Where: Jackson Artworks, 1108 Jackson St.
When: Through March 28; gallery hours are 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday and by appointment.
Admission: Free.
About four years ago, artist Brent Houzenga found a pair of old photo albums in a trash can.
The books were antiques, family heirlooms dating from the late 19th century.
“They were beautiful, and I couldn't believe somebody would just throw them out,” said Houzenga, a Des Moines-based artist.
Those vintage photos became the inspiration for a series of mixed media works now on display at Jackson Artworks. The show, “Slippery Humanist Values,” also features Omaha artist Watie White's new series, “Stolen Paintings.”
Houzenga took the old photos, mostly of anonymous people in characteristically unsmiling 19th-century poses, and stenciled them onto the back of old windows. The tattered frames around those windows implies the antiquity of the original photos. It also suggests the artist's rural and rustic background. “I grew up in on a farm in Illinois,” he said.
Houzenga's aesthetic sense, however, is urban and contemporary. His works reveal influences from modern art, comic books, punk rock posters and graffiti.
One of his stencils, “Hot Rod,” shows a 19th-century woman stenciled in vibrant yellow and orange. The colors reminded Houzenga of a 1970s era muscle car, hence the title.
“Produced From Scribbles” shows a bearded old man wearing a Christian cross. The stencil is intended to be ironic. Houzenga created the image using swirls of paint applied in a random fashion, a process that is symbolically the opposite of Intelligent Design.
Houzenga found only one photo that wasn't anonymous. It showed the U.S. Cavalry Band, circa 1889, in New Mexico. Houzenga used this quartet –– two fiddle players, banjo player and guitarist –– to create his “Four Pieces.” The musicians are stenciled in a warm, earthy brown paint. Houzenga said the image has become his most popular work.
White moved to Omaha a few years ago and has quickly become one of the city's most prominent and exhibited artists. “Stolen Paintings” all feature White's acquaintances, who've been inserted into great paintings of the past.
White asked his friends to pick a painting that in some way captured their personalities. He then interviewed them to find out more about their interests and backgrounds. He incorporates all this information into his paintings.
A friend named Stuart chose two seemingly unrelated paintings –– 19th-century English Romantic painter John Constable's “Hay Wain” and 20th-century British painter David Hockney's “My Parents.”
Stuart is shown in profile holding the Hockney painting, with himself depicted as both his mother and father. He's standing in a seemingly bucolic landscape that's being attacked by German stukas (dive bombers) and V-1 rockets. It's as if Constable had done an illustration for Thomas Pynchon's “Gravity's Rainbow.”
Other friends are painted into Duchamp's “Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2” and Caravaggio's “Bacchus.”
The show runs through March 28.
Contact the writer:
444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com
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