Well, I have just returned from a viewing of Josh Agle’s “Animal Kingdom” exhibit at the Corey Helford Gallery. I think that it is an exhibit that most Furry fans would find worthwhile.
Today, Saturday 18 February, my sister took me in my wheelchair from my convalescent hospital to view the exhibit. The Corey Helford Gallery is on Washington Blvd. in downtown Culver City, in a small, tree-lined neighborhood with numerous art galleries, picture framing shops, and artists’ supply shops. The Corey Helford Gallery itself is a nondescript dark gray building on the outside. Inside, it is one gigantic empty square boxlike room with stark white walls, and a low black settee in the middle. The paintings on exhibit are mounted along the four walls. There is a small staircase to an upstairs loft where limited-edition art prints of the exhibited paintings are on sale.
SHAG’s “Animal Kingdom" exhibit consists of fifteen original acrylic on panel paintings, from 13” x 10” to 96” x 34”, priced from $4,000 to $40,000, eight of which were marked “sold”. I previously described SHAG’s art style as 1950s moderne; I stick to that opinion. (I see on SHAG’s website that an art critic describes it as “retro-kitsch”.) Each painting is titled. Almost all have a theme of stylized cocktail parties in which the men wear stag horns and the women are dressed in form-fitting cat-girl costumes. Four paintings also show a child dressed as a lamb or bear cub or bee, either drinking while the adult is asleep or trying to steal a drink (an obvious vodka-and-orange-juice screwdriver) while the adults are awake. Most of the paintings had a small jack next to them on which the viewer was supposed to listen to a very brief story. Fortunately for me, the audios were all broken so the gallery had printouts of the stories, which I was able to take for this report.
The Flayrah announcement’s Gallery link opens to the “Animal Kingdom” exhibit announcement showcasing SHAG’s painting #1, “The Riding Crop”. The “story” is: “Both girls eyed the riding crop – they knew one of them would be forced to use it soon. They were strict vegetarians, and detested animal cruelty of any kind, but sometimes there came a point when violence was the only solution,” The Gallery’s “Future Shows” link shows painting #14, “The Cat Carrier”, also clickable as SHAG 1, which did not have a printout of its story. SHAG 2, which Higgs Raccoon linked to in his Flayrah announcement showing a child dressed as a black lamb smoking a cigar and holding a cocktail, is the exhibit’s #8, “The Blackest Lamb”, with the story, “It’s midnight. She has been waiting for her lover to arrive since 7:00. Even if he doesn’t get there until 1:00 am, the wait will be worth it. He’s getting takeout at Umami.” SHAG 3 is #2, “Black Kitten in Green”, “She won’t blow on the dandelion. She will crush it and crumple it into a small ball of greenish fiber and juice, taking care not to let any of the floating seeds escape. She just put in a new lawn at the Roscomare house.” SHAG 15 is #12, “The Wayward Cub”, “She didn’t have a problem with Steve’s drinking until the first drop of his Purple Rain hit the snowy white fur of her ex-husband.” SHAG 17 is #7, “White Paw”, showing a white kitten playing with a screwdriver, “She’d asked him to fix the icemaker many times this month, and his excuse was always ‘I can’t find my screwdriver.’” I won’t bother to list all of them, but most of the exhibited paintings are here on the “Future Shows” website.
The prints of these paintings, each one an “archivally framed (however many) color serigraph”, are priced from $400 to $1,100.
Josh Agle has his own gallery in Palm Springs, and a website, http://www.shag.com/, where more of his artwork may be seen.
Well, I have just returned from a viewing of Josh Agle’s “Animal Kingdom” exhibit at the Corey Helford Gallery. I think that it is an exhibit that most Furry fans would find worthwhile.
Today, Saturday 18 February, my sister took me in my wheelchair from my convalescent hospital to view the exhibit. The Corey Helford Gallery is on Washington Blvd. in downtown Culver City, in a small, tree-lined neighborhood with numerous art galleries, picture framing shops, and artists’ supply shops. The Corey Helford Gallery itself is a nondescript dark gray building on the outside. Inside, it is one gigantic empty square boxlike room with stark white walls, and a low black settee in the middle. The paintings on exhibit are mounted along the four walls. There is a small staircase to an upstairs loft where limited-edition art prints of the exhibited paintings are on sale.
SHAG’s “Animal Kingdom" exhibit consists of fifteen original acrylic on panel paintings, from 13” x 10” to 96” x 34”, priced from $4,000 to $40,000, eight of which were marked “sold”. I previously described SHAG’s art style as 1950s moderne; I stick to that opinion. (I see on SHAG’s website that an art critic describes it as “retro-kitsch”.) Each painting is titled. Almost all have a theme of stylized cocktail parties in which the men wear stag horns and the women are dressed in form-fitting cat-girl costumes. Four paintings also show a child dressed as a lamb or bear cub or bee, either drinking while the adult is asleep or trying to steal a drink (an obvious vodka-and-orange-juice screwdriver) while the adults are awake. Most of the paintings had a small jack next to them on which the viewer was supposed to listen to a very brief story. Fortunately for me, the audios were all broken so the gallery had printouts of the stories, which I was able to take for this report.
The Flayrah announcement’s Gallery link opens to the “Animal Kingdom” exhibit announcement showcasing SHAG’s painting #1, “The Riding Crop”. The “story” is: “Both girls eyed the riding crop – they knew one of them would be forced to use it soon. They were strict vegetarians, and detested animal cruelty of any kind, but sometimes there came a point when violence was the only solution,” The Gallery’s “Future Shows” link shows painting #14, “The Cat Carrier”, also clickable as SHAG 1, which did not have a printout of its story. SHAG 2, which Higgs Raccoon linked to in his Flayrah announcement showing a child dressed as a black lamb smoking a cigar and holding a cocktail, is the exhibit’s #8, “The Blackest Lamb”, with the story, “It’s midnight. She has been waiting for her lover to arrive since 7:00. Even if he doesn’t get there until 1:00 am, the wait will be worth it. He’s getting takeout at Umami.” SHAG 3 is #2, “Black Kitten in Green”, “She won’t blow on the dandelion. She will crush it and crumple it into a small ball of greenish fiber and juice, taking care not to let any of the floating seeds escape. She just put in a new lawn at the Roscomare house.” SHAG 15 is #12, “The Wayward Cub”, “She didn’t have a problem with Steve’s drinking until the first drop of his Purple Rain hit the snowy white fur of her ex-husband.” SHAG 17 is #7, “White Paw”, showing a white kitten playing with a screwdriver, “She’d asked him to fix the icemaker many times this month, and his excuse was always ‘I can’t find my screwdriver.’” I won’t bother to list all of them, but most of the exhibited paintings are here on the “Future Shows” website.
The prints of these paintings, each one an “archivally framed (however many) color serigraph”, are priced from $400 to $1,100.
Josh Agle has his own gallery in Palm Springs, and a website, http://www.shag.com/, where more of his artwork may be seen.
Fred Patten