Sonny Goes to the Art Gallery

Even though I live right around the corner from it - literally, I'm ashamed to say that I only actually visit the London Regional Art Gallery once or twice a year. Unless they have something going on that I really want to see. But they seldom do.

I didn't really want to see this newly-discovered Paul Peel painting of a big dog, but I did want to see what one can find at a yard-sale in Ohio when you have a couple thousand in cash on you and hope to find something that's really worth a few hundred thou. Apparently, they do garage sales differently down there.

Anyway, the oil painting of the dog was pretty good. An authentic Paul Peel? I don't know - as the rest of the Peel exhibit demonstrates, Paul is better known for his paintings of nude children than dogs.

But as a painting of a Saint Bernard it was remarkably well done. All that was missing was a cigar and a pawful of a winning flush. Apparently, Paul did this painting as a 17-year-old and it won a blue-ribbon at the Western Fair. It's certainly better than what I could do. And it does have that warm fire-place lit feel characteristic of all his work. And it is a darn good painting of a Saint Bernard - and who doesn't love a big Saint Bernard? But then again. It IS the work of a 17-year-old and looking at the painting up close you realize that although Paul's heart is in the right place, that's not always the case with his brush-strokes.

That show is in the basement of the gallery. I thought it might have been up on the third floor so when I came in from the street, I raced through the lobby ("Hey, no running or horse-play in the gallery, young man!" yells out the guard at the lobby desk. I shot back with "You're not the boss of me!") and caught the elevator one floor up.

Lots of good stuff up there. Portaits from the gallery's Permanent Collection of local old guys and some gals who haven't lived here in over a century or so. Photos from Beta Photos on Richmond of long-gone London street scapes and graduation photos of now-famous Londoners who haven't lived her since graduation.

And contrasting all this is an exhibition from the graduating class of the Fine Art Department of Fanshawe College. A lot of it is what you might expect - young kids striving not to do something that would be picked up in a yard sale in Ohio in one hundred years. Small chance of that happening. But there a show by one student who came up with the goods in a way that mananaged to be representational and shocking at the same time. I won't spoil the surprise. I will tell you that it involves her obsession with crows. Big black crows.

But it was when I decided to leave that I came upon the highlight of my visit. In fact, it's probably been the biggest single cultural mind-fuck that I've had in years. Probably since the first time I watched 'The Matrix.'

I was coming down the stairs from the top floor and there it was right in front of me. I had managed to miss it when I came in because I had been in such a hurry to get to the dog painting that I went right by it. Or maybe I didn't even notice it because of it's subject matter. It was wall-paper. An entire wall of wall-paper. And I'm talking about a wall which would be about the length and height of my entire house.

There's a shot of it at the top of this post.

This is what the gallery says about it - "Responding to an invitation to create a site-specific installation for our centre gallery, artist Eric Snell has devised a wall-paper project. The entire wall, 7 metres high X 14 metres wide, is covered by a commercially-available revival French toile pattern, which originated in the late 18th century.

"Snell views the project "both as cultural social anthropological comment about 'us' and the world we live in, a visual metaphor of our day-to-day life, repetitive, ordinary and endless."

"A contemporary jolt is the anachronism of a large flat-screen television playing a continuous video of the wall-paper itself. It is a sign of ubiquity; flat-screens in homes and public places, and being 'on' all the time regardless of the content."

... you know, this show is one of the reasons most people don't go to publicly-funded art galleries. They believe the people running the place are making fun of them - and with their own tax-dollars no less. They think these 'artists' guys are pulling one over on them. Being paid thousands of dollars for something their five-year-old could do better.

I won't comment about how much the guy was paid for this, or if he actually put the wall-paper up himself or if he was able to buy the stuff on sale or at least get a good deal for buying in bulk. I don't care about that. Small potatoes. The government wastes millions on much more dubious stuff than this exhibit. And if Snell's installation inspires just one kid to become an artist, or if it brings joy into the heart of another Sonny Drysdale, then it's worth the expense.

I don't feel the way most people might about this kind of thing. I walked out of the place with a big smile on my face. That wall-paper really made my day. At the moment, Eric Snell is my favorite artist.

The best part is the flat-screen television. Eric didn't content himself with making his 'comment' by sticking up a painting of the very same wall-paper or even a framed photo of the same thing. Nor by using a television with the pattern of the wall-paper on the screen as you would a photo on your computer's desk-top.

Oooohhhh, nooooo! That would be too easy. So Eric filmed a LIVE video of the wall-paper and that's what we see. Playing endlessly. Now, that my friends, is pure GENIUS.