St. Verbatim in Exile

“All Art is Carpal Tunnel: Neo-Brut Works by Charles Alexander” runs through August 17th at the Scarab Club’s Second-Floor Gallery. This showing features 26 new art pieces by whimsical, tongue-in-chic area “old phartist” (he’s 72) Alexander. This is his third SC solo s how. He currently curates the Affirmations Center Art Gallery.

In June, he was a DIA Saturday Demonstrating Artist and had a “diner acclaimed” showing of his work at the Majestic Cafe. “My work goes well with caviar as well as ham and cheese,” say’s Alexander. “I can afford the latter, if properly grilled.” In the 90s he had his work featured on four Metro Times covers. “I gained a lot on notoriety f rom those covers – that and the adults only ads I ran at the time. I still get favorable comments”, he said.

A Critic Double Speaks

Preface To Alexander’s Scarab Club Exhibit:

“Is there no lovely, lovely light at the end of the carpal tunnel?” Simple Simon asked the Taker of Timely Tickets, who smiled kindly at him, conductor’s 3-in-1 oil can in hand – for aesthetic, financial, and locomotive lubrication of passing freight, of which art is only one example of many worth talking about in New York City.

Free will given. Free hand taken. Free pour forgotten. Enter at risk!
(So reads the flashing neon sign.) P.T. Barnum’s EGRESS AHEAD!

“Are there no shades of bright banker’s Euro green, no hints of
radiant bread-and-butter purple, no dot-dot-dashes of prosperity blue
to guide the artist to how it’s really done these Intelligent Design,
home-school, broadband Fundygelical days?” Simple Simon mused, paying
tokens A, B. C and D, subset URL (for distance traveled), and
pocketing X, Y, and Z (for restricted Zipcode) for himself.

[COMMUTER’S NOTE: Zipcode: Ground Zero. URL: Nice job of framing! Who
cuts your mats? Isn’t this hung downside up? You charge by inch,
hour, or critic’s choice? Your agent’s who? Forty. Fifty. Sixty
percent of what, times when, against why not? Sell much these days?
I thought not.]

“For tokens X and Y I’ll g rant 50 miles into uncharted spino-cerebral
space,” announced the Take of Timely Tickets. “Your chakra parameters
seem dimly lighted, but nonetheless audible to outsider sonic echo
and insider boombox boom. Kick up your heels for ego surfing! If you
feel the need to repeat. (Repeat the joyful sound!) Please do. Yes!
Yes! Yes! Change lobotomies and dance!

Fibrillation at High Noon

“The High Holy Synapse Days – make use of them as best you can. In
the Twilight Zone of your Dark Night of the Soul, Simple Simon, keep
them marked on your desk calendar of life. Stamp your art pieces for
Mercury retrograde in Mars. Pluto in Uranus. Mark them Venus 24/7.
Burn your roman candle at both ends. Carpal tunnel or no, the joke’s
on you. It’s an artist’s life. Red, white, mostly blue.

“And why bother poor janitor Henry Darger for far-out directions?”
the Taker of Timely Tickets added. “Or why even charm his seven
Vivian sisters, with their curious little-guy appendages, for a much-
needed Glandeco-Angelinnian ride on the Reading past do-not-collect
$200 Monopoly GO!? They’ve swept the tracks clean of two-point perspective, paint-on-
velvet Elvis Presley iconographic images. Proceed with or without 501
C3 aspirations. Boldly break a leg, my boy! Bon chance!”

“Shall I pack a lo-cal lunch?” asked Simple Simon, sheepishly, while
breaking an easterly wind, but bravely daring to skip the I’m-over-
the-hill and down-the-hillaria-tube to neo-fractured fame is
fleeting . . . And so . . . thus ever so . . . it was . . . Why
travel on an empty stomach? Why indeed? Give me back my ear . . . My starry night . . . to blink . . . and
out! Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.”

[MORAL: Pow! Bang! Shazam! Go for broke on Easy Pick! Rub hard. J
pegs, no way. Play 1492. 1776. 2012. 15 chips on papal litany orange.
Sweet XVI. Genuflect! Go bop! and benedictus, too. Deco. Deco. Art
Nouveau. A bit of outsider brut will do for you. Amen. Spell check
for truth with a carpal T. Hip hop. Seven come 9/11. Hope springs
eternal. Over and out! Bless us St. Andy of Warhol for we have
sinned. Spray paint your Alpha-Artist turf! Glitter and be . . ."]
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Translated f rom Dada French by Sr. Nada Tulate, Sisters of the Order
of Nihil Obstat, Academy of the Arts, Convent, Brooklyn by the Bridge
60606. Rosaries for the aesthetically blind on alternate Wednesday of
the month. Automated sheep shearing on Pentecost Sundays.

No Progress in Piety