Poetically Correct

Spindleworks at Local 188

By Chris Thompson

Spindleworks is at Local 188 through May 5. Call 761-7909.

“ROCKING HORSE,” with artist Earl Black, part of the Spindleworks show at Local 188.

It’s been a while since I last watched WKRP in Cincinnati, but I’m sure that the bald guy in the low-cut dress is Loni Anderson. Before her fiery divorce from Burt Reynolds, she was Jennifer, WKRP’s blonde bombshell. Next to her, on short legs with balled-up feet, stands a man who, judging by his frilly bowtie, has to be Herb. The two of them join the rest of WKRP’s personnel in a thickly-drawn cast of characters who line the bottom of John Joyce’s painting, aptly titled “WKRP,” one of the first images to greet you upon entering Local 188.

The characters stand in front of an office building that shoots ten stories towards heaven. After much thought and countless reruns, Joyce has mapped the universe of WKRP’s employees, and allocated an office to each. The top floor’s four windows are designated, in order: “Mr Carlsons Office,” “Jennifer’s off.,” and “Herb’s of” — the other “f” trails off past the building’s edge, into a pale orange and green Cincinnati afternoon. On the rooftop a smokestack emits charcoal curlicues. A black antenna sends wavy lines to join them in the indigo ether. These lines are gifts sent to Cincinnati’s listeners with love from Dr. Johnny Fever, who with almost the entire ninth floor to himself, has pride of place in Joyce’s distribution of office space. A string of text exclaims into the watercolored skies: “The #1 disc jockey in the world is Dr. Johnny Fever is because he’s a deejay and Less Nessman is a newsperson!”

Those doubting his authority should note that Joyce wears overalls with a piece of masking tape across the breast bearing the words “John Joyce the Artist.” While his work is uniquely personal, its intensity is shared by all of the Spindleworks artists. A program run by the Independents Association of Brunswick, Spindleworks is a non-profit co-operative consisting of thirty-two “outsider artists” (meaning not formally trained) with developmental disabilities. It began in the late 1970s as a weaving workshop, and while there are still a core of textile artists, it now includes a variety of media, having developed in response to the artistic growth of its participants. They get studio space, materials, and gallery space to display their work. Seventy-five percent of the sale of any artwork goes to the artist, and the remainder gets filtered back into Spindleworks. Director Charlie Buck explains that the artists work in a tight-knit community, often collaboratively, and they offer each other a level of encouragement virtually non-existent in the art world. Buck herself has been inspired by their drive for artistic growth. “It has been a great thing for me”, she says, “to really understand what a powerful thing creativity can be.”

The power, and clarity, that have resulted from these artists’ creative approaches take forms ranging from subtle to overpowering. In Diane Black’s “Meeting Myself,” a young self reaches to embrace her older self. The elder seems not quite to recognize the younger, but nevertheless extends her own hands to welcome this familiar stranger. This scene takes place against a flat black void, hinting at a desire to step outside of time and into a private universe, where youth and old age could advise one another about what to beware, or what to be sure to take time and enjoy.

The pregnant silence of “Meeting Myself” is contrasted by the apocalyptic scene conjured by Stevie Mann’s painting “Burning Angels,” in which six angels stand transfixed by the flames that have begun to swallow them. Mann’s measured clash of colors, orange and blue, red and green, produces a visual dissonance that is viscerally unsettling.

Words like “power,” “clarity,” “simplicity,” and “intensity” are often used to characterize “outsider art”, a genre which has in recent years seen a steady rise of interest, nationally and internationally, from collectors and critics. In most cases, according to Buck, collectors of “outsider” or “self-taught” art tend to purchase an artist’s entire estate and then create a market for that artist’s work. This means that the artist, if alive, usually participates minimally in the construction of his or her “career,” and often gets little financial benefit from his or her own success.

Spindleworks hopes that by increasing the visibility of its artists, it will be able to link them with galleries who can represent them, thereby fostering what Buck describes as “powerful and honest” work that is in many ways “free from the kinds of barriers” that characterize the contemporary art world. Indeed, the show is a compelling collection of work reflecting a passion and commitment that most of us would sell our souls for. In this respect, whatever it might tell us in sociological terms, in aesthetic terms the label “developmentally disabled” has little bearing on a discussion of this show; “developmentally enabled” would be more accurate.

Not long before his death in 1987, French artist Robert Filliou made one of his most poetic works: a loose fountain-pen drawing of a few blue people dancing together in a circle. Over their heads hung a single sentence, and if it’s possible to characterize Spindleworks with a single sentence, Filliou found it: “Art is what makes life more interesting than art.”

Chris Thompson can be reached at xxtopher@hotmail.com