{"id":13875,"date":"2012-11-07T04:33:38","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T10:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=13875"},"modified":"2025-11-07T21:42:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T04:42:23","slug":"gentry-blackburns-uniconic-icons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/gentry-blackburns-uniconic-icons\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentry Blackburn’s Uniconic Icons"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It is characteristic for Gentry Blackburn to undervalue her own work. This is not surprising, as her pieces, unique and surprising to the outside viewer, emanate from a world that seems all too natural for Blackburn. This is a world spiced with tin lunch pails, piles of aging LPs, vintage furniture, even a vintage storefront pony ride to accompany her and her guests who sit on 1980\u2019s vinyl chairs on the front porch. The paintings she is currently working on, for a show at Kayo Gallery this month, are a series of images of figures from 1980\u2019s popular culture Blackburn calls \u201cuniconic icons.\u201d For Blackburn, what she paints is an extension of herself, for others it is a flight of fantasy into nostalgic regions of yesteryear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In showing at Kayo Gallery, Blackburn returns to a space that she made her own for 5 years. \u201cIt was like people were walking into me, into my world,\u201d she says of Frosty Darling, the retail space she maintained on Broadway, now occupied by Kayo Gallery. \u201cIt made it kind of emotional at times\u2026 it was like walking into my living room.\u201d The store featured art, candy, clothes and handmade gifts, in a setting described by the store\u2019s website as a \u201cwestern-pop microcosm that seamlessly fuses old-time, state fair wholesomeness with a strange Warhol art aesthetic.\u201d\u00a0
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Retail is hard work, and becomes even more complicated when the owner is invested in the merchandise the way Blackburn was. \u201cIt was an extension of me and I wanted everyone to love it; I took the criticism as a direct reflection. Retail is hard but it especially hard when you feel like people are judging you.\u201d Frosty Darling had a strong local following, for which Blackburn says she is grateful, but it is difficult to stay in business serving a small if loyal clientele. \u201cI love the store; it broke my heart to close it. Sometimes when the lighting was just right it looked so cute; I was really proud of it, it was just extremely stressful. I couldn\u2019t sleep at night\u2026 and now that it\u2019s closed\u2026 it\u2019s a melancholy relief.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since closing the store, Blackburn says Frosty Darling has been in hiatus. \u201cI think of Frosty Darling as my crafting persona. The label is kind of a gift I gave to myself as I continue on. Crafting is still important to me, I\u2019m working on the paintings right now,|1|<\/strong>\u00a0but I\u2019ll always want to make things and sew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The paintings she is working on now are small-scale but beautifully rendered canvases. \u201cI do it cute, I do it well,\u201d says Blackburn.|2|<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cI want it to be something someone would want. They are earnest little paintings.\u201d The work is marvelously and thoughtfully composed, they are carefully and meaningfully presented, and the manner in which Blackburn renders them lends a characteristic look that adds a further dimension to the \u201880s \u201cunicons\u201d she paints.<\/p>\n

Why Blackburn has chosen these subjects and why nostalgia is so fundamental to her creative world has deep roots, nothing to be taken without the utmost gravity \u2014 such gravitas ironically taboo in the laissez-faire world of Frosty Darling. In her own manner of speaking, Blackburn says of her retro interest, \u201cIt feels like old friends. It feels like going back to your parents home and finding your old sleeping bag that you went to slumber parties in.\u201d This is a comfort, and moreover, a sense of security in an unsecure world that, says Blackburn, is a decisive reason for her sense of nostalgia \u2014 particularly the 1980s, the decade she grew up in, the decade that offered her the most security, that directs her work and infuses her life. \u201cIt\u2019s like hanging up family portraits,\u201d she says, \u201cThere\u2019s a comfort to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blackburn\u2019s own family life began in Heber, where her mother has been an art teacher for 31 years. Consequently, studying painting when she went to the U made perfect sense, and in 2003 she graduated with her BFA. But for the five year run of Frosty Darling, she has worked as a librarian since she was 18, enjoying being around old books. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved old things. I would much rather have vintage than the newest model. I just don\u2019t get why people always need to cycle through their material possessions. The newest thing has never appealed to me. It has always been the treasure . . . and it just looks good.\u201d This penchant for the retro has been both professional and personal. \u201cWhen you are thirteen years old and you are trying to reinvent yourself but you don\u2019t have any money, you have to go to the thrift store or rummage through your grandparents basement or make your own clothes\u2026 and that is where I learned to sew.\u201d These sartorial skills were key to Frosty Darling, where she sold clothing, handbags, and other crafted items. She also sold her paintings in the store. \u201cPainting is the thing, having done it, that makes me feel like \u2018wow, this is what I do!\u2019 A sense of accomplishment keeps you sane. Frosty Darling necessitated my work getting small, because of the limited space. It\u2019s a brainstorming session of meaning to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Blackburn\u2019s uniconic icons from the \u201880s resist the stand out iconic figures from television, film and music that much of the media has since emblazoned on our mind to define the 1980s. It was a time when \u201cVideo Killed the Radio Star\u201d and MTV gave new meaning and status to pop celebrity; film invented the sequel promising our beloved figures would appear again and again; and all facets of life were made laughable in the lovable characters of situation comedies. But Madonna, Harrison Ford and Bill Cosby are not on Blackburn\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to be iconic but not overly iconic,\u201d says Blackburn. \u201cI try to pick subjects that make you ask \u2018Who was that?\u2019 and many won\u2019t know. I\u2019m doing \u2018Who\u2019s the Boss\u2019 right now and I\u2019m not doing Tony Danza but I\u2019m doing Mona\u2026 it\u2019s iconic\u2026 but not quite. \u201d And there is good reason for this. In choosing subjects of this nature, Blackburn creates a sense of realism and a quality of immediacy that fills in the blanks, answers questions and closes the gap for a scope of total authenticity. By focusing solely on the Tony Danzas and not the Monas one focuses on super-images of super-stars, shattering authenticity and a sense of realism.<\/p>\n

Blackburn goes to great length to find images that \u201cdon\u2019t look like the first image you would find on a Google search. It\u2019s hard to find references. It\u2019s hard to find the right image. I think of them as portraits, compositions, like a family picture. I want them to be the kind of paintings where if you love \u2018Cagney and Lacey\u2019 you are going to die if you don\u2019t have this one. I try to find those images where people just have to have it, they say \u2018This would be perfect for the bathroom.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The comfort Blackburn seeks and the comfort she hopes to convey with these images is a comfort that comes with recognition of, \u201cI remember that episode! That feeling is satisfying,\u201d she says, one that embeds with the artist a security and a reality that is stable and real lending the images themselves an astounding temporal presence and verisimilitude.<\/p>\n

In one painting, inside an oval scarlet rococo frame, \u201cLacey\u201d stands on a ladder with a slight smirk while \u201cCagney\u201d looks over the shoulder of the viewer with a concerted gaze. It is a moment caught in time, frozen and permanent in its quality, unlike a media shot that looses its sense of temporality and becomes subsumed in a now replicated world of the masses of super-icons creating a warped and skewed reality.<\/p>\n

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In another, Magic Johnson stands with an enormous grin raising a basketball above the heads of reaching jubilant children in a still for an after-school special: \u201cMagic Johnson: Timeout. The Truth About HIV, AIDS and You.\u201d|4|\u00a0<\/strong>The athletic superstar is iconic enough, but this painting portrays him in a moment infused with complications. Painted with bright colors inside a mint green frame, the painting is a potent moment that well-documents some of the intensity of the 80s, handled with tremendous humanism.<\/p>\n

Other figures are certainly less iconic. Who, after all, would remember \u201cDuck Face\u201d? Gentry Blackburn would. This forgettable on and mostly off-again character from \u201cFull House\u201d had a certain charm to Blackburn, who reclaims him in a tiny and lovable portrait, two-inches square.|5|<\/strong>\u00a0And in another work drawn from the same sitcom, the secondary character \u201cMona,\u201d played by Judith Light, receives a scolding from her daughter, Angela. But we don\u2019t see a sequined dress, characteristic of the 80s, but a fragment of reality as Blackburn has recalled it.<\/p>\n

In her image of Charles Bronson, Blackburn shows him not aiming a handgun and donning a leather jacket but in a very private and personal moment.|6|<\/strong>\u00a0He is speaking on a pale blue phone receiver, with some show of emotion, and we can see he is shirtless with chestnut hair casually cascading across his brow, caught in a moment of thought, not action. This is the side that Blackburn sees and likes to remember. She rescues him for herself, for her audience, and from the world of lost icons whose distorted world of indulgence and fame is forever superseded by Blackburn\u2019s unicon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cThese are earnest homages,\u201d Blackburn says of her work, without any semblance of affect, but rather acute humility. \u201cNothing popped-up, Warholed-out or classicized\u2026 they are what they are.\u201d This is the world Gentry Blackburn is at home in \u2014 a hand-crafted reality she can define and make her own, imbued with a sense of nostalgia but also uniquely grounded in the uniconic. It gives her a unique vantage point to life that is no less real than any lifestyle or perspective. And it guarantees her work a stamp of approval, a number of quality control and a mark of authenticity, from the marvelously talented artist who you may have known in a previous episode as Frosty Darling.<\/p>\n

Gentry Blackburn\u2019s \u201cuniconic icons\u201d will be on exhibit at\u00a0Kayo Gallery\u00a0in an exhibit that also features Ryan Harrington. The show opens November 16, 6-9 pm and continues through December 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gentry Blackburn, aka Frosty Darling, returns to her space on Broadway with a series of paintings she calls uniconic icons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":14045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[1099,295,757],"class_list":["post-13875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-frosty-darling","tag-gentry-blackburn","tag-kayo-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/0bl30.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 14:55:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13875"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98059,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13875\/revisions\/98059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}