"Jamais Vu" Exhibition On Display at Coop Gallery
Tyler Boaz, an Angelo State University student, held his first solo exhibition, the “Jamais Vu” blacklight art exhibition at the Coop Gallery of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 19.
“This is a blacklight gallery,” Boaz said, “so everything has to be reflective. For paintings like this one, I would build a frame. Most of the frames in this gallery are handmade as well. I built the frames, all of these are stretched by hand. I mixed up these acrylic, neon colors with the homemade, transparent gesso that I like to make, and that’s how I get this sort of look to it.”
Boaz is a senior at ASU, majoring in the art generalist area of study. The gallery will be open again from Friday, Jan. 26 to Sunday, Jan. 28 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
"Quality Guaranteed"
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“As far as subject matter, this is a neon sign. It says ‘100% Unsalted Coffee’ and it’s called ‘Quality Guaranteed.’ It’s a ridiculous thing to advertise and that’s kind of the whole point. It’s just, people will say whatever they can to get their leg up on the other guy even if it doesn’t make any sense.”
"Tranquility 1"
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“I have these and these are different. These aren’t paintings, these are actually drawings that I did with neon pencils which are like a variety of colored pencils that you can buy so these are all on paper. I had to leave the glass out of the frames because it was reflecting the lights in a strange way and it messed up with the colors."
"Tranquility 2"
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“This one's a bit more abstract with more hard lines and angles as obviously, people don’t look so much like that, but I did a couple of these figure drawings but once again they’re in neon colors so they’re not very realistic I suppose. They’re more dramatic-looking. These are just on recycled paper. Compared to the other one, this is meant to be a bit softer. It has more realistic features.”
"I Have Found It"
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“This is actually the first neon light painting that I did. It was meant to look like a neon sign like light bulbs, and I thought it would be funny to paint a light bulb made of light bulbs, and so I did. That’s how that one’s supposed to be. It says ‘Eureka’ on the top and the title of this one is ‘I Have Found It!’ which is the literal meaning of eureka for when you come up with an idea.”
"Game On!" and "Owl"
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“This is another one of my neon sign paintings. This one’s a bit smaller. An 11x17 canvas.” “This one here is an owl, and I have been painting that owl for the last five years, I think, over and over again. I don’t know why, really. I used to doodle it on coffee cups before I moved here, and I did it so much that the coffee shop I did it in actually hired me and they ended up putting all my little drawings on coffee cups on their shelf. This owl has made its way into a lot of my artworks, my paintings, my prints, my illustrations."
"Mr. Milo"
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“These are two of the smaller-scale neon pencil drawings. This one, ‘Mr. Milo,’ is actually a picture of my cat, and I thought it would be funny to put a picture of my cat in an art gallery."
"Faithful Contemplation"
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“And this one here, ‘Fateful Contemplation,’ this is actually a drawing of a bit of photography that I did for a friend of mine. We were in a church, and he had his arm slung over the funnel with the bible in his hand and he was just looking like that, and I convince my friends to model for me sometimes when I need to practice my photography drawing and paintings.”
"Behold! His Majesty King of the Coop"
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“This one here is actually quite special. Because this is my first solo exhibition, my first time, it is actually in the Coop Gallery here. This is a painting I made specifically for this show to be shown in this gallery for the first time and it is titled ‘Behold! His Majesty King of the Coop.’ It’s meant to be a sort of nod to this gallery and the fact that this is my first time having a solo exhibition here.”
"A light to guide me home"
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“This one here is actually the largest one in this gallery. I think it’s approximately five by four feet, so it’s quite large. I had to use a tripod to set it up here. It’s one that I like quite a bit. It sort of almost a landscape painting of a lighthouse cutting through a background of like a starry sky, and I thought it was an interesting idea and so I thought, ‘you know, lighthouses are really big, so I’m gonna put it on a big canvas,’ so that’s what I did.”
"Make it to Sunday"
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“These ones here are all meant to be shown together. They’re three parts of one larger group of artworks and they’re titled ‘Make It to Sunday,’ and it’s a continuous… different gas gauges going down and the canvas is just shrinking. This was inspired by my anxiety around how much money I had to spend on gas driving home from campus one day, so I made that three-part series. It’s all meant to be displayed together.”
"Anatomical Study"
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“These are just some anatomical studies that I did of the skeleton bones and the hands, the muscles and the feet. Mostly, these are just portfolio pieces to prove that I can do this. There are certain concepts to sort of gain credibility as an artist. Part of that is proving that you can do things like anatomical correctness, so rather than just do a boring regular drawing, I did neon pencil and put it in a gallery. I made these sort of heavy-looking box frames. I thought it really added to their composition.”
"Probably shouldn't kiss this one"
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“This one here is a little more silly, I suppose. It’s a drawing I did of a frog wearing a crown on its head. It's a tree frog and I’m pretty sure they’re poisonous. That’s what that one is, just a joke.”
"Ghosts Of Rock and Roll 1"
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“This one here is ‘Ghosts of Rock and Roll.’ This is another one of the glow-in-the-dark paintings that I did so if I were to shut the lights off, this would start to glow, everything except these black areas in here, and it gives it pretty interesting shading. This one was quite complicated. This is one of my handmade canvases, and unlike those over there, this one is painted with a sort of plaster gesso that I make. A mixture of plaster and glue, and slather it. When it dries, it’s rock-hard. This is one that I like quite a bit. It’s gotten some positive reviews.”
"Ghosts of Rock and Roll 2"
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“This is my second guitar, and for this one I made a different sort of shape, and the highlights are really this thick, almost puttylike paint that I mixed up. It’s like a thick, transparent gesso and I just slapped it on there. This is the third glow-in-the-dark painting that I did. It is meant to match the other one. It has that same plaster gesso in the back on as like the first layer. It was meant to be a sort of companion and also opposite to that one, so that one’s very warm colored and this one’s very cool. They were meant to sort of counteract each other.”
"Maze"
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“This is another one of my paintings. It’s more minimalist, I suppose. Although, I think this is actually the second-largest painting in the gallery next to my lighthouse. I titled this one ‘Maze,’ just because it’s a maze of intersecting lines and it almost looks like it’s symmetrical, but in fact, it’s not. It’s sort of like an implied symmetry to it, but if you were to fold it in half either way it wouldn’t actually line up.”
"Just one couldn't hurt right?"
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“This one here is one that people seem to like. I titled this one ‘Just one couldn’t hurt right?’ This is based off an old memory I had when I was a child. I grew up with all the adults in my life were, like, heavy smokers, and I remember being a child having one of those like, Dum Dum suckers and pretending it was a cigarette and smoking it. My parents got very mad at me for that, and for some reason that memory stuck with me.”
Nelle Woodruff
Staff Writer
Aletheia Sandley
Photographer
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