This week was a double whammy in my art world. I had to visit two gallery's, although thankfully they were both on Lyndale Ave within two blocks of each other. The first was SOO Vistual Arts Center and the second was Intermedia Arts. SOOVAC was more like a regular gallery where you are looking at the work of "classic" type artists. Intermedia Arts was different and unique though. They were featuring the work of 28 female hip hop artists and their take on women empowerment today. A lot of their work was in grafitti style, or as collages. Some of it was more classic looking such as paintings and sculptures. It was all very hip and modern looking.
I went to SOOVAC first. When you walk in it looks like a little store. You can buy unique items of the sort you would find a the gift shop Patina. But when you walk a little bit further in you see the two galleries. One is much larger than the other. The larger one was holding the work of Greg Gossel in a show that was called Broken. He's an interesting artist in that he likes to make large paintings of comic book scenes. They look like the small square pictures that you would see in a comic book, but on a much larger scale. He'll usually have two different scenes on top of each other, where depending on where you are looking you will either see one or the other. My favorite painting that he did was a large portrait of a baseball player called Hank In Yellow. It had that comic book look to it also, but without all of the other images in the back ground. I like that it was simple and straight forward. You could just look at it and appreciate it for what was.
The other smaller gallery space at SOOVAC held work by a woman named Amy Rice. She does smaller works of art on a wood back ground. Her work has an Asian flare to it, where you feel like your looking at an Asian country side scene. My favorite work that she did was called Paper Boat. It looks like a little fortune cookie made out of paper with a person sailing it around a lake. If I was going to buy any art from this place it would be from Amy Rice rather than Greg Gossel.
The next place that I went to was Intermedia Arts. It's a larger space than SOOVAC but from the outside you could more easily drive or walk past it without realizing it was there. The thing you would notice while walking or driving by would be the large mural just outside the door. Walking in you are able to go a variety of different ways. You can walk straight in and talk to the information desk, you can go to the left and see a screening of something, or you can go to the right and see the Mama Said Knock You Out exibit, which is what I was there to see. This exibit was put together to show female empowerment as portrayed by female hip hop artists. They all did a very good job. It was interesting to see the perspective of so many. Some seemed angry, others at peace with themselves, still other were just trying to get a message across........such as "Well behaved women rarely make history"!
There were two works that I liked the best at Intermedia Arts. Both of them were by an artist simply called Niz. The first one is Badu-Turn up the Bass! This is a painting of an African American woman who looks like she is sitting on a speaker. But rather than seeing the speaker you are seeing a bunch of speaker amplifiers all over her body. Not only did I like the look of this painting, I liked what it seemed to represent. To me I saw a woman who is letting her inner voice scream out. And not only is she letting it scream out, she's turning it up! I found it to be inspirational for all women.
The second painting by Niz that I liked a lot was New World Blues. This is another painting of an African American women but this time she looks more subdued. She is dressed in a more classic style of the sort you would see being worn during Cival War times. She looks sad with her face turned towards the ground and some sort of cigarette in her mouth. What is interesting is that across her chest is a sash that says Triumph. Again this painting spoke to me. In my own view what I saw was a representation of a people who have made huge progress in their struggle for equality, but yet are still up against a big wall. There is much work to be done still when it comes to racism and equality for all. To me she represents this.
On the outside of Intermedia Arts, as I said earlier, there are murals. They wrap a
ll around the building and hide many different things in their colors. Some were peaceful and tranquil and others were screaming and loud. There was so much to pull on your eyes that I had to stand there for awhile just to take it all in. My favorite mural outside was of a woman coming out of what looked like a locust flower. This is a traditional representation in Asian religions of the beginning of life. The woman of course being the mother of all. It was neat how they had art not only on the outside of the building but on the inside as well. It was a totally different kind of art on the outside, so you could again see the many different layers of a womans emotions as well as the many different types of art that can be created.Over all I would have to put these two galleries lower on the list of my favorites. They were interesting to go to, but I can't see myself going back to either of them. I like the art that was at Intermedia Arts a lot more than what was at SOOVAC, it just spoke to me more.
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