• Tag Archives Mike Elko
  • Never Ending Terror

    Winter                                                                 Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

    The big day has arrived.  Kate’s last shift.  She’s off right now getting her nails done–her constant scrubbing in and out of rooms made fancy nails silly–and her toes, since she wears sandals almost all year round.  This way she’s dolled up for tonight and for the next week in Colorado.

    Back a bit I bought a print by a Minnesota artist, Mike Elko.  It hangs to the right of this computer and looking at it right now triggered a major aha.  The print is the faux cover of a magazine, Practical Paranoia.  It features a cartoon woman with sixties hairdo and clothing, a tear trickling down her face and this copy next to her:  He keeps saying, “If you question me, then the terrorists have won!”  Is all of this really necessary or is he just trying to make me crazy?  I live in…

    NEVER ENDING  TERROR!

    A Bush era piece, I bought it in part as a lest we forget, a cautionary tale about government gone loony.  As I looked at it right now, I realized a huge difference, a huge positive difference between the Bush and the Obama eras.  We don’t feel this way anymore.  There is no longer the Cheney–Rumsfeld–Bolton–Wolfowitz–Kristol nexus, a sort of demented nerve ganglia that twitched and pulsed cries of alarm at every shadow.  Obama has calmed us as a nation while continuing to actively pursue terrorists, and a sober analysis of the Bush methods.


  • Practical Paranoia

    20  bar falls 30.52  1mph ESE  windchill 19  Samhain

    Last Quarter of the Dark Moon

    Second graders from a dual-language immersion school trailed after me through the museum.  We went up on the elevator, always a hit and proceeded once on the third floor to Tanguy.   Sophia, or was it Sarah, said, “It looks like the artist created a bunch of shapes so we could figure out what was there.”  Reasonable working definition of surrealism.

    At Ensor’s Intrigue we found a face on the painting that I’d never noticed, a face in the lower right hand corner.  Here the kids expressed concern about the baby slipping, “She’s not holding the baby very well, and the other people are yelling at her.”  Since this was a Spanish immersion school and since it was mid-November, the somewhat festive atmosphere and skeletons lead to a consensus:  Day of the Dead.

    At Dr. Arrieta, Jared, a small Mexican boy who spoke no English proudly read out the Spanish language inscription.  In this case the group decided Goya was a woman who looked old because she had gray hair and wrinkles.  At they didn’t say, really old.

    We were done after three pieces, but Kyle noticed Theseus and the Centaur, so we looked at it.  Camryn, who requires hearing augmentation (I wore a receiver/transmitter so she could hear me.), made this observation, “He’s trying to kill him because humans are not supposed to have horses legs.”

    As I left, Virylena, a sweet faced Mayan girl, said, “Wait. We don’t know the way out.”

    The teacher, however, assured her that she knew the way out.

    paranoia400.gifAfter the tour I waited in the coffee shop for Mike Elko.   He had an exhibit in the Minnesota Artists Exhibition space a month or so ago.  I bought a digital print of one of his pieces.

    We talked art for a while. He believes prints, and art in general, should be simple to read and grasp.  His work all has humor in it.  He showed Careen Heegard and me some pieces from an upcoming show at the HighPoint Print co-op.  He has taken pictures from old school dictionaries, like a bantam rooster and put a saddle on the rooster, complete with a child in riding gear ready to mount.

    I’m tempted to hang a sign under this piece once I get it framed that will read:  Never Again.  This period in our political history and in particular this aspect of it, the demagogic fear mongering, has weakened our democracy and attenuated our freedoms.