Trolley Hop Gets Fishy

(Or Maybe Kitschy)

By: Tamsen Merrill

Published On: August 31, 2010

The trolley was worth the hop in August: a slew of new exhibits, known treats and singing sea life.

On the east end, at Tim Faulkner Gallery, Lawson Rogers showed his streetwise creations from Makeshift Clothing. “It started with me just wanting to do screen printing and wear my own art work,” he said. One his favorites was a tight collage of sharp faces with contrasting expressions in white on black. “It’s one of the only pieces where I didn’t use a computer program to edit or clean; it’s completely hand-drawn.”

Down the street at Swanson Reed Contemporary, Jacob Heustis was taking time off from playing bass in Wax Fang to reveal his other artistic side. His latest batch of paintings spoke to the economic market and art as a commodity: One wall held a giant SOLD sign painted thick, drippy red on a white background; next to it, another huge canvas with a single drop of red paint on a vast field of white. We thought we got it, but his interpretation was welcome.

“SOLD is the way the rest of the world says that,” Heustis says. “The art world is the only place that you can be pretentious enough to use a tiny little red dot and not be literal.”

Further on, Shine Wellness Studio was a good fit for Linda Erzinger’s exhibition: Flowing, colorful figures painted on glass and upcycled acrylic.

Just around the corner, the evening’s biggest crowd of gallery viewers hovered around The Green Building, where they absorbed Bryce Hudson's exhibit, then drinks at 732 Social..

On the west side, 21c showed a stunning collection from Simen Johan, while PYRO Gallery hosted Debra Lott, among other female artists. Our goofy instincts were drawn to what was outside: The Art Car exhibit near Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.

Autos were decorated in various states of kitschy wonder along West Main: 1953 Plymouth painted like Jackson Pollack had a nightmare? Got it. Ford Fairmont as traveling Tiki Bar? No problem. But it was the mid-’80s Volvo covered with animatronic bass and lobsters — infamously known as Sashimi Tabernacle Choir — that stole the show. As each “normal” car passed by, its motion-sensitive body burst into fishy song and crustacean dance.

Fine art and plastic bottom feeders: a great First Friday.