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“Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.”
I’ve been thinking about that observation from the Brazilian lyricist and novelist Paulo Coelho for some time now. Tears of joy and tears of sadness are a part of every life. As someone who has written about the arts for a considerable length of time, it deeply reverberates within me.
For as long as I have been writing “Chasing the Muse” for this publication, and well before, I have not shied away from the difficult subjects that many artists explore in their work and that museums and galleries exhibit.
In the last year, I’ve written about a Holocaust memorial, the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s “Complicated Legacy,” censorship and violence against women in Iran, rising sea levels, and a Gallery X exhibition that explored a myriad of social justice issues. Tears became words. Art is not always for the weak of heart, nor should it be. But then again, art can be the source of beauty, celebration and wonder.
It can even just be a source of frivolity, cheer and playfulness.
Works by Kate Frazer Rego
And it is not but pure serendipity that a pair of New Bedford artists are displaying their respective works at two local venues. It feels like a much-needed break from all the heavy heartedness that so many people seem to be experiencing.
At the Groundwork Gallery, Kate Frazer Rego presents “Portals,” a display of 31 mixed-media works. At this juncture in time, she is a long-known creative commodity in the community.
She has always exhibited a smart and delightful sense of humor, which serves to soften her sociopolitical and sex-positive commentary, as in her “Labia Series: A Fresh Look at the Feminine” at the former S&G Project Gallery in the Hatch Street Studios.
Other the years, her oeuvre has expanded to include cartoonish male body parts and commentary on romantic expectations and widowhood, as well as the pubescent hum of first desire to the acceptance of the limits of one’s aging body.
As a child of the ’80s and ’90s, she was influenced by the palette and surreal goofiness of “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” The Cartoon Network, and early MTV.
Her new work has little to do with carnal desire or the physical body at all. In fact, it is a turn inward. The portals for which the show is named is about an interior journey, exploring passageways into the self of mind and soul.
For the most part, her work is of a small scale and primarily semi-abstract, embracing thick textures, vivid colors, and something bordering on a cosmic weirdness.
“Smiley Face Portal” is inexplicably decorated with the once ubiquitous smiley faces (created in 1963) but green instead of the trademark yellow, along with shimmery blue slug like creatures and a singular floating celestial eye. It appears as an abstract-expressionist painting created with colored sugar and Crackerjack toys.
“Fishmovy Revealed” looks like an overly decorated birthday cake with white icing so thick and sweet that you would immediately feel the need to brush your teeth after a bite or two. There are portals on the surface in which the letters FISHMOVY are discernable. Each portal is surrounded by tiny dots of bright blue, yellow, pink or purple.
It is unclear who — or what — Fishmovy is but it is likely to be a compatriot of the artist’s odd clunky superheroes, Grassman and Skywoman. When she contemplates the portals and her inner journey, she rarely travels alone. At times, ants or spiders are along for the ride.
Frazer Rego’s newest work is pure eye candy. And sometimes that’s all you need.
“Past and Present: The Art of Sue Hauck” is on display in the Frederick Douglass Gallery, the street level exhibition space in Gallery X.
Hauck, the wife of sculptor Chuck Hauck, is a self-taught artist displaying over 100 small-scale paintings that delve into pop art, science fiction, old comic book advertisements, fairy tales, monster movies, fashion magazines, cocktail culture and old sitcom tropes.
Works by Sue Hauck
A child of the ’60s, she certainly absorbed all the consumer excesses and suburban fantasies of the television series of that era.
The multitude of women in her paintings are femme fatale wannabes. Their hair is perfect, their dresses are form-fitting, and their gestures are flirtatious. They are part Honey West, part Jane Jetson, and part Samantha Stephens and none of them are waiting to be rescued by a man. They are smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis. That will catch up with them later.
Not only that … there is an ungodly amount of aspic being served at those parties.
The experimental artist and musician Lloyd John Dunn coined the term “Retro Futurism” to describe the contradictory aesthetic that exists between nostalgia (retro) and what is to come (futurism.) Hauck certainly has embraced that sensibility with fervor.
A prime example is her “Atomic Blonde,” in which a woman in a slinky, low cut dress holds a toy rocket in her hands and looks at the viewer as if she is issuing a challenge.
In the back pages of comic books from the 1960s and ’70s, there were often ads for tiny crown-wearing, castle-living brine shrimp that were marketed as Sea-Monkeys. Hauck nods to that scam with “Sea Monkey Family,” featuring shrimp with arms, devil tails, antennae and a baby playing on the beach. The female, of course, has long golden tresses. After all, crustaceans prefer blondes.
Hauck’s “Jet Boi” could be a suggestion for a “My Favorite Martian” remake with Will Poulter in the lead.
Her “Busy Bean Pink” is a thrift store find, a rather straightforward depiction of three wine bottles, a corkscrew and two goblets. She added seven tiny pink elephants including one jammed into the neck of a bottle as a wine stopper and another asleep in an ashtray.
Both Hauck and Frazer Rego are guilty of injecting a bit of lightheartedness into art in an era of distress. And I’m grateful to them.
“Past and Present: The Artwork of Sue Hauck” is at Gallery X, 169 William St., until June 7.
“Portals by Kate Frazer Rego” is at Groundwork Gallery, 1213 Purchase St., until June 20, entrance on Maxfield Street.
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
