Hello! I have been busy this month with a couple of paintings, as well as some music stuff. I’d love to talk to you about two projects that will be exhibited soon.
SLC PRIDE
I was asked to provide some large scale paintings (three 6x3 ft) for display at the first SLC Pride Festival, from 6/29 - 6/30 at the Gateway Mall.
I decided to create an homage to important queer artists. The painting is a tryptic: two stripes per sheet, six stripes all together, as a rainbow.
Each stripe is dedicated to a different artist:
Red: Stencils in the style of Keith Haring, in particular based on one of his “Dancing Dog” prints.
Orange: Based on Nan Goldin’s photograph “Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi”
Yellow: One of Jean Cocteau’s illustrations for Jean Genet’s book “Querelle de Brest”, which formed the basis for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film “Querelle”
Green: A loose adaptation of Andy Warhol’s “Flowers”
Blue: A stencil of SLC Pride’s logo
Purple: A drawing of the character Lois from Alison Bechdel’s long-running comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For”
I used a combination of free-hand painting and stencils. It has been a very long time since I created a stencil, so I might be a bit rusty, but I’ll say that I am happy with the results.
SKATEBOARD
The Urban Arts Gallery (also, coincidentally, located at the Gateway Mall) does an annual skate deck show. This will be my second time participating in the event, the first time was way back in 2019.
My idea for it was to try to do something more cartoony. When I started it, I was really into the art of A.R. Penck, and of course Keith Haring. I wanted the piece to somewhat reflect the surface it was painted onto.
It’s a (loose) depiction of State Street in Salt Lake City. It features some cutesy characters (including a bull front-and-center, which I’ve been doing a lot of art about lately). Citizens of the town are just hanging out, existing in public space.
I used acrylic paint, and a new medium — acrylic markers. I’ve wanted to try them out for quite some time. They work basically like a regular marker, so you can get clean edges.
This will be on display next month (July).
Thank you for reading. Until next time,
Jerek