So we drove to downtown and found a place to park near the Padres stadium and walked to the venue, which I'm pretty sure is called Community/Space, with the show itself called The Machine Shop "Covered Walls" show from the flyer I found online afterwards. It's off 15th Street in East Village, really not the most savory place in the world but the venue itself was really cool. You walk down an alleyway and about halfway down there's like another where they rigged some lighting. At the end there's an opening into the building to the left where they had the gallery and a small upstairs area for hanging out. Its kinda small but most art galleries are and this one had a really good vibe going on. It was obviously a converted industrial space, like the founders had noticed the potential for this unused space and did something creative with it. I like that. Bout it bout it.
One of the really awesome aspects of this particular experience for us was that on our way there we didn't really know what to expect because I guess Mark had just read an article in like a local SD weekly mag but couldn't remember much on details. We weren't even sure if there was a cover charge or what, assuming there wouldn't be I guess. We get there and not only is it free and in this cool place, but there is free alcohol!! 2 kegs and what appeared to be endless bottles of red wine = I can work with that. None of us were exactly trying to get smashed but it was definitely cool especially because it was unexpected. There was a DJ there called DJ Slowhand who was playing some cool grooves. I can't exactly remember everything he was spinning because I wasn't intently paying attention, but I do remember him throwing in some vintage groove in there and everything was a pleasurable mix.
As far as the actual art goes, I liked pretty much everything in there but the different artists on display had drastically different styles. The artist Mark had heard about, Kyle Boatwright, is a graffiti artist from Imperial Beach who apparently got arrested for over 200 counts of vandalism and spent time in jail for it, paid $83,000 for it, and now he doesn't do it on the streets he does it in galleries. Lesson learned I guess. But he was doing a live wallsize piece at the back of the outside part of the venue and all night his piece just came together more and more. It was like this twacked out guy in a straightjacket breaking out his arms to spraypaint the word "Sain" (I think) all crazy next to him. The outline of the image and words was already done when we got there but all night he was doing crazy shading and coloring and watching it live you really take appreciation for how much work making any type of art like that takes. It's unfortunate that this guy had to learn the hard way that the illegal street stuff would catch up with him eventually, but at least he continues on with his talent with people now actually taking notice of him etc. Cool story.
The art inside was all over the place. Each artist had drastically different styles, with one of the artists, Max Mcilwee, displaying different styles amongst his own works. Most of Mcilwee's pieces were sort of urbanized caricatures with prominent African features, but a piece of his called "Karli" was entirely of a different strain. It was a painful-looking old tree with a bright but sad desert-tone background, all painted on what appeared to be an old wooden window shutter. The whole effect was pretty strong, lots of apparent emotional content I'd say. Also this Mcilwee guy had a really cool business card that was like grafted onto a piece of sheet plastic or something, more interesting than your average card.
The artist who was featured the most prominently, or at least it seemed that way because his pieces are so big and bright and because they were the ones featured on the biggest wall in the gallery, was named Monty Montgomery. He has a really hyperactive, neon pop art thing going on that at once I like to look at but don't see the depth in. It's cool bright stuff and his figures are clear, and the collage effect does allude to some sort of intended reaction, but for me it's merely a visual feast that doesn't make me think really.
I'd say my favorite artist featured at this event was Eric Borja, whos works are like spastic yet refined scribble works that create like disjointed human figures, or in of the pieces, the semblance of a city map. At first glance it looks like colorful chaos but if you take it in it's like the random colliding strands of life clashing. I don't have the proper artwork terminology to accurately describe or critique these artists, obviously, but this guy's work appeared to me to be the closest to the kind of thing I used to see in art books and stuff back in high school. But in a good way.
Two other featured artists were Ryan Warnhoff and Carrie Hudson, both of whom titled their works as "Untitled" and both of whom represented the darker works in the gallery, both literally in terms of the colors used but also in the subject matter or emotional tone. Warnhoff's piece was like a noisy but abstract moonlight scene, focused on shadowy circles like orbs in a dead sky. It looks like a Mogwai song, if that helps you out. Very cool and if he had more pieces featured he might vye with Borja for my favorite artist of the night. Hudson's two pieces were of identifiable objects like an old sailship in a storm or a looming elephant, both depicted as though from a quiet nightmare. The elephant in particular has like a strained, weathered look to it that and both of her works had an almost alarming feeling to them as opposed to Warnhoff's somewhat subdued beauty.
There were other artists featured, maybe one or two more that I didn't end up taking pictures of their works so looking back I don't remember. One of the other artists was a photographer who had 3 pieces on the main wall on the tiny upstairs level, of like SoCal summer type imagery. It was nice, but for me it was nothing special and I didn't want to take a picture of it. I know that my friend Ryan Novak, however, had told me that one of these photographs was his favorite of the night. Another artist had a 3-D piece on one of the downstairs walls that was like a bunch of origami frogs facing one direction on the outside of a paper box with one faced the other direction and a different color than the others fixed to the inside visible through a square cutout from the front. To me this was almost like too amateurish to even be displayed at a gallery even a more rugged one like this, so it didn't keep my interest. I'm surprised it even came back to me weeks later.
After going through the gallery, getting a beer, watching the graffiti guy for a bit, getting another beer, going back in the gallery to re-examine and get my pictures, and probably getting another beer, I got a phone call from Sarah saying that we were gonna be on our way. I'm not sure how long we were there but it was definitely a good time and I'd recommend that place to anybody when there's an event there. We had an unexpectedly good time especially considering the unexpected free beer.
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