Festival of Ho Hum-Art

Coit joins weasels. I am a director of the Prairie Arts League, Simla Colorado's only arts organization and from to me to time invites are miss sent or miss received in our mail box. I also own some weasel disguises. This includes a real beret, a dark jacket, ersatz good shoes, godawful tie, etc.

I put my best Joe Camel tee on with the rest of the out fit, minus the tie, then carefully drove to the City. Denver has changed in ways cab drivers can see, lots more control of traffic and the old short cuts are disappearing. I-25 was a parking lot but I picked my way into town inside of twenty minutes working off the big road in spite of so-called improvements to slow traffic movement. Republicans hate the environment; Democrats hate people moving freely.

I found my way to Denver Center for the Preforming Arts after almost getting ripped off by my good pal, old Henry Mieninger. Have to watch the laddie. Getting art supplies at a fair price and making art in Denver is another tale.

Parking was no problem as the opening was at the start of Memorial Day weekend. I could tell there were artists around by dented fenders, weird bumper stickers, rotting body work on the cars. The good economy has by-passed the arts. I started up the steps to the palace of art.

I am on time to the event because I left my purse at home and hunger drives this artist. I was confronted by booths; this was a Taste of Denver's serving of bad art. Outdoor art shows are a favored haunt of bad art but there are good artists who feel they must show and sometimes I find a flicker of hope.

JJohn Lenticki is more than a flicker, he's for real. I have watched his work for years as he kept a school of plein aire painting alive in Colorado. Later he helped found the ray of hope in art instruction in Denver, The Denver Art Students League. The League is the place where pros teach. If you mess with art, draw, draw, draw, that way even a critic can learn to see...

IIt was close to six so I found my way with the help of my pass to the weasel trough. I was worried about grub. Outdoor shows take a load of carbs. On the way there is the start of computer generated tee shirts etc. A wave to Doug Dawson another teacher from the League days and up the stairs to the trough.

II knew the guys in suits got all the food and the artists got the shaft and I found that to be true today.

I like the view but become confused by the people tabling, I guess they are there for the real press who know nothing about art except for what Father Mike Rosen (there is no inbreeding at the Post) told them... "Artists are leeches" kind of press that ensures that Colorado spends less tax money on arts than any Pellagra Belt state. I'm being fed for being a weasel, the press are fed because there must be a higher life form than lawyers.

The Feed lot is filled with little warped sculptures sort of like Degas on 'shrums.
"Are you an Artist?" someone asks.
"No I'm a weasel, arts administrator, a suit. Until I get home."
"Oh good..."

The grub is good-tasty, much better than the brie and plonk that the galleries have been feeding me since the forties. I always thought that it was the food that stunted my, and my first teacher's (Tom Benton's), growth. As the blood rises back to my brain I start writing this article; I rejoin humanity and my critical faculties return. This is thanks to a cater named OPTIONS, their cooking is an art form.

"I am in a large room filled with bad art and it isn't the Denver Art Museum. The room is filling with brittle women of a certain age. The first wave of the Yenta League air drops in. There is one Black face and he is a waiter. No sign of Latinos. Then I see Ed Dwight's art work at least a Brother has done something. I then think that the position of Arts weasel is mainly filled by White women. I know that the state arts people are far from racist, as are the City of Denver; those people will come here long after I am gone. The mayor will come late, that is the way of the politician.

I was having an illumination, there could be something about non-profits leads to whitening. It's another world the world of controlling culture. Weasels control much of what we see. These are the people who control budgets, the foundations. What this artist has discovered is that the foundations give very little money to artists or the grass roots organizations but rather to a mafia of grants writers and administrators. Artists need not apply because they tend to use money for supplies and food.

When I hit the bricks I check out the rest of the story. I find a load of crafts. No horrible stuff but a level of mediocrity which speaks to Colorado's bad old days. The Jazz was solid tea Jazz, no coloreds here. And the layout was planned. There was a booth from Camera Obscura where photography is dragged almost past a craft level. I was once a proud photographer who thought there was a chance for my craft to become art but instead photography, shortly before the advent of the computer, became a playground for obsessive compulsives.

he fair artists were stuffed into uniform white boxes called canopies. The layout was a strictly followed formula, a sign that the obsessive compulsive had moved on to being the weasel who designed the layout of arts events. Gone are the organic booths or any attempt at display originality, this design was a one size fits all approach rather than the test of artists being able to define art spaces. In Wellington's Denver the arts and artists conform or die.

here was no sign of Bigfoot and the real weasels who circle the Wilmington, so after another swing around looking for more art I left the Festival of Dull Art, went back to my studio. On the way out I recognize one of the cops doing security from my night class at the league. Where there's art there's hope.

Back