Studio visit with Abel Gutierrez Baker - portrait
I drove out to CalArts. It is a skooch off the beaten track, but what glorious weather - it was like a vacation in an afternoon. I was a bit early, and it was a bank holiday so the halls were empty but for a few hard-cores, which served to up the atmosphere of my visit.
Abel will do a drawing of Liz and one of Jon - the portraits will form a diptych. He's thinking of using the charcoal pencil on pencil technique so that depending on where you are in the room, the imagery appears and disappears. This is as good a photograph I was able to get in the studio lighting, but its good enough to get the point across. Jon and Liz will be supplying Abel with a couple of images of each of them as teens to choose from. I like that they'll be rendered at the age at which they were on the verge of becoming adults, aptly since Abel’s work deals with this time in a boy’s life.
There are some curious titles in Abel’s bookshelf, one of which has the word Bride on it. Are there two copies of a book called "Terror Hospital"? There are several boy oriented books, even an author named Kidd, but I gotta borrow this one: "Some Faggy Gestures," by Henrik Olesen.
Abel's upcoming thesis show will be focusing on images of boys in water. The imagery in the painting and Cyanotypes are sourced from life-saving instruction photographs. Taken out of context, underscored and isolated by Abel, they become eerie and romantic. To me, the boys in his work communicate a wistfulness, a glorious naivete, a physical and spirited admiration of youth. The painted shirtless bodies with limbs flailing, posing or floating in water submissively held by another - they all capture some essence of boyhood communal innocence on the edge of being lost.
Abel's upcoming thesis show will be focusing on images of boys in water. The imagery in the painting and Cyanotypes are sourced from life-saving instruction photographs. Taken out of context, underscored and isolated by Abel, they become eerie and romantic. To me, the boys in his work communicate a wistfulness, a glorious naivete, a physical and spirited admiration of youth. The painted shirtless bodies with limbs flailing, posing seriously for portraits, or floating in water submissively held by another - they all capture some essence of communal innocence on the edge of being lost.
and the man himself
This is a graphic I found in one of the non-Braille versions of Boys Life. It reminds me of a family crest, or a wonderful tattoo
