Candy Cornbread at grayDUCK Gallery
Candy Cornbread, the most recent show to grace the walls of grayDUCK Gallery, is playful, colorful and full of wonderful prints. The show features the work of six Austin artists – Jason Archer, Jaime Cervantes, Satch Grimley, Matthew Rodriguez and Jeffrey Swanson. The artists worked with Red Bluff Studio (co-owned by Cervantes and Grimley) to create a whimsical show playing on art history, pop culture and good ol’ fashioned consumerism. It’s a great show for the gallery location and really seems to capture the fun side of Austin-based art. The majority of the works are screenprints of roughly uniform size. And most of the prints are beyond reasonably priced; I can’t imagine finding many more original works of art for sale by well-known Austin artists for less than $60.
artist: Jason Archer
I had the opportunity to ask Jaime Cervantes about the show; he had the following to say.
Caitlyn Collins: Tell me a little bit about how this show came together, especially as it is in collaboration with your studio.
Jaime Cervantes: We’ve been wanting to make more art-type prints instead of the usual gig posters we’ve been making for several years. Satch had this low-brow / street art print show idea he wanted to do. So we asked the guys if they wanted to do this and everyone agreed. They produced the art and the studio produced the prints.
CC: Have you worked with all of the artists featured?
JC: We’ve worked with all of the guys before to put together a similar show we did during SXSW at the old Art Authority (now the Spiderhouse Ballroom). That was the first time we got to work with them.
CC: Tell me about El Malo, one of your featured works. Though it’s a screenprint it resembles a woodcut. And of course you play on pop culture.
JC: I love Star Wars, so El Malo was very easy for me to make. I love the way cultures can collide to make something funny or absurd, and that was my take on El Malo. I also wanted it to be folk in the way it looks and its idea. Like someone heard the story of Star Wars when they were a kid, then later tried to recall who the bad guy was but couldn’t remember his name.
CC: All of the works featured are screenprints. What is it like working with this medium?
JC: Screen printing can be so clean and even. I wouldn’t know how else to lay down big areas of color and have them look so smooth and perfect. But it can also be distressed and dirty looking, kind of like letterpress or woodcuts. It really depends what an artist wants to do with it.
CC: What is your favorite work of art in the exhibition?
JC: It would have to be Matthew’s sad candy corn. I would see that image around town and always liked it even way back then. So it’s nice to finally have one to hang in my place, although I might like a happy candy corn a little more.
Candy Cornbread runs until September 25th.