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UnDO Index   This is unDO#1

I'm Not The Dallas Observer's
New Art Critic & Neither Are You

Story + Photographs by J R Compton

CentralTrak pool

For a while there, couple weeks ago, I was proffered the job as The Dallas Observer's art critic. Boy, do they need one. Despite niggling doubts, I accepted and was eager for more interview. But I haven't heard back, so I'm likely no longer in the running. Good thing. They need someone younger, energetic. I haven't a clue who. But I need to get back to promoting Dallas artists.

The possibility promised serious conflicts of interest since I couldn't then cover the same subjects here — or take random months-long vacations from art — I get so tired of it sometimes I've developed The Art Ennui Index, so you can read about those without me flogging through it all again.

Laura Abrams - Orchid Not Forgotten, 2008 - found object and recycled steel at Haley-Henman
It will be at the State Fair just down from Big Tex.

I have been — may still be — in my latest bout. Haven't even looked at art this month, except my own, but these images are all from all this summer. I've promised more than I care to deliver about that show last month, yet am eager to get on to something I can watch from afar. Snipe and run. Don't much care what's going on in the commercial gallery scene. I still donate to EASL but won't attend their Fort Worth Heist (but have the only pix of their Hot Deep Dallas one), and I'll document the Fort Worth Art in the Metroplex experience again, since I got a piece in.

When I do re-start writing about art, I'll concentrate on individuals. Already got a few in mind. One would have to be Laura Abrams about whom I've writ snippets on these pages before. But she deserves serious pixels. Her show at Haley Henmann was monster, even if she did pay me to photograph it. Otherwise, I might have missed it. Stupidly.

There's been the usual gob of new galleries over the summer. First, I didn't have time — what with that show. Then I didn't want to bother checking them out (but will, gradually), though Haley-Henman, which has been around awhile, is doing right by Dallas artists. Now there's a place a really fierce show could shine.

John Williams - Big Mouth - wood and acrylic - approximately 24 x 24 x 14 inches
at Salon du FIT in the Bath House — Reminds me of the commercial gallery scene
 

At The Ob, I would have had to fill half a tabloid page — no telling how many words — maybe twice a month — cutely accompanied by as many as    two   little    black & white    images. Here I go on till I'm finished, then stop, piling through big, vivid color images. My experience — I'd need another index for all those comments — is that editors change writers' words till I don't even recognize my own writing. You can imagine how well I deal with authority figures. I don't pay me much here, but it's worth every penny.

The DO's new editor wanted stories "about the artists, their art and the characters and players behind the art scene, with a fresh, accessible, knowledgeable voice," which is what this site is already all about, except we concentrate on that all-important first element, Dallas artists. Traditionally, The Ob barely notices them.

He suggested I write a column to see if it was okay. I began thinking about this story and these exact subjects then. Their last crit was relegated to smaller and smaller slots in tinier and tiniest type us Baby-Boomers could barely see. Then they disappeared altogether.

Centraltrak in the Rearview Looking Back at Fair Park

Got excited about UTD's Centraltrak in the hot of summer. It might yet be this season's most successful new art venture, led by former DO art critic Charissa Terranova. If it lasts, it could build into something a little more involved and involving. I got splashy new color emails every couple days about something yet again new from them midsummer.

Flurry of activity, suddenly stopped, then splurts of OT — old movies?. They need pacing and a pro PR person, but have interesting ideas where art's heading, not altogether different from The Contemp's. Turns out the Trak is an upscale townie dorm for UTD resident alien artists who push some real and many imagined envelopes in a reconditioned elderly Deep Fair Park office building near under the overpass of Central Expressway.

Not entirely unlike SouthSide on wherever after they kicked out amazing local artists like Scott Barber in the big middle of chemotherapy not long before he died — and installed international artists I haven't heard a peep from since.

Art in CentralTrak's Downstairs Hallway

Before there was a Central Expressway, there was a Central Track for trains, eventually replaced by the expressway and why street names don't continue east and west of the track north and south.

CADD (Contemporary Art Dealers Association) — can you imagine anyone wanting to call themselves CADDs? Curious choice — and their new gallery. DADA (Dallas Art Dealers Association) never approached dada, so CADD probably comes closer to reality, except they're opening a gallery — Yes, an organization of galleries is opening yet another gallery, and downtown, where the parking is never free. Next to the big Needless Markup store. Can't wait.

DADA — with yet another mass opening (Art Walk) in September — used to insist new galleries wait two years before acceptance into it and their publicity extravaganzas. Then they took anybody with a room of art, changed their mind and went back to the old two-year wait. All those anyones still intact.

One hopes CADD continues being discriminating. I attended CADD's Vernissage summer a year ago, and it seemed promising. They didn't even respond to my press pass request for this summer's repeat. Neither was I excited at doppelgänging the experience.

Morton Rachofsky - Titleless #283/82 - Striped Pyramid - 3/8 inch vinyl on poplar (detail)

Another institution whose big event I tried to get press passed into was the Texas Sculpture Association's Silver Anniversary to-do that's a big fund-raiser at the Nasher. I emailed my creds, they emailed sloshily inert replies. I got the real skinny from a friend on their board. Then they sent a letterhead page saying they didn't know what they'll do. I'd told them I just wanted to photo the sculpture, but much as I love 3D art, I probably won't attend.

Meanwhile, TSA's founding president and parliamentarian Morton Rachofsky is showing still innovative three-dee art at the oddly eccentric Geometric MADI in Upper Oak Lawn along with long-time former SMU art chair Roger Winter [lower on that same linked page] most of whose reputation rests on painting, and whose work there looks like it.

Check the DallasArtsRevue calendar for full information — it's very confusing — up now but it opens next month. The MADI's been showing little shows by Dallas sculptors and is a bright and joyous venue worth lots of intellectual smiles.

Were I The DO's critic, I would happily Bronx cheer TSA, the idiots at 500X, Light & Sie, Art Prostitute, The Contempt, etc. for taking me off their press lists. I entertained dreams of leaving them out whatever I wrote there, but the high was short-lived. Growing bored with The MAC, I recently joined The Contempt so I would at least get their PR. The Observer job might, though, have netted me some younger readers.

But can you imagine smart-ass and curmudgeonly old me employed by an org whose advertisers would inevitably complain? That even has advertisers? I have played out my own hiring and firings in the Letters to the Editor pages of the DO in the long distant past, had numerous photographs pirated without credit by them, and was their first paid typesetter, so we go back.

Probably far enough.

Under Central Expressway

 

This was unDO (not the Dallas Observer) #1. unDO #2 is Repeating Patterns & New Ideas.
#3 is Deja Vus, Skewed Views, 3-D Oohs & The Muse