Paisley Muertos Chair: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Paisley Muertos Chair: Pop A Squat On Beautiful Art

Dick Van der Wurst on November 28, 2012

2012 • 32″ x 15″ x 15″
acrylic, spray paint, fabric on wood

I was asked to submit work to a functional art show in Houston in November, 2012. I had never done any such thing. I’m not big on “surface decorating” so it was a big creative exercise for me to make my type of art work on a random “functional object.”

A trip to one of many local Goodwill stores had me dragging home any wooden thing with a flat surface that would take paint. I found this basic wooden chair and figured the seat would be a great place to try out the latest in my “Paisley Muertos” series…since I’ve sold out of all the older ones.

I had to take the back off which was a challenge to do without breaking anything. Then I sanded and glued down the fabric to the seat very carefully. Worked out great. I painted the seat and the back separately and put it all back together at the end. Worked out pretty well. I’m going to hit Goodwill again and find more stuff to paint on. I think stuff like this will be a great addition to a show of my paintings.

Room for improvement lies in the fact that I did not address the type of chair I was using when deciding on imagery. I’ll need to keep that in mind in the future. I suppose the images of decorated death on an innocent child’s desk chair is startling but isn’t really addressed directly by me here. Hmmmm….

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7 Years Bad Luck: Relativist Pop Art by Moe Profane

7 Years Bad Luck: Surprise Associations Arrive When You’re Looking

Dick Van der Wurst on November 27, 2012

2012 • 3.5″ x 15.5″ x 3.5″
acrylic, spray paint, mirror on wood

I was asked to submit work to a functional art show in Houston in November, 2012. I had never done any such thing. I’m not big on “surface decorating” so it was a big creative exercise for me to make my type of art work on a random “functional object.”

A trip to one of many local Goodwill stores had me dragging home any wooden thing with a flat surface that would take paint. I found this $10 chunk of walnut into which 7 holes were cut to hold candles. I meditated and wikipedia’ed on the number 7 for a while, thinking of how to incorporate its significance into the piece somehow.

“7 years bad luck” occurred to me at some point. Other things were also considered for a while until the idea of incorporating a broken mirror popped into my head. BAM! I found this one at the store that was exactly the right size. Art miracles can happen.

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Displaying Art in a Bar: Making the Most of Opportunities

Dick Van der Wurst on November 4, 2012

You have to plan, anticipate and ask questions, especially if you don’t get to see the space before arriving to set up. I had the chance to take some art to New Orleans recently. It was something I have been wanting to do for years. The issue was that it was one night only, in a bar, and I had no idea what to expect.

I started with lots of questions with the organizer. Poor young lady. Just a senior at Tulane, she was used to other young folks who were inexperienced and just happy to have a space to show their college portfolios…not a surly, 40 year-old, stressed out stranger from San Antonio who was questioning everything.

After getting the info on the barricades we would have at our disposal, I sketched this up:

And here are some pics of how it turned out:

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*photos by Carl Bordelon

New Work Concept Exploration: Ennui Au Jus

Dick Van der Wurst on November 3, 2012

I have begun working on this new work. “Ennui Au Jus.”

We’ve all heard about combining food with other pleasurable sensory experiences like cheese and art shows, prime rib and strippers, sex and pastrami, so why not combine delicious food with a debilitating existential crisis?

Nothing in the world is quite so awful as boredom…I’m talking about finding life itself not only uninteresting but also purposeless. Existential boredom defines an inability to find not just particular things but all of life interesting. It manifests itself as a mood in which, for no reason you can articulate, nothing seems to satisfy—even things that normally do.

Alex Lickerman, M.D.

Au jus is French for “with [its own] juice”. The boredom that comes from having not purpose, no pressing need to act, no vision in our head of a future state that we mush attain, like a carrot enticing a horse to keep moving forward, can have us stewing in our warmed-over juices. We can choose to focus on happy distractions or accept that even if we find a diversion to distract us from our boredom, all we’ll have is a temporary distraction from the inevitability of a meaningless life and an insignificant death.

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