by Reggie Michael Rodrigue

On a bright and breezy Sunday afternoon – the day after the opening of the Prospect New Orleans Biennial to be exact – my wife and I made our first visit to T-Lot, a Prospect 2 Satellite in the St. Claude Arts District.  If you don’t already know, T-Lot is a little different than most art spaces in the city.   It’s actually a little different than most art spaces on the planet.  That’s because T-Lot is the only space that I know of that encompasses studio spaces and 8000+ square feet of backyard in the shape of a “T” that can converted into exhibition space.   This ain’t ya mama’s art gallery!  It’s more like your insane cousin’s! You know: the one who’s always trying to build rocket ships out of grain silo parts in his backyard and smells like cheetos and red bull … and oooooh, this so makes the difference!

We were there to see the exhibition “Parallel Play,” the second annual installment of communal T-Lot madness in which members and a select group of their fellow New Orleans peers blanket the entire compound with art.  The “front desk” was an unmanned folding table laid out on gravel in the “neck” of the T.  We walked a little further into the yard, and found T-Lot members Stephen Kwok and Natalie McLaurin hanging out on a set of bleachers under an avocado tree that occasionally sent an avocado or two to dive bomb the surrounding area.   Apparently, Kwok and McLaurin were gallery sitting for the day, and they took turns assisting us graciously throughout our stay there.

We were told by them to go back to the “front desk” and avail ourselves of the exhibition list/numbered map.  There was quite a lot to see, and it was scattered all over.  To follow the list meant criss-crossing the lot over and over again, but that didn’t matter because it was like some demented scavenger hunt for art that was pretty kooky and fun.  The adjacent neighbors only added to the fun, playing accidental DJ for us while we checked out the art.  A stream of funk and rap bounced into the T-Lot from their yard.  Natalie McLaurin said they didn’t mind their neighbors, and their neighbors didn’t mind them.  They both liked to party:  T-lot’s neighbors are Mardi Gras Indians.  In fact, we missed the big party/opening they had the night before.  Another unfortunate thing was the fact that some of the art was not fully functional because they involved performances or video projections that weren’t possible to duplicate in the light of that day. It was made clear to us that “Parallel Play” requires a little bit of shadow play as well.  We were sad to hear the news, but there was still a whole lot to enjoy.

Surprisingly, the piece that my wife and I enjoyed the most was a piece that wasn’t complete when we saw it!  Stephen Kwok and Dave Greber created an alter titled “Alt” that was a ziggurat with terraced sand pits installed in a tent.   The artists littered the thing with LED tea lights (all but one of them were out by the time we got there).  There was supposed to be a video projection by Greber at the top of it, but that was missing.  What was left behind though were “offerings:”  loose change, a coffee mug, ink pens, a note book, condemns, an empty aluminum can, a hammer, a cigarette lighter and an empty cigarette pack, etc.  Kwok and Greber left instructions in the tent for visitors to leave an “offering” on the alter, something that they felt they could part with.  The whole set up was both pathetic and incredibly awesome at the same time.  It was also quite beautiful just as it was.  My wife and I spent quite a bit of time perusing the sand pits, looking for interesting “offerings” and wondering about the people who left them behind.  For me, it felt like ancient history and the present had collapsed into this piece, into one moment of classical elegance and contemporary abandonment.  I spent a little bit of time wondering what it looked like the night before with all the LED’s a glow and one of Greber’s colorfully schizophrenic videos burning on top of the alter.  The thought of it, and it made me smile.  My wife left an old, empty bottle of Nasonex for posterity.

Kwok had some other smart things on view in the two-story studio all the way at the far end of the “T.”  Kwok knows that sometimes it’s the simplest things that make the biggest impact, and with “FFF” he makes that point.  It is a sculptural installation of three white pedestals  topped with three different forms of cream: powdered creamer, moisturizing cream and heavy whipping cream.  God only knows why this was so interesting, but it was, and my wife was shocked to see the whipping cream atop one of the pedestals tremble when she walked.  What was so surprising to me was how such an austere conceptual piece made us feel like kids in kindergarten: “Kids this is cream, C-R-E-A-M!  Can you say cream?” Another great piece by Kwok was “Results, ” a white long-sleeved shirt decked out in countless homemade pinback buttons with various images and symbols on them.  It seemed like the entire world was buttoned to this shirt, and I thought it was an appropriate symbol for the kind of lives we lead today with not only our hearts but the world hanging on our sleeves.  Lastly, Kwok  presented a video called “Fixed” from his website.  It is a grid of staring competitions involving Kwok, recorded over video chat.  It’s proof that when we humans acquire great technology, ultimately it gets put to the silliest uses – sometimes rightly so.

Hannah Chalew presented a handful of works, all concerned with overgrowth and/or derelict spaces.  A topic close to every New Orleanian’s heart.    Her sculpture “Odin St. Takeover Part II” stood triumphant on its stilt legs, the paper house on top of it seeming to succumb to the elements of time and nature.  With Chalew, nature always has the upper hand.  She drapes an entire wall in the studio with handmade vine camouflage.  A couple of exquisite drawings of derelict spaces line the walls.  A beautiful collage/painting/wall sculpture titled “Intertwined”  delineates the planes of two houses with Chalew’s handmade “vines” without ever giving the viewer a glimpse of the homes themselves.   A lone  “vine” crosses the gulf between the two invisible houses.  Also on view outside is an arbor titled “Relict Landscape” which is made of actual vines planted in the ground and completed with a bench on which viewers can sit and peer out from under the arbor.  Chalew is branching out – literally.

Sadly, I felt the work of Natalie McLaurin deployed in the studio space and outside didn’t compare to the work I’ve seen from her in the past.  She offered two  sculptures of hardened clothing made possible by dipping them in resin.  These sculptures also had lights inside of them that we missed out on.  They hung from trees.  Inside, McLaurin offered some perfunctory drawings that suffered in comparison to Chalew’s which were near.  A sculpture of a cast of legs in jeans and sneakers and topped off by a paper bag stood near Mc Laurin’s drawings.  It made me yearn for one of the artist’s similar pieces with handmade bird wings instead.   One piece that could have worked was a piece of black fabric with mutliple, linear cuts across it.  It suffered from a poor presentation on another sheet of fabric.  I think if it would have been on a hard surface like a wall, it would have read better.  There was another installation of McLaurin’s concerning  what McLaurin left or gave away during her move from New York City to New Orleans, involving small sketches of these items placed in plastic sheets.  This piece lacked something in presentation as well, and I lost interest pretty quickly.   I was a little dejected.  All the poetry of the last work I saw from McLaurin was drained from this work.  What was worse was that she was being such an amazing host to us!  I felt like a heel and still do as I write this, but I gotta call ’em like I see ’em.  So sorry, Nat.

Another disappointment was Angela Berry’s sculpture “Biology of the Everyday,” a wooden and cement DNA strand that had about as much life as a neglected coat rack, although it did look like some kind of playground device from the 50’s that could poke a child’s eye out.  Other playground-looking sculptures faired a little better, but not by a whole lot.  James Goedert’s mutant ladder wasn’t so visually exciting.  It was simply a wooden ladder with one extremely long side that still didn’t manage to get one very far up in the air.  Yet, it’s title provided a good punchline: “So Long for So Little.”  Aah, conceptual sculpture jokes!  Katie Lerin’s “WARP//WEFT” was a jungle gym disguised as a weaving loom, or so it looked.  It was just OK.

I really dug Z Bhel’s “Wooden Army,” a mix of free-standing paintings of people on luan.  There was a pothead in the army, and everybody knows potheads are good for a laugh.  I imagine they must have been fun in the middle of all the  people who gathered on opening night.  I can imagine people bumping into them and apologizing to the sculptures.

Amanda Cassingham presented a performance in the form of a pamphlet advertizing the opportunity for the viewer to receive a cookie through the mail for a payment of $3.14 if they feel they “deserve” it.  This tongue in cheek offer was just ridiculous enough to pique our interest.  We snatched up a “Special Offer” pamphlet and plan on testing this capitalist/ social experiment soon.

I came to the conclusion that Jason Childers is the newest incarnation of Mr. Wizard.  His sculpture “XY, ZX,YZ”  is two squares made of thin lumber slats bisecting one another.  One is vertically oriented while the other is horizontal.  What looks like a low-rent, DIY minimalist snooze turns out to be an ingenious sculpture that is also a contraption of daVinci-like proportions.  The center of the sculpture is occupied by a shaft connected to ropes which are also connected to the lumber slats that form the squares.   Childers assembled the sculpture without the use of nails or glue.  He simply cranked the shaft in the center, and the tension exerted on the ropes pulled the squares together to form the final sculpture.  Who says art isn’t a science and science isn’t an art?  It’s sure not Jason Childers.  Granted, it took an explanation for me to even give this thing a second look, but I love it now!

Another artist who blew me away was Elizabeth McLellan, who presented a few large-scale drawings on paper on one of the fences in the back yard. Using charcoal, sediment and natural pigments, she conjured a world of decay and apocalypse that, despite the subject matter, was beautiful to behold.  In the drawings old homes and streets succumb to epic dust clouds in a mix deft representation and sublime abstraction.  Stunning!

My wife and I almost missed the last piece of the show, a prismatic and mirrored tour through an alleyway the follows the side and back of the two-story studio.  The piece is attributed to WNFG and is titled “Mind the Gap.”  I have a suspicion that WNFG is referring to the treachery of trying to walk down the alley which included a one to two foot drop on one side.  Whatever, the case, it was a great little installation that cocooned us in color, light, sky, dirt and images of ourselves, and was the perfect end to our visit to the T-Lot.

There were other pieces of art at T-lot that were OK. There were pieces that were completely missing.   I’ll leave all of these to rest.

On the whole, exploring T-Lot’s adult playground was a fantastic experience, and yes – their backyard definitely kicks your backyard’s ass – unless you have one of those giant pools with a light show and a volcano or something!  Then, you win.

“Parallel Play” is on view  at T-Lot, 1940 Saint Claude Ave., New Orleans, from Friday, October 14 at 6:00pm – Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 10:00pm