{"id":27048,"date":"2014-11-06T00:02:04","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T06:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=27048"},"modified":"2025-10-24T12:58:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:58:00","slug":"freak-show-at-art-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/freak-show-at-art-access\/","title":{"rendered":"Freak Show at Art Access"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n

\n\"Freak
\n<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

It was a crowded opening with obviously interested viewers eagerly engaged with a variety of well-presented art: Marcee and Ric Blackerby\u2019s \u201cFreak Show\u201d went off without a hitch.<\/p>\n

Except for the title, that is \u2014 which, shortly after the initial postcards were sent, was abruptly changed by the Art Access board to something less catchy though (perhaps) more politically correct:\u00a0Differences \u2013 A Dialogue<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What would Toulouse-Lautrec say?<\/p>\n

Before the name change, the majority of the 20 artists already had created works commensurate with the original theme.\u00a0 And the fact is that many of the artists are \u201cdifferent\u201d in some respect \u2014 Marcee Blackerby, for example, has used a wheelchair since stricken with polio as a child \u2014 and most don\u2019t consider the \u201cFreak Show\u201d title derogatory. Blackerby certainly embraced it. Her small box of \u201cMixed Freaks\u201d has conjoined twins, a turtle boy, a girl with four arms and others along with a handy mirror so you can place yourself in the cast of characters.<\/p>\n

Blackerby acknowledges that \u201cfreak\u201d is a powerful word, and a loaded one. \u201cBut it\u2019s moving into the mainstream with a vengeance,\u201d she says. Even the Kennedy Center, parent organization to Art Access, performed the freakish play \u201cSide Show\u201d this year.\u00a0 And Sheryl Gillilan, executive director of Art Access, points out: \u201cToday\u2019s proponents of the word freak wave their \u2018freak flags\u2019 high, and forthrightly declare their right to be unique, eccentric, creative and adventurous.\u201d \u00a0As a blogger she quotes flatly states, \u201cI bet it\u2019s brought you some embarrassment . . . but . . .\u00a0it\u2019s also what makes you powerful<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gillilan says \u201cfreak\u201d can still also be used derogatorily, \u201cand those children and adults labeled as such are often the victims of bullying behavior. Thus, the conundrum of why \u2018different\u2019 people (and animals) get picked on when perhaps their differences could be harnessed as a wellspring of power, identity and creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logan Madsen is one artist who knows how to harness the power of difference. His powerful and evocative work has a powerful and evocative story behind it. Art often does, but it isn\u2019t always as well executed as this. An accomplished self-portrait by the self-taught painter accompanied by details of one of his four-fingered hands and one of his eyes hang beside a large view of Madsen\u2019s back showing more of the extremely rare and heartbreaking conditions with which he is afflicted and emotively depicts the depression which accompanies them. There are fewer than 30 documented cases of Miller\u2019s Syndrome worldwide and, according to Amanda Finlayson at Art Access, Madsen and his older sister, Heather, are the only sibling pair to have it. It affects muscle and bone formation, joints and some organs and also causes hearing loss. Incessant physical and emotional pain, the artist writes, is compounded by rampant anxiety and depression. The siblings also have Primary Cyliary Dyskinesia, which causes chronic lung disease and an autism spectrum disorder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I see somebody who looks different I want to inspect them as much as I can,\u201d Madsen says in his artist\u2019s statement. \u201cClearly it\u2019s not nice to stare, but WE ALL WANT TO. I wish I could touch them, talk with them, understand them, but it\u2019s too risky. I might offend them or get stuck having to be overly charitable . . . . We all must become more comfortable with being uncomfortable. So I am asking that you share the burden of discomfort that I have to endure. If calling me a \u2018freak\u2019 offends you, as it does me, then I will scream it out loud if only to make the masses feel my disparity for just one second. . . . I am pushing myself out onto the ledge so that you can see how scary it is to be different. You and I are different. Let\u2019s help each other understand how that makes us equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cat Palmer\u2019s photo and mixed media studies on old locker doors are dandy: intriguing combinations of quotes and images that offer contrasts to make you contemplate differences. For instance, two doors feature a conservative couple and a counter-culture couple seated on the identical loveseat before the same brick wall backdrop. (They could be the same people.) One has a quote from Audre Lorde: \u201cIt is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.\u201d The other from Thoreau: \u201cIt\u2019s not what you look at that matters, it\u2019s what you see.\u201d She also has a locker-door study of two men\u2019s body types, under- and overweight, and a transformative one of a youth. Elsewhere in the gallery she offers telling photographs of queens in regular and drag life.<\/p>\n

Several artists offer versions of Freak Shows:<\/p>\n

Travis Tanner does a tongue-in-cheek take with a mixed-media box (beautifully framed, natch) containing layers of tiny LEGO people that represent a \u201cNeat Freak,\u201d a \u201cSpeed Freak,\u201d a \u201cJesus Freak,\u201d a \u201cControl Freak,\u201d and even a \u201cFreaknStein.\u201d He reminds us that there are freak accidents, freaks of nature \u2013 you get the idea. It\u2019s a veritable \u201cState Fair Side Show of Freaks.\u201d \u00a0He says that in his work he arranges \u201cimages from our visual culture into new conceptually layered pieces. This can leave the viewer to consider the most familiar images in more provocative ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doug Wildfoerster shows a long \u201cBoardwalk\u201d that nearly fills a wall, Dr. Nightmare\u2019s Amusements, covered with remembered freaks from his childhood, done in watercolor.\u00a0 He hails from Brooklyn, near Coney Island and its famed sideshow, where he says performers were quite possibly exploited by their employers and spent their days being unapologetically stared at by strangers \u201cbut at least they were making a living at it. That might sound callous, but many of those who had physical anomalies came to freak shows after being rejected by their families.\u201d And, he adds, found a place where they could raise their own families and have friends who accepted them as they were.<\/p>\n

Two superb pieces came from the show\u2019s curators: Ric Blackerby\u2019s charming metal insect sculpture, a sort of Harlequin beetle on wheels, richly varicolored, that looks ready to go to Mardi Gras.\u00a0 He says he is calling attention to some of the small \u201cfreaks\u201d in nature, which are often thought of as scary. And his wife\u2019s \u201cWalking the Rainbow,\u201d a very large acrylic box (Blackerby is well known for her story boxes) with a painted rainbow background features a lovely woman sporting red high heels on long legs made of springs, a white rat nibbling at her coil rib cage. She balances with a downy black wing on a long blue stick. On a swing suspended from the top are conjoined bandit twins, each with a single eyeball in the center of its forehead. \u00a0A magical image that\u2019s most difficult to forget.<\/p>\n

Not all pieces are freak-related: Frank McEntire exhibits a sculpture about the Enola Gay; a \u201cChapel\u201d with the devil guarding the door (look down through the bell tower for a surprise); and the mixed media \u201cA Great Earthquake\u201d where one steps on a button on the floor to bring the interactive piece to life. Nancy and David Starks\u2019 \u201cDancing Skeleton\u201d lamp is a charmer \u2014 she seems to be doing a Tarantella despite her ominous message about death. Rod Millar\u2019s superb photographs of caterpillars draw the viewer right to the wall \u2013 the ones on a stem seem to glow in glorious psychedelic green.\u00a0 Mary Wells\u2019 watercolor children\u2019s book is easy to miss but well worth finding. Race is addressed in Soren Green\u2019s \u201cColor Blind,\u201d a nicely done mixed-media montage of a black woman resting, eyes closed, wearing a bold yellow dress, her hair streaming in colors reminiscent of Milton Glaser\u2019s famed Bob Dylan poster.<\/p>\n

Finally, as artist Brian Bean depicts in his excellent renderings of a series of five delightful consecutively numbered chickens (or maybe they\u2019re roosters \u2014 he hasn\u2019t decided) in \u201cThe Pecking Order,\u201d we are all social animals. Bean writes: \u201cAnyone who has seen or been the object of ostracism or persecution knows that we aren\u2019t too different than a flock of chickens. They have a rigid hierarchy enforced by punishment and persecution to sort status from high to low. We may use more subtle methods, but the pecking order plays out just as thoroughly in human lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately we might remember what writer Andre Dubus II (father of the National Book Award winner for\u00a0House of Sand and Fog<\/em>) discovered when his legs were crushed by a car as he assisted at an accident scene: Those of us who are not disabled \u201care merely temporarily abled.\u201d That makes us all just freaks in waiting. Let\u2019s see this powerful show and \u201cdialogue\u201d about it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Differences \u2013 A Dialogue<\/em>\u00a0is at\u00a0Art Access Gallery<\/a>\u00a0in Salt Lake City through November 14. The show also features work by Wayne Geary, Bonnie Sucec, Trish Empey, Miranda Whitlock, Matthew Jones, Jared Nielsen, Grant Fuhst and Stephanie Swift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a crowded opening with obviously interested viewers eagerly engaged with a variety of well-presented art: Marcee and Ric Blackerby\u2019s \u201cFreak Show\u201d went off without a hitch. Except for the title, that is \u2014 which, shortly after the initial postcards were sent, was abruptly changed by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":27062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[468,2140,2139,99,1911,1021,297,2138,956],"class_list":["post-27048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-art-access","tag-brian-bean","tag-doug-wildfoerster","tag-frank-mcentire","tag-logan-madsen","tag-marcee-blackerby","tag-ric-blackerby","tag-sherly-gillilan","tag-travis-tanner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/blogfreak.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 00:26:32","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\/27048","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\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27048"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97431,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27048\/revisions\/97431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}