National Lampoon, Heavy Metal, and Playboy.
Charette attended the Swain School of Design in the mid-’80s, and although he did not complete the program, he made life-long friends. And he was exposed to the paintings of Edward Hopper, Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Eric Fischl, Leon Golub and Kurt Schwitters, an eclectic group for sure, but echoes of them all come through in his work.
Nicole Cosme, the general manager at GroundWork, told me that she came across Charette’s artwork at a FRACC art vendor’s event, and described it as “unique, vibrant and disturbing.” She bought three pieces and offered him an exhibition.
The two became friends and she realized that he “is HIS art. And that’s why it feels so raw, dark and sometimes uncomfortable … yet at the same time, playful and funny. To me, Jim’s art exposes humans for what we are — imperfect and comical and so damned beautiful.”
Cosme is right. Charette’s work is filled with freaks, leering women, giant man-eating cats, stencils of Audrey Hepburn and Lily Munster, militants, baby heads, dancers, sneering brats, flamingos, a match-wielding elf, crawling kids, metaphysical beings, Greek muses, and everyday Joes and Janes doing very not-everyday things.
I once called Charette’s art “as twisted AF.” And now, that’s on his business card.
I’m looking forward to the fifth decade. Because after all, where do you go after you’re “all growed up?”
“The Art of Jim Charette: Four Decades of Chaos and Creation” is on display at GroundWork, 1213 Purchase St., New Bedford until Sept. 27.
Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
Wonderful review of an extraordinary artist.
Peggi Medeiros
This review has inspired me to check it out. Thanks