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SANTA CRUZ , CALIFORNIA...BILLS WHEELS

T.J-LAZER

By T.J-LAZER
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LOUDFAT

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from a while ago

Sentinel staff writer

 

When the artist known as Gore.b left his childhood hometown of Santa Cruz several years ago, there wasn't much going on in terms of the visual arts, from his point of view.

 

So, he went to New York, fell in love with the world's most vibrant and cosmopolitan city and made some in-roads in a career as an artist.

 

Earlier this year, Gore.b moved back to Santa Cruz. What he encountered in the arts scene was something completely new and unexpected: the Hide Gallery, the Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary Art, the ambitious plans to convert the former site of the Salz Tannery into a live/work arts center.

 

"I figured it was a great time to come back," he said. "Santa Cruz to me has always been like Grand Central Station. I come here and stay a little bit, then I get on another train. But this time, I'll be around for a while."

 

Gore.b is one of six young Santa Cruz-based artists featured in the new group show called "Six Degrees of Separation," now showing a the Mill Gallery, an annex of the Hide, located at the Mill, the former Yellow Taxi building on the south end of Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz. He will show a few of his larger-scale paintings inspired by Ansel Adams photos with local roots.

 

Gore.b will be the first to tell you that he's rather anonymous in the art world -- literally so, his given name **** and he wouldn't reveal his last name. But that's how he prefers it. In New York, he developed a style that makes a virtue of anonymity. Growing out of the street-art movement, which itself is rooted in graffiti art, Gore.b is a painter and sometime-sculptor who produces his work in public spaces, often unsanctioned and unsigned.

 

"My art is very veiled, hidden," he said. "It's something you stumble across in the nooks and crannies of the urban environment."

 

Sentinel staff writer

 

When the artist known as Gore.b left his childhood hometown of Santa Cruz several years ago, there wasn't much going on in terms of the visual arts, from his point of view.

 

So, he went to New York, fell in love with the world's most vibrant and cosmopolitan city and made some in-roads in a career as an artist.

 

Earlier this year, Gore.b moved back to Santa Cruz. What he encountered in the arts scene was something completely new and unexpected: the Hide Gallery, the Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary Art, the ambitious plans to convert the former site of the Salz Tannery into a live/work arts center.

 

"I figured it was a great time to come back," he said. "Santa Cruz to me has always been like Grand Central Station. I come here and stay a little bit, then I get on another train. But this time, I'll be around for a while."

 

Gore.b is one of six young Santa Cruz-based artists featured in the new group show called "Six Degrees of Separation," now showing a the Mill Gallery, an annex of the Hide, located at the Mill, the former Yellow Taxi building on the south end of Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz. He will show a few of his larger-scale paintings inspired by Ansel Adams photos with local roots.

 

Gore.b will be the first to tell you that he's rather anonymous in the art world -- literally so, his given name is Adam and he wouldn't reveal his last name. But that's how he prefers it. In New York, he developed a style that makes a virtue of anonymity. Growing out of the street-art movement, which itself is rooted in graffiti art, Gore.b is a painter and sometime-sculptor who produces his work in public spaces, often unsanctioned and unsigned.

 

"My art is very veiled, hidden," he said. "It's something you stumble across in the nooks and crannies of the urban environment."

It's an ethic that flies in the face of established practices in the visual arts and, to Gore.b and many artists like, that's exactly the point.

 

"When you go to a gallery, you expect to see art. And a lot of times, people expect the unexpected in a gallery, that artists are going to do something raw and new and different. And the result of that expectation is not to be surprised by anything anymore.

 

"But if you hide your art, you can retain that element of surprise to your artwork. Lots of artists are doing that in New York, on the streets, in places where people just kind of end up stumbling across your art."

 

Even more radical is the artist's suspicion of the commercial aspect of art.

 

"I never really wanted to sell my artwork," said Gore.b. "I had to start selling my paintings for a while and I was making a decent living off of that. But it wasn't really what I wanted to do. It was too narcissistic. I didn't want to live just for myself. Art is personal, a hobby. When you sell art, it becomes like a job and I didn't want it to be a job."

 

The preference for public spaces and anonymity, the distaste for commerce all points to a guiding philosophy of Gore.b's work: for the artist to be invisible and for the art to come forward. His efforts to have his art fit into its public, urban environment are often reflected in his subject matter. He likes to evoke history in his paintings and sculptures, again emphasizing the work's setting and de-emphasizing the artist's personal vision.

 

At the Mill show, Gore.b will present four paintings inspired by photographs taken by Ansel Adams of the old Salz Tannery in 1954. Adams was a friend of the Tannery's owner Ansley Salz, who asked the great photographer to document the leather-making process at the tannery.

 

Gore.b -- who graduated from ******* in *** and later attended ***** -- was looking through the Special Collections at **** when he discovered the photos and was inspired to copy imagery from them.

 

Part of his method also has to do with material. Often, as was the case with the tannery paintings, Gore.b will use recycled paint, many times recovered from old paint cans at the landfill or other recycling centers.

 

The six artists on display at the Mill until the end of September are all friends and colleagues. Gore.b's link to the group comes largely by way of muralist Elijah Pfotenhauer, a longtime Santa Cruzan now living in San Francisco. The two were pals growing up in Santa Cruz. Pfotenhauer is, in fact, a common link between all the artists.

 

Newly relocated to Santa Cruz, Gore.b is hoping to pursue more artistic opportunities in his hometown while laying the groundwork for a career in environmental engineering.

 

As an artist, he said, he has been for years inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, the famous British sculptor known for his "land art" in rural Scotland, and subject of the acclaimed film "Rivers and Tides." But what Goldsworthy does in a rural setting -- produce art works designed not only to blend into their surroundings but in fact to decay and change over time -- Gore.b is hoping to do in an urban environment.

 

"Any time I've been caught in the act, people have been amazed at what I was doing," he said. "I'm not going to say that that justifies it, because maybe it doesn't. But I have no qualms about what I do. I feel I'm being respectful of everyone's rights and the environment."

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