Break Out the Banjoes!

This originally was posted with a video taken by Venus Prado's phone, which showed my giant voodoo doll being obscenely attacked by her and Carlos' daughter Rockie with foot-long stick-pins. Sorry that can't be reproduced here. I think Venus has taken it down. Too bad, it was exquisite in its perversity. Also missing is my video for the piece "72," although I left the comments (and for that matter, the dead link). John Mason of Micro-phobic earned my personal humiliation for how his music was mistreated. Posted Monday, January 28, 2008

It's time for the Chez Bernard Breakdown!

Last summer, I was invited to the San Antonio Creative Capital workshop. Creative Capital is a New York City-based nonprofit that (among other things) teaches local artists how to make the next step, how to stop being a local sensation and start becoming a national one. And make money doing it, a necessity only the most snobbish and/or naive would debate.

While the business tips were helpful, the two things I most gained were a dramatic increase in confidence (I'd never really thought of myself as an artist of any seriousness) and contacts. The people there were artists, every one of them. They didn't just call themselves artists, as many people will, or talk about it. They did it. Do it. Here in San Antonio. And a great many of them in all the places you're supposed to do it -- shows in New York or London or Cannes, grants and fellowships worldwide. But I (and I dare presume, you) never heard about most of them, because I had my filmmaker blinders on, and not my artist, uh, whatever the opposite of blinders might be.

And they liked what I do. It never would've occurred to them to suggest that my fight scenes weren't realistic enough, or that my greenscreen skills could be improved by this or that, or any of the other things I hear from film people, all of whom would make Hollywood-level product. The artists got it. And one, during a break in the workshop, sat on a selection committee for the new Chez Bernard endowment from the Artist Foundation, and nominated me as an emerging media artist.

Flash forward a few months (you can take the artist out of the film world, but you can't take the film world out of the artist), I was awarded the endowment to put on an "intimate, single-artist exhibition." First thing I was asked was which theater I wanted to rent out for the screening. I instead decided to make it an actual art show, in a gallery space, with people mulling about sipping white wine and saying "hmm." I've been involved in enough of these things to know I didn't want people sitting in seats and having to pay attention to some narrative I'd unspool before them. I wanted a "real" art show, and I wanted a party.

But before it could start, we had to get everything ready. With the guidance of Emily Morrison of ArtPace (and the Artist Foundation) and the technical wizardry of video artist Jason Jay Stevens, the Cadillac Lofts downtown were procured. I was mostly busy working on some new pieces to debut there, but much of the week before was spent vacuuming and taping over picture windows and teetering on ladders to hang platforms for projectors and a screen from the ceiling of the space. The acoustics in there were horrid, we could scarcely hear one another from across the room, but my primary concern was that the audio from the two main projects would clash and leave all the patrons of the arts with migraine headaches bleeding out their earholes.

I needn't have worried about that at all, as the night of the show would reveal that the audio was all but entirely drowned out by the bodies in the room. The industrial space looked groovy, but was no Sydney Opera Hall, sound-wise.

And then there was the issue of synching the audio for the three-screen environmental piece in the corner (step into the middle and see three screens that all relate to one another). I was there until almost opening trying to get it to work, and never did make it. I left it to ArtPace's sound guru, who managed to be gone by the time I got back. Doubtless aware of my notorious wrath. It was completely out of synch, never any relation between sound and image for the remainder of the night.

But as my father-in-law likes to say, if we had any idea how little people think about us, we'd curl up into fetal balls and eat our stomachs. (Well, perhaps I've exaggerated my father-in-law's axiom...) Truth is, no one really cared about the audio. They enjoyed the images, and the conversation, and now and then would buttonhole me to say "um, I'm sure I'm the only one who doesn't get it, but..." No, I'd assure them, if they could hear the audio (music by Micro-phobic), it'd make perfect sense, and explain it the best I could.

Here, see for yourself. It makes sense. Maybe not perfect sense, but, you know, sense.


And here's the video environment piece. It's no longer in three chunks to be viewed all at once, of course, as that'd be difficult to do on YouTube. But I kind of approximated that. Kinda.


Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel, if you're of a mind. I'm planning to do a lot more art stuff in the future, including a few more of those playground "musical" pieces.

The biggest success of the night was the sculptural piece. Portrait of the Artist as a Voodoo Doll. A life-sized effigy of myself, constructed of burlap and raffia by my pal Michelle LaHomme from my designs. Michelle is a genius. She's done costumes for a few different of my projects, and she manages to be not only a sorceress with a sewing machine, but a creative force on her own. I've never given her a sketch or concept that she hasn't improved upon considerably, and this doll is no exception. We also created some six-inch-long pins so everyone could jab me (with positive intent, naturally). I stepped over to it a few times during the evening to pull pins out, give other folks a chance to have fun. I'd received some very, uh, creative piercings. I think they liked that one.