This night was an onslaught of arts patrons who would never go to an alternative rock arena show, mixing with fans like those sporting mohawks, or women with unreasonably short skirts, black seamed lines up the back of their stockinged legs, and nose rings. Mixing together well, and resembling what was on the paintings and other media in front of them.
Chris Mars, now an award-winning artist after a ten-year stint with the also award-winning alternative group The Replacements, even as its drummer, was likely to be hit with questions aplenty about his activities with the band, artsy and also ambitious as far as a party lifestyle, not just his art.
In the end, at this party — a prominent exhibit at The Phipps Center For The Arts in Hudson — the art won out. The exhibit across several individual galleries with two guest artists runs through Nov. 1.
AI though, attracted almost as much attention as art as it erroneously said this was a solo show by Mars, hilariously being titled “My House Is In The Pool,” actually the name not of the former big band member’s retrospective, but that of Jeremy Jones, his ceramic and mixed media sculpture form of the three-way exhibit. The third part is by Tim Byrns, “What Remains,” a wood sculpture that includes a selection from the Vilomah series. Art patrons might know what that means.Â
The people gaping at the Mars machination fit into three categories, the first and largest being local artsy patrons (snobs?), followed by rock fans who were mostly male that looked a bit younger, from two generations, than that to be following the ’80s seminal Replacements, and actual musicians who looked the slightly punk part and just might have been contemporaries.
As the award-winning showing of short Mars films and a Q and A with him wrapped up, hundreds of people rather quickly exiting through the gathering area via a ramp and then through the out door. A couple hundred more lingered then later slowly filtered out.
The attempt to keep up as The Joneses started with his own gallery exhibit being at the gateway to that of Mars, which was indeed much bigger but upstairs, and The Jeremy show began as you walked into a relatively narrow-way with a group of five of his heads as gumball machines. Do we have a narcissist here? But I do gotta say, the sculptures looked really colorful and cool.
Up a long stairwell we are to the hundreds of pieces by Mars. They showed a theme, with those previously described on these pages, a ghoulish and tall-headed group of slightly larger than the usual band figures, contorted and cavorting in various settings. They were said, on AI, which got part of the exhibit description basics wrong, to be exploring intricately themes of mercy, prejudice and community.
I said to a guy standing next to me, dressed like an early alternative rock musician and resembling Ronnie Wood of The Stones, that yeah, there is a theme here. He nodded, looking mostly straight ahead at the pieces. Was this someone important?
Almost all the pieces seemed fitting for pre-Halloween.
In a back corner, called a different small gallery than the other two, there were some earlier and smaller sketchings, mostly of a person or two only, and even some award-winning earlier drawings done by Mars in grade school, such as a football player showing grit between the bars of his facemask.
I never did see my other-art-gallery friend there. Or did I? Were some of those people filtering out quickly going to watch the simultaneous Brewer game at a sports bar? (See below.) I saw two, one in the form of a group that was maybe a bachelorette party, that fit the bill. But one woman in particular did not look like your usual baseball-capped fan, in a long deep blue sequined dress with also-long leg slit, all dressed up like for a formal affair. She was spinning around showing her wares, and more leg, to the appreciative group of men in the center of the bar. Spinning seems to be a theme.
God, attracting as much attention as the etchings at the exhibit.