2007-07 Vital Source Mag – July 2007
Huey Crowley
Photo by Erin Landry Looking at the studio of Huey Crowley, one can’t help but wonder about the visual landscapes he visits in his mind. “Yeah, it’s a little messy,” he says with humility. There’s a huge canvas lying against the wall; paints, oils, acrylics, books and finished art pieces are scattered on the floor. He hands me a pile of little square cardboard art pieces that he’s been selling on the streets for $20 a pop to buy groceries. For being 20 years old, Huey is no amateur in the art scene. In just two years he’s done illustrations for Stuck magazine and done deck art for Toy Machine Skateboards. He is also a skater and currently a student at MIAD. To see more of Huey’s work, visit hueycrowleypaintings.deviantart.com and myspace.com/hueythebutt. How would you describe your art? Lately I’ve been working on a lot of pieces that are influenced by abstract expressionism, but I don’t want to consider myself just an abstract expressionist. I believe that abstract expressionism is one of the purest ways to capture a feeling as far as painting goes. With these paintings, I am trying to develop a language through my mark-making, to recreate a certain point in my life. When it comes to your paintings, what is your main source of inspiration? I keep reverting back to my childhood. But as far as things that inspire me go, sometimes just walking down the street looking at buildings in Milwaukee, there are different variations of light which I find quite beautiful. I’m also inspired by the objects themselves – the bricks, the old paint, the worn-off advertisements, the painted-over graffiti. The other day I saw some windows in a building that were completely covered with dust. There were about 50 windows where dust had been cleaned off from the inside, each one by a different hand and in a unique way. I get a lot out of stuff like that. I am also inspired by Willem De Kooning, among many other abstract expressionist artists, and the graffiti artist Jean Michel Basquiat. My dad inspires me as well. How would you describe your process of creating? Painting feels sort of like a game of chess. Sometimes I will just sit for an hour or so and look at the painting, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Paint has a life of its own. I’m just trying to help it along to a finished point. Before I start, I’m never really sure what my painting is going to look like. I don’t sketch it out beforehand. When I am satisfied with the result, I will know, but I don’t believe that there can ever be a set end-point to a painting, or a feeling for that matter. What do you feel is your goal or message as an artist? If I wanted to, I could portray something literally, a story or a feeling. I could draw it, I could film it, I could write […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
Josh Rouse
“The title was conceived during a 70-mile walk through the north of Spain in October. I thought it was a funny name and it’s similar to Aesop’s tale by the name of Country Mouse and the City Mouse,” Josh Rouse says of his seventh full-length album. Filled with reflective lyrics, the sounds around the words reflect the lyrics themselves. “Put on your winter coat my dear / they say the snow is coming hard / gonna be the worst in years / seems my old wool hat’s disappeared,” he sings on “Snowy,” his blue velvet voice against a backdrop of sparse organ notes and a snare being tapped like a naked tree bough against a frosty window. Rouse still manages to make winter feel sunny by popping horns into songs languid with reverb-y guitars and docile upper octave piano (“Italian Dry Ice” ) and by hooking quickly into “Nice to Fit In” with an upbeat tempo incongruous to lyrics about being alien to a new country and feeling out of place. Rouse uses his trademark classic ‘60s and ‘70s pop sound to pay accidental or intentional homage to pop-folkies Bread, infusing his music with many of the same folk qualities and plenty of jazz. Rouse’s vocal team-ups with Paz Suay (who also works with Rouse in the duo known as “She’s Spanish, I’m American” ) is a sweet addition. Suay’s accented but perfectly complementary vocals lend an even more velvet quality to Roush’s smooth delivery. Country Mouse/City House is a summer release, but perhaps this is makes it captivating. Its seasonal timing is askew – a cold front riding on the heat waves of summer’s usual overly tripped-out pop. Conflicting themes of wanderlust versus holing up at home with one’s sweetheart mirror the feelings of cabin fever normally associated with the winter months. It may not be the hit of the summer, but when “mitten weather” comes (as Charlie Brown once called it), this album will be the one to warm up to. VS
Jul 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
July 2007
July 3 Ash Twilight of the Innocents Infectious/Warner Circus Diablo Circus Diablo Koch The Rodriguez Brothers Conversations Savant Kelly Rowland Ms. Kelly Music World Music/Columbia Silverstein Arrivals & Departures Victory Velvet Revolver Libertad RCA July 10 Against Me! New Wave Sire Bad Religion New Maps of Hell Epitaph Beatallica Sgt. Hetfield’s Motorbreath Pub Band Oglio Crowded House Time on Earth ATO Gallows Orchestra of Wolves Epitaph HIM Venus Doom Sire/Warner Interpol Our Love to Admire Capitol Reel Big Fish Monkey’s For Nothin’ and the Chimps for Free Rock Ridge Music Kim Richey Chinese Boxes Vanguard Smashing Pumpkins Zeitgeist Reprise Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Merge They Might Be Giants The Else Zöe/Rounder The Unseen Internal Salvation Hellcat/Epitaph July 17 The Cribs Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever Warner Minnie Driver Seastories Zöe/Rounder Editors An End Has a Start Epic/Fader Label Federation It’s Whateva Reprise Mick Harvey Two of Diamonds Mute The Magic Numbers Those the Brokes Astralwerks Meat Puppets Rise to Your Knees Anodyne MxPx Secret Weapon Tooth & Nail Rooney Calling the World Geffen Suzanne Vega Beauty & Crime Blue Note Matt White Best Days Geffen Yellowcard Paper Walls Capitol July 24 Adema Kill the Headlights Immortal Peter Criss One For All Silvercat/RED Emily Haines & The Soft Skeletons What is Free to a Good Home Last Gang Talib Kweli Ear Drum Blacksmith/Warner Mobile Tomorrow Starts Today The Militia Group Sum 41 Underclass Hero Island Tegan & Sara The Con Vapor/Sanctuary UNKLE War Stories Surrender All Jon Vanderslice Emerald City Barsuk July 31 Luka Bloom Tribe Cooking Vinyl Recoil subHuman Mute Shivaree Tainted Love: Mating Calls and Fight Songs Zöe/Rounder The Thrills Teenager Virgin
Jul 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Temporary Beauty
The phrase “art on wheels” conjures images of taxi billboards, tour vans with flaming skulls and purple ponies, fancy ice cream trucks with neon graffiti and occasionally even cleverly wrapped buses. But look a little further – specifically, further down – and these words might also encompass another, much more fleeting form – skateboard deck art. Primarily placed on the flip side of skateboard decks, these graphics are unnoticeable until the skater gives a peek of paint and sticker via a kickflip or railstand. Although it’s tough to appreciate a deck artistically while in motion, decks have still garnered appreciation for their intense graphics that are political, religious, gender-infused; smacking culture around with a flippant force that ranges from the shocking to the quirky and is seldom dull. For this reason, skateboard decks are becoming a focus for many an art gallery in the last few years, forcing them to stop rolling and stay put, fascinating many an art aficionado who might not otherwise encounter a seven-ply piece of North American maple on wheels. It’s authentic American art in its essence, with many of the artists being skaters themselves. Most involved in deck art start at an early age, while they are still learning how to drop onto a board and roll. Twenty-year-old Milwaukee skater and illustrator for Stuck Magazine, Huey Crowley, is a perfect example. “I started messing around with deck art when I was in 7th grade, and I made my first actual attempt for Black Market Skateboards when I was a junior in high,” he explains. “The deck was called ‘Fear of a Black Market Planet’ and had all the members of Public Enemy on it.” His art made it all the way to Japan to be mass-produced. A technical issue kept it from release, but it was enough to light Crowley’s fire. “From then on I was always making stuff for skateboard companies. Skater artists like Ed Templeton really psyched me up to do skateboard art. It’s nice to be able to go out and skate, and when you’re done you can come home and still keep the creativity flowing on a different scale.” Gene Evans of Luckystar Studio also started early in the mixing of skating and paint. “Skateboarding is just something we did in the trailer park I grew up in. I drew and painted on everything as a kid. I’ve always painted over existing artwork – something I still do to this day. I’ve been painting and trading painted decks since I was a kid [in the late 70s].” + Building a Better… Board Most young skaters start out on plain decks – or ‘blanks’ – because they cost less. “The more bland or boring decks (blanks too) are basically for people that just want to skate (or are poor like me),” Crowley explains. Mike ‘Beer’ of Beer City Skateboards owns a shop in Milwaukee that offers both decks with graphics and blanks. Beer said that his blank decks are about $15 – […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Cheap adversaries
We’re having a tribe rummage sale soon, and it’s long overdue. We’ll all be attempting to foist off what we no longer have room for on people who still have some space or, ideally, an actual need for it. It’s time to purge. Yesterday I took two pickup trucks full of stuff to my sister’s to store until the big day. There were about 20 boxes of boys’ clothes plus all my baby hardware and some old bikes. I’ve decided not to sell any of my own clothes. Going through them, I remember on some level that I was in love with most of the items now gathering must in my attic when I bought them, but time has not been kind to the majority, which were “fabulous deals” or on clearance at Target. Buttons have fallen off, zippers ripped (and not because my pants were tight!) and cloth has faded unevenly. I have a metric crap ton of cute t-shirts that are either too snug under the arms, too loose in the body, too short at the bottom or all of the above. And I’m not even attempting to sell my cheap bookshelves, computer desk and other remnants of modular storage desperately needed on the day they were purchased. Most barely made it through the move into my house and are reinforced with L-brackets, extra screws and wood glue. They’re going straight to the curb. You get what you pay for, I guess. I’m going to have to replace my desk and bookcases right away, but I’m not running off to a discount store for an instant fix. Nope, this time I’m doing it the new-fangled way: I’m buying used. I’ll start with Craigslist and local eBay listings, trolling other people’s rummage sales on the weekends to satisfy my craving for a tactile shopping experience. My goal is to spend $200 on a desk, chair, area rug and several sets of shelves, all of either reasonable quality or unbeatable price. And I know I can do it, too, with a little patience. By August, the proceeds from my own rummage sale will fund my new junk and I’ll never have to set foot in a Kmart to make it happen. Aside from the Benjamins I’ll save, I’ve been wondering what has caused this shift in thinking in me, the poster child for convenient problem-solving and lifelong lover of clearance deals. Because I’m serious, I have no interest in driving to Schaumburg for a cheap FLÄRKE, even if it does have five shelves. I find the whole idea uncharacteristically irritating, and I wonder if I’m the only one. Localized online selling and the catapulting popularity of thrift shopping and swapping have created new options for people weary of a disposable culture, where 30-plus years of discount retailers flooding the market with cheap goods have created the expectation that we not only don’t have to pay much for what we own, but that there’s no need to care for it because […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Jon Anne Willow
