Downtown San Jose is in the midst of a humble but noteworthy revival of the contemporary and urban art community and the first Friday evening of each month the galleries stay open late and serve drinks to the steadily growing crowds. People are waking up to art and it's good. In fact, on the opening night I sold one young woman her first piece of original art. A significant moment to be sure.
Kaleid Gallery provides opportunity and exposure to emerging artists in the South Bay Area and during the opening night of my show we had a DJ and upwards of 250 visitors.
We quickly ran out of wine and unfortunately Jesus wasn't there to do his thing. His words, however, are found in the rather cumbersome title of my exhibition:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
This comes from the Gospel of Thomas (which didn't make the cut for the Bible) and is one of those sayings that most contemporary scholars attribute to Jesus but that made the early church a bit nervous. (Personally, I'm surprised the water-into-wine story made it in over this one.) Anyhow, my formal education in philosophy, religion and psychology keeps showing up in my art and this show is no exception.
My undergraduate education in philosophy and religion effectively dismantled my conception of God and my subsequent graduate education in psychology finished the process by deconstructing my understanding of self. (Don't worry; things aren't quite as hopelessly post-modern as that last sentence makes them sound.) As far as the art goes, I'm beginning to see my work as an attempt to repair my relationship to God and self. An odd type of reconstruction. A hesitant advance and retreat. Perhaps you could even call it an uneasy reconciliation. Well, nonetheless, I've been finding that through artmaking I can engage concepts and experiences that were previously confined to the academic language of textbooks. And interestingly, I've recently begun to take apart old textbooks and create my own narratives and texts out of their pages.
The "Helping Professional" series (see images) is made up of pages from an old first aid manual that had a strange appeal when I first came across it in a second-hand store earlier this year. As I began to work with the pages, I started to see a parallel between the physical wounds in the pictures and the emotional wounds of my psychotherapy patients (I'm a psychotherapist intern). The sentences and phrases could be interpreted as my own thoughts and feelings or as the thoughts and feelings of my patients. At this point, I learn far more from these pages than from the pages of the textbooks they tried to make me buy for class. Hope you enjoy.
View the Photo Gallery to browse the rest of the series.
Kaleid Gallery Featured Artist - June 6th - July 14th
Eric's work can also be found @ www.erictaggart.com