Due to the blizzardo thats en route to DC my show opening at Glen Echo has been canceled. We are tentatively planning to have the opening on Feb 19.
“YOU WILL BE DRIVEN TO A POINT MIDWAY BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH! SHOCK-FULL OF THRILLS!” That sort of B-movie hype, in stand-up red letters, is just one of the elements you’ll find in the collages of Chris Lawson and Jared Ragland. But it also might be an apt description of the viewer’s response to the unique world these artists create. It’s a realm where movie still photos meet holy relics, where pulp illustration intersects with the poignant found object, where exploitation meets the ineffable. Their collaborative show, Cut Slash Paste: Collage Work By Chris Lawson and Jared Ragland, opens Friday, February 5, with an Artists Talk and Reception at 7:00 PM at Photoworks Gallery. Curated by Photoworks’ instructor William Knipscher, the exhibition runs through March 14.
Dear Friends,
November flew by didn’t it? In fact, it flew by so quickly that here we are a few days inside of December with little to show for our creative output or otherwise here on the site. We’ve been busy, I promise. Joey’s got big plans for the new year. Uncle Marv is making a go at being a real-live artist and is currently showing collage work in DC, New Orleans and Chicago, with more shows coming up in the new year. We have a few marvelous projects on the horizon, including a hopeful redesign of the site before the year’s end.
We were really encouraged last month by the interest taken in our story and our work by ink-stained lifer, music blogger and Birmingham Magazine writer Carla Jean Whitley. Upon hearing about us during a Greyhaven event in Bham last spring (where our best pal Madison Blount gave us a big shout-out from the stage), Carla Jean took a look at this-here blog and decided she’d write about us. Quite nice of her to do, huh? The piece was featured in the November issue of Birmingham Magazine, and you can read it here: THE MARVELOUS COLLECTIVE by Carla Jean Whitley. Ms. Whitley succinctly tells the story of our love at first sight and the five year romance thats been nothing but sunshine, roses and gentle pats on the bottom ever since Joey belted out a cigarette lighter love song right in the middle of a little ol’ Helena, Alabama coffee shop. Gets me misty-eyed just thinking about it. Its amazing to also think about about how next week will be the fifth anniversary of our collaboration here at tmc.com. Thats a lot of collages and blogs about debbie cakes. I’d say we are gonna do something great to celebrate, but I’m plum out of ideas and I’m saving my money for Joey’s Christmas presents (I’m going all out this year and gonna get him a FurReal Friends Biscuit My Lovin’ Pup, Guitar Hero: Mötley Crüe, and some bananagrams for his stocking - ssshhh, don’t tell), so we’ll probably just let it pass and look forward to another great go around the sun. I’m pretty sure itll be a hallmark of a year.
Too fast for love,
Uncle Marv
2a.m., and Joey and I have been battling with a collage/poster. Can’t seem to get it. And so off we go, leaving it for tomorrow. I close down photoshop, put the box of pictures away, and then with one last check of the email, the facebook, the music news…and…there it is, like it was only supposed to show up at 2a.m. What other time should it appear? Tom Waits has a website - and not only a website (his first), but an announcement for a live record from the last Glitter and Doom tour. The very tour, mind you, that my girl and St. Thomas and Marvelous Joe and Little Mandy all saw, with the first track taken from our very show in the Magic City. How ’bout that.
As St. Thomas would say: OH BOY.
Best thing about the site is page after page of Waits’ quotes. He calls it ‘Wit and Wisdom’ and verily it is. I’m up an extra hour - and that’s after watching the splash page images cycle 15 times over - whiskey in hand, reading through them and hell if I don’t have class tomorrow.
Really. OH BOY.
Tonight!
Uncle Marv (that’s me) is showing collages at the Birmingham Art Collective’s Show at Woodlawn. Check it out his artist page on their site here: B’ham Art Collective. The show is happening tonight only, at Woodrow Hall (formerly a Masonic Lodge - where there are still signs of rituals carved into the architecture) on 5504 1st Ave. No., from 5-10pm.
Marv also has a piece in the Paraphrase exhibit opening tonight at the Darkroom Gallery in New Orleans. Paraphrase features work “paraphrasing, spoofing, caricaturing, parodying or lampooning icons of photography” and is juried by the legendary John H. Lawrence, director of museum programs at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Between the hipster-styled Scottish rite rituals in Woodlawn and the hedonism in NOLA, it should be a fine, fine evening. I’m going to attempt my first mobile posts from the Bham show. Stay tuned.
