James Cobb: Curated by Jimmy Santiago Baca

JAMES COBB

CUE ART FOUNDATION

J

JAM ES COBB 12.03.2003-1.24.2004

Curated by Jimmy Santiago Baca

THIS EXHIBITION WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY

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• WorldBusiness Capital

Financing Business Across Borders541

FORWARD

We are honored to host this exhibition, which has been generously curated by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Mr. Baca, a writer and poet. has chosen James Cobb, an artist and musician who lives in San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Baca¡s appreciation of Mr. Cobb's work demonstrates how the Foundation's discretionary selection process allows a natural cross-pollination to occur between different forms of expression.

This exhibition of digital prints, just one part of Mr. Cobb's project called "Our Children", confirms our commitment to artists of the highest quality, who. due to geographic location. might not otherwise receive such an exhibition opportunity.

CURATOR'S STAT EM ENT Jimmy Santiago Baca

On James Cobb's work Almost as if the heavens opened up on a morning when folks were all going to work, a family waits at the bus stop, dogs nearby, baby in arms of wife. man with a steady eye on pedestrians normal, when a whisper showers down from heaven in the fqrm of black leaves and they scatter over the red streets of a New York or New Mexican morning and somewhere in Texas a lone runner jogs on a sand dune like a black stink bug scales the edge of concrete block fence running to stay alive running to live longer.

Mix it up, take no safe refuge in the gentle strings of the cello let's take a red neck hick munching a green chili burger guffawing at the monstrous hurricane as if it were a mere lamb lost from its flock-Scatter it! Blow it!

Mix it up!

Growing in the infant's eyes are maddened bull elephant's cries, beneath the calm exterior of suited business man his smile gentle as a giraffe's grazing on a reserve or zoo trough greens,

we hear his soul a guzzling down deep burbling toxic flushing where voices squabble in a maddened hysteria over crumbs of bread.

Babble. chaos. mob-rioting in the midst of which we hear a gentle flute. a clarinet a spider weaving its web much the way Miles Davis braided notes on the night air.

Mix It Up! D<?n't believe the lies. don't believe the revolution is coming don't believe the words of love don't believe the killing will stop, don't believe children will not die of hunger or AIDS, don't believe in dreams it's all nightmares and naked cries sailing through broken tenement windows and a few good souls below on street corner handing out pamphlets on salvation.

Mix it up the way a mother slowly stirs in pancake batter. the way a junkie mixes heroin and cocaine into the spoon and boils under a blue flame his soul buzzes around like a fly or moth to flame singing it wings.

Mix it up the way boots of foreign occupiers sounds at night on stones, whole battalions marching heel to stone clack clack clack mix it with a woman's whimper. with a president's lie.

the droning of a TV constantly

in the background grinding our brains to dust MIX IT UP!

And so I enter Mr. Cobb's work,

those blue faced, tattooed children. the biblical betrayals.

picking their teeth with gut-tendon from a lamb just barbecued,

snapped chicken bones writhe in agony in dogs jaws--don't fucking let the teacher teach.

don't listen to your parents.

because what we see isn't there, what we hear isn't the truth, what we're told is a lie,

what we touch vanishes, what we taste is poison

what we love is killing us, so MIX IT UP! That's what the heavens promise me on this day

painters in a thousand studios mixing it up ... and some homeless man in the brain

now crosses his legs and strums his banjo

trying to find a tune to sort it out,

to sing a celebration for our madness, exploring the notes

in hopes somewhere he'll find a child

walking through the smoke, through the dead cranes,

hoping that child still remembers how to speak how to love

what compassion is ....

in his work, minds

ARTIST'S

STATEMENT

I had been using tattoo-like images in my paintings for years as a means for creating another layer of visual information, another level of narrative, and I thought it would be interesting to load full-body scans of children with this kind of information.

They were fun to work with. I rigged up a low platform on the floor of my flatbed scanner. The long, SCSI board, the blanket laid out on the low planks, the concrete floor of the studio, the whole set-up looked like some kind of dangerous back alley medical device and was a bit intimidating. One girl. eyes wide, refused to participate even though her Dad pleaded with her to do it. I had to humor and soothe. The smallest of the children had to have his parents lying on either side of him while I was scanning so that he could be brave enough. None of them liked having their faces scanned with the towel over their heads. My daughter seemed to openly defy the scanner by staring it down. Most of the kids' parents are friends and the children are used to doing "weird" things for their folks now and then. Two of the kids are mine.

The audio project gave me a second and very different opportunity to work with these kids. I recorded them talking with my wife, Rhoda Hockett. with their finished image as the conversation piece. This time, instead of having a collection of images with which to "build" their illustrations, I had a collection of phrases. sentences, noises. the children's own thoughts, with which to build an audio piece. Ultimately it became clear to me that most kids don't like clowns.

With all my work, I try to evoke a sense of the universal good at the core of things.

For me it works best when the viewer/listener finds him or herself perceiving the truth in imagery or sound and music that they might be surprised to be drawn to.

CLARE

Light-Jet pr nt on paper, 49" x 20", 2000

FORREST

Light-Jet print on paper, 49" x 20", 1999

GEORGE Light-Jet print on paper. 50" x 28", 2000

JACK

Light-Jet print on paper, 50" x 22", 2000

PHILLIPA Light-Jet print on paper, 50" x32", 2000

RICKIE L19ht-1et print on paper, 20" x 49", 2000

RUBY Light-Jet print on paper, 40" x 28", 2000

THEORA

Light-Jet print on paper, 50" x 30", 1999

TRENTON

Light-Jet print on paper, 48" x 24", 2000

VALERIE

Light-jet print on paper, 48" x 29", 2000

ARTIST'S

BIOGRAPHY

James Cobb began his real interest in visual art making flyers and posters for the bands he was drummer in during High School. He continued to casually make images during the decade following High School, but had no real interest in "art" until his wife-to-be, Rhoda Mappo, introduced him to "Mail-Art" in the late 70s. She was very active in that scene and had been for some years. Cobb was inspired by the global underground network and for the following five years or so devoted all his free time to corresponding, creating images, networking, and visiting many of the artists worldwide that were part of what they all considered a "movement". Cobb participat­ ed under the names Nunzio Mifune, the Six-Fingers Club, created many music tapes as Six Ffng T hing and put out an obscure, convoluted Xerox machine, the Mambo Press Update. Eventually he developed a sophisticated spray-paint stencil style for the use in creating multiples for small global distribution to like-minded folks.

Towards the mid 80s, Cobb began to realize that a) he wanted to create images more complex than stenciling would allow and b) since he was spending all his free time doing this work he ought to explore options such as the more mainstream gallery scene (where he noted people actually bought and sold images... even strange images). He began the process of teaching himself how to paint with oils.

Checking out coffee table art books from the library and buying all the materials he might need, he embarked upon his career as an artist, exhibiting his work all around the country.

Cobb has veered from painting full time to creating digital imagery and musical/ audio pieces at his digital home recording studio under the name of "Six Fing T hing".

He is also playing soprano sax in the musical aggregation "Pseudo Buddha" based in San Antonio, Texas.

CUE ART FOUNDATION MISSION STATEMENT

CUE Art Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides deserving artists

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

from around the country an opportunity for solo exhibition. Located in New York's

Gregory Amenoff

Chelsea gallery district, the Foundation's 2,000 sq.ft. ground floor exhibition

Thomas G. Devine

space affords these artists professional exposure comparable to that offered by

Thomas K. Y. Hsu

neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual financial restraints. CUE does

Brian D. Starer

not promote a particular school of artistic thought or practice; rather, the criteria for selection have been devised with the sole purpose in mind of exhibiting work

ADVISORY COUNCIL

by artists who have not had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have

Gregory Amenoff

received minimal exposure in New York in the last ten years.

Vicky A. Clark

At the core of CUE's mission is the determination to foster an agenda-free

William Corbett

program of twelve exhibiting artists a year, each handpicked by a single curator.

Petah Coyne

An on-site artist-in-residence program offers selected artists studio space in which

James Drake

to produce or finish work for their exhibition at CUE.

Bruce Ferguson

The responsibility to choose qualified individuals from the visual arts and beyond to act as exhibition curators rests with CUE's Advisory Council, an honorary

Sanford Hirsch Dana Hoey

group of artists and leading figures from the arts education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities. The curators, in turn, will play a role throughout

GALLERY DIRECTOR

the exhibition process, helping the artist catalogue his or her work for exhibition,

Jeremy Adams

and participating in gallery lectures and programs.

Educational initiatives in the form of public programs and artists' dialogues will take advantage of the diverse community that participates in CUE's gallery and studio programming. Foundation internships and stipends will help prepare the next generation of artists and art educators by providing practical working knowledge of the art making and exhibition process.

ALL ARTWORKŠ JAMES COBB CATALOG DESIGNED BY SPECK, BROOKLYN, NY PRINTED IN CANADA

GALLERY ASSISTANT

Sandhini Poddar

CURATOR'S

BIOGRAPHY

Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1952. His awards and honors include the Wallace Stevens Chair at Yale, the National Endowment Poetry Award, Vogelstein Foundation Award, National Hispanic Heritage Award, Berkeley Regents Award, Pushcart Prize, Southwest Book Award, American Book Award, and the International Prize.

Swept up in the narco-police madness that swirls in the barrios and ghettos of America, a nearly illiterate Baca went to jail in his early twenties and served hard, flat time, with no parole. Five years later. he emerged from prison a voracious reader and a skilled self-taught writer and went on to become a passionate and critical voke for Contemporary American Poetry.

Baca is the author of A Place to Stand, a memoir, and numerous books of poetry, including Healing Earthquakes. Black Mesa Poetry, Martin and Meditations on the

South Valley, and Immigrants in Our Own Land. CD's include Healing Earthquakes, Strike Zones, 73 Mexicans, and Defiant Reaction. Movie scripts and productions include Bound by Honor (Blood In, Blood Out), Disney Productions. and The Lone

Wolf - The Story of Pancho Gonzalez. HBO Productions.

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