Justin Mata "Wheels Wallpaper" at Rare Medium

Pictured above: Justin Mata, Wheels Wallpaper, 2012, gel medium transfer. Rare Medium Gallery, at 1321 East Pine, is located on the meridian of my near-daily travel to my home. The gallery is currently exhibiting collective member Justin Mata's Wheels Wallpaper, a series of gel medium transfers of motorcar hubcaps and wheel images. Exhibiting with Mata is Cory Verellen's prints of umbrellas. The imagery of this show was to me today associative two things in the largest sense, and as usual for art experiences, many smaller things. Mata's sculptural transfers, using an exhibit system that produces a time-based effect on the gel transfers, drooping them like so many Dali watches, or the gloopy-gloppys that I made from elmer's glue on the palm of my childhood hand. The choice of a hubcap started me on my own hubcap flashback of last summer in the Klamath National Forest, when I was searching for hubcaps for the raw material for an exhibit I was selected for, at the Kentucky Museum Of Art And Craft, Louisville. I found my lode in the tiny hamlet of Etna, California, in knee high grass behind a decades-abandoned filling station. Salvation arrived when I found a complete set of four Chevy New Process truck hubcaps waiting for me to liberate them, which I did, I painted a swine face on two, one of which was exhibited at The Kentucky Museum. The second associative reaction to the Rare Medium exhibit was in response to Mr. Verellen's umbrella images. I was transported back to the filmic portrait (commonly referred to as Screen Test) of Andriew Warhola's Edie Sedgwick, which I had worshipped brazenly at The Tacoma Art Museum as part of Hide/Seek over the course of repeated visits. I have been fascinated with the tragic story of Edie Sedgwick and quite possibly hopelessly infatuated with her charming beauty. In Warhola's portrait, Ms. Sedgwick is wearing a scarf over her hair that is embellished with -wait for it- umbrellas. The proximity of Rare Medium to my home is fortunate. If one can make the distance traveled, it is well worth a visit. Good times.