Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Sunday morning eye candy
Artist pal Kenney Mencher has a new show in Oakland. (I’ll edit this on Monday morning to give a link to the show.) He sent me the announcement last week, which reminded me — it’s been a while since I shouted him out.
Neat pix below the cut.
This is my Mencher, “Fortune.” It hangs above my reception desk, and generates many comments (mostly favorable) every day. Folks are intrigued by the triplets with crossed fingers, and the blank stare of the fortune teller. Is she alive? Is she an automaton?
Everyone wants to know what the painting means. The point of Kenney’s paintings is to stimulate the viewer to come up with his own story, but that doesn’t satisfy my patients. So I tell them, “It means, I don’t have a crystal ball.”
Folks are always asking me questions I can’t answer because I don’t have a damned crystal ball. We’re well educated medieval barbers. How many times do I have to say that?
Anyway.
Kenney has taken some heat, and also generated a modicum of fame, by getting his paintings banned at certain stodgy venues. Don’t know why stuff like this would offend anyone.
Or this.
Or, ahem, this one, entitled “Scooby Snack.”
That second-to-last one, “Judge’s Chambers,” inspired a lengthy commentary on the web. Lots of people were convinced that the woman’s legs and buttocks were painted to suggest a giant penis. Can’t say I see it. Nope, not at all.
Over at Writer’s BBS, I once hosted a poetry challenge wherein I asked participants to write a poem inspired by one of Kenney’s paintings. (Do I know how to pimp my friends, or what?) Kenney has those painting-poem combos on his website. I can’t remember which poem won the competition — not mine, though. Maureen, did you participate in that challenge?
I’m one of those guys who cannot understand modern art, whether it’s birdsplat-in-acrylic or bold solid bars of whatever. I also despise landscapes. You would think photography had killed off landscape painting, but any interior decorator will tell you otherwise.
I think art, like writing, should be edgy and challenging. That’s why I appreciate Kenney’s work. His paintings are narratives, but he leaves it to us to supply the story. Here, art diverges from fiction; in writing, a measured amount of ambiguity is a good thing, but too much ambiguity and the story becomes autistic — comprehensible only to the author.
Kenney is a voyeur who enjoys probing the seemier side of life. Every few months, I check in at his website to see what’s on his mind. It’s like wandering through a seedy motel, peeking in each and every room. I’m never disappointed.
D.
I love the painting/poem combinations, and the idea. Are you feeling better?
I didn’t, Doug. I remember Josh and Susan and Crystal did.
I like landscapes. And bold stripes of colour. So there.
I’m feeling better, thanks. Sleeping 10 hours does wonders for the constitution. I even have an appetite this morning.
I like landscapes too, Maureen — photographic landscapes. As for bold stripes of color, feh. It’s not for me.
Hey, I really like these.
On the subject of art, I happen to think that there should be artifice in art, something *made* that requires talent and learned skill. Bars of colour just don’t do it. And I don’t get Jackson Pollack. Not at all. That’s because I’m not edumacated enough.
I’m too plebian to understand “edgy and challenging” (fiction or art). But I like this stuff. The kind of art that demands a story. Neat!
[…] Soon as I post this, I’m emailing him to get a price on Under the Hat. I love it. And I’m dying to pose for the man. Here’s a previous bit I wrote about Kenney. […]