The Bad & The Beautiful
The orangey-pinkish jpeg in my prior posting, was sent to me by Jimmy Von Milwaukee. That’s him standing in the background looking guilty. Perhaps. The piñata in the foreground is his take on performance artist Pegi Taylor. The two have been firing rubber bullets at each other recently. Some of them have bounced around on Mary Louise Schumacher’s Art City blog, but frankly, little harm has ensued except to artist Bob Watt who got dragged into the flak and took a few unfair hits. Yes, it’s true that a strange odor sometimes wafts from his totemic sculptures of Native Americans, but if they’re displayed outside in alleys (say, in JVM’s River Rat summertime soirees), you’d hardly notice the musty odor. You can read quite a sweet tribute to Watt if you go to Julie Lindemann and John Shimon’s website. One of their portfolios features their 2002 photo (Bob Watt with Telephone) of Milwaukee’s icon, a guy with an interesting past, a guy who once ran for Mayor of Milwaukee. Poet, painter, man-about-town, believe it or not Ripley, Watt graduated with a degree in Economics!
Bob Watt with Telephone, photo by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann
