Matt Bovie & David Fair "Cut-Ups" Show

(Over David Fair's left shoulder you can see the Mr. Peanut in the oval frame that will soon be ours!)

Traveling to the "Cut-Ups" show of Matt Bovie and David Fair at Gallery 1448 on Baltimore St. was my first trip knowingly to Baltimore's Middle East. I'd never heard of this region like I'd never heard of Harbour East until a few years ago when it appeared from a developer's cash register mind's eye. But I guess Middle East isn't a construct, just a geographical designation I'd never heard of. Crazy John's wasn't too far from where we were. That used to always be a huge point of reference for me around downtown. How far from Crazy John's or how far from that alley where Jason had a gun pulled on him and made the assailant break down weeping and hugging him.


Another hot and steamy encounter with the magic of David Fair and The Tinklers crowd in the Summer of The Big Boil with a big chunk of young Bovie fire. David and Matt's art truly resonated and worked off each other bigtime. So much so that I wasted no time at all in making the faux pas of asking David to pose for a picture in front of Matt's art.


Mr. Peanut acted as ringleader of Robert Johnson shaking hands with the devil, the thick twirly hairdos of Elvis impersonators piled up like soft serve ice cream, Batman and Superman fighting crime and skulls flaming with pinwheeling eyes and lightning crashing everywhere. Even Nancy and Sluggo made an appearance.


Thinking of our fug ugly house color - calmine lotion graveyard - that we've been wanting to get painted for a while and part 2 of our wedding - the big party - I walked into the gallery telling myself it was merely a museum full of beautiful objects. Beautiful, desirable, objects, but they must stay where they were, up on the wall. But once Everly and I walked around and got caught up in the great work, bills and the coming Apocalypse (economic, not the second part of the wedding) were soon gone from our minds and Everly began pointing at the small Bovies she wanted that were going for a great triptych deal. Besides, how much longer can these two great artists remain so affordable and for how long will they associate with the likes of us? Bovie has even on occasion already spoken of moving to LA, so he could be very soon doing lines of coke off strippers' bellies with Baseman on Rodeo Drive.


Speaking of LA, I finally got to meet Everly's old friends Rumi and Schoene (pronounced Shar-day) two days before they move there!



Below is Everly pointing. Above is Senor Bovie scowling at the paparazzi.










Despite the stifling heat and lack of air conditioning or fans, The Tinklers soldiered on and performed the classics. Of particular note was their song "Come On Down to the Beach" that just gets more poignant and beautiful with time. Plus Chris now pogo dances to it. I think his daughter has been haranguing him to rock out more. I put a small clip of it up on the Audrey Normals Facebook page. They also performed some David Fair compositions and invited David up to sing on a Coo Coo Rockin' Time tune.





And it was a tough decision, but we went with the oval framed Mr. Peanut by David, although I was torn by the totem pole pieces that were made up of his main icons like snakes, Mr. Peanut, Superman and Elvis. I guess that's the nice switch that David and Matt do. David makes the pop primal and primitive and Matt makes the primitive and primal pop. The end results are eye candy that send electrical juice through the nervous system. The show is up until August 29th (my grim 50th birthday!)