WMSE 91.7 FM Art & Music Fundraiser
Greetings, I haven’t posted here for two years, so I’m trying again – but a little differently. It’s high time I cleaned up the place, re-wrote the Bio and dumped the CV, check it out.
Keep an eye out for all media blasts from the House of RAD in Riverwest, and just go to it, you’ll have a great time. There are 30+ artists in an old factory that don’t merely rent studios, they are also part of a group that does stuff together all the time. And I’m now one of them, the crazy old new guy. Brandon Minga runs it fulltime like Burningman in Cream City. Come to this place and you will see collaboration happening right before your eyes.
The 6TH Annual WMSE ART & MUSIC event, on Friday, July 15 at The Historic Pritzlaff Building, will be the highlight of my Summer. A non-profit event by which all others will be measured, they set a high bar. For me, Art and Music make up 85% of my interests, the other 15% is my weird “Pseudo-Theology” which I’m happy to share with anyone that’s interested! Art and Music are a perfectly linked pair of creative forms that have completely defined my sense of “culture”, and probably yours too. Combine them with LOCAL, and WMSE, and Milwaukee is firing on all four cylinders.
I think it’s the vibe at Art & Music that gets me, the look of the crowd, a perfect mix of grayhairs and youngbloods. We have suffered withdrawal from really good cultural events for two years, but the game is back on.
WMSE auctions off a couple hundred 12 x 12 record album sized boards (Live auction) provided for us to paint, sculpt, collage, decorate, and create-upon in some way. Pre-event bidding (and viewing) will be online as well. These are my contributions:
I have three granddaughters so I’m always on the lookout for Great Female Role Models. In rock and roll it’s Carol Kaye. A session bass player in the 60’s and 70’s in L.A. You know all her bass lines, the only girl in an all boy’s club. Watch “The Wrecking Crew” documentary with your daughters.
I patched a few photos of her together then redrew it and added text in Photoshop. Output a film positive DASS print and made an alcohol transfer to Arches 88 paper. Finally, re-worked the entire image with charcoal and sprayed a strong matte fixative. I have no secrets. I thought the leopard skin print was sexy and the horn-rimmed shades just right. Bid high and often.
Weird copies of Mona Lisa always fascinate me, google image it, they’re hilarious, incredible variety. I’ve used it as an assignment once, and I’ll do it again in Fall. My version is set in Hell, because I love drawing demons (but I don’t know why). Why yellow? Why not red? I have no answer. I wanted it to be detailed enough that there are things to find like those “Hidden Pictures” books. Can you find: 9 Demons. 2 Deer, 3 babies with a 5 o’clock shadow, etc. You get the idea – so BID BID BID!
“It’s Krazy” is a print I did a few years ago, it’s a CMYK 4-color screen print. A blow-up of a Krazy Kat comic strip from the Sunday Funny Papers. I cropped it to increase the abstraction, It’s from a series of 10 different characters, but Krazy was my favorite. It was a little small so I mounted it on white Masa paper with an archival spray adhesive. The further away you move the better the focus becomes – it’s voodoo! BID VOODOO BID.