Arts DEVOté

Summer has my brain
Arts DEVOté is already staying inside too much, giving in to the heat way early. The Inter-web is just so close to the swamp cooler, and the new issue of Raw Vision (the UK journal of Outsider Art, Art Brut and Folk Art) just arrived. Picture A.D., happy as a baby in his moist, cool womb, clicking away the day and reading about the guns of Alexander Lobanov, the deaf-mute Russian who only drew pictures of himself … and his guns.

The day DEVO died
In case you hadn’t already made up your mind that A.D. was more DEVO than Art, here’s the final nail in the frame: The magnetic specimen at left (Its eyes follow me when I sleep!) is one of many beauties in the collection of the Museum of Bad Art in Dedham, Mass., and it’s one of A.D.’s new favorites. From the description at www.museumofbadart.com: “This blending of big top themes with a piercing study of the dark side of human nature, elevates the well-worn clown genre to a new and exhilarating level.” Amen!

The MOBA’s entire collection of “art too bad to be ignored”—most of which was discovered in thrift stores or rescued from garbage cans—is stellar. Some of the most impressive art A.D. has seen lately. You think he’s kidding?

Seriously though
… Isn’t one goal of making art to causes a reaction? Sure, the reaction here might be something like, “Hold me, Mommy. I’m scared,” or “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” but A.D. would still hang most of the stuff here on his wall … if he lived alone. And the Inter-web has much more: The Bad Art Gallery (www.badartgallery.com) has some decent portraits, and Huge Magazine’s thrift store art gallery has an amazing piece titled “Auto-Erotic Strangulation” (www.hugemagazine.com/thrift/). But Paul’s Gallery of Thrift Store Art has the winner in John Ellison’s painting of a baby angel serenading what appears to be a baby Jesus in bondage under a giant yellow candle. Poetry. See more at: www.taiga.com/~paul/. It’s so hard choose which images to include here. Must. Squeeze. In. One. More. Ooh, pretty!

Weekly Devotions

• Goblin Market : An erotic, two-woman musical based on a 19th century poem? I’m so there. Blue Room Theatre, through May 20, 7:30 p.m.

• Shakespeare in the Park Spring Gala Fundraiser: Fri., May 19, 6-8 p.m. at Chico Theater Company.

• You Are Damned! Send ’em to Hell at www.youaredamned.com.