Dammit, I leave town for a few weeks and suddenly Frederick is heating up. As in 99 degrees F heat. I digress, Frederick is metaphorically heating up though, a highly anticipated art show happening at Area 31 on Saturday September 1st at 6pm -ending at 9. 
Ash Cheshire – you know through the band Cheshi, also happens to be a neat visual artist. Before we give an excerpt on her artistic statement on the show – just look at the poster art to promo the show! The post card version is generating a lot of discussion – it just looks like an amazingly rad album cover in and of itself.
Here’s a portion of her statement:
Ash Cheshire is a reclamation artist using found antique art, symbology, and narrative textual elements to create work that imprints memory, both individual and shared. Cheshire’s memories originate in Appalachia where they were raised and are complicated by their queer identity, rural poverty, and a youth that feels both present and waning. Cheshire aims to attribute a new value system—one that both celebrates and critiques their roots—to antique pieces that have an inherent value to a contrary demographic: the wealthy, those who value luxury and think they define it.
In an attempt to reclaim luxury, Ash creates pieces that incorporate their personal and historical indulgences such as Spam and Kid Cuisine, leaning on the pop art movement as inspiration; a movement that articulated the tension between flamboyance and austerity. They work with and against the notion that ornament is equivalent to affluence, that one must attain wealth to decorate or celebrate. Flamboyance is in the colors and stylization. Spam becomes queer, and therefore so does rural America, where often queerity is overlooked in favor of cities, with their adornments.
Cheshire uses a simple but highly saturated color palette, provoking viewers to contemplate not only flamboyance but also Appalachian perception, often diminished in literature and art to a place where the people are simple and the setting is bucolic, saturated, lush…
In their work featuring religious symbology, Cheshire’s impulses shift toward Dadaism. Christianity is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as is Christ. Cheshire is sure not to idealize their upbringing or locale, centering on religious oppression, demonstrating what it means to question, free oneself, and erase. Interrogating the increasing societal impotence to indulge in poverty porn (i.e., a glorification or even imitation of poorness), Cheshire faces (and often defaces) Christianity and its ability to restrict, limit, and even indoctrinate abuse. Cheshire paints faces white, masks “The Last Supper” attendees, and those masks exhibit both an attempt to erase and eroticize…
Area 31 is at 31 E Patrick St. If you’ve never been – it’s hidden in an alleyway near McGuire Fine Arts gallery.
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Meanwhile, back up to Thursday nite, got a chance to see Nowns again at Cafe Nola – just really really impressed with the sound – it’s indie rock for sure, but its…I don’t know, I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but it’s that giddy joy I get from listening to LCD Soundsystem. You’re in the know because James Murphy is in the know – and the different mix of influences, from Bowie to Talking Heads, to Joy Division to…well you name it as far as influences that matter. To that effect, Nowns is channeling through Iowa native and now Frederick resident Andrew Sorensen this heady mix of electronic washes with a delicious array of sonic textures -some provided by his afro-futuristic guitar work – others through his command center of pedals and pre-programmed banks of beats and bass lines. Not sure what he’s singing out, but as I listen to a lot of West African music sung in French, I listen in much the same way his echo delay drenched vocals which reminds me of Animal Collective, but only incidentally. Check out Nowns when they play out again – but in the meantime, check out their cassettes at the Record Exchange – and there’s always bandcamp.
Rewind further to midweek and you’ll find Middle Kid has out a video produced by Frederick Playlist. It’s Playlist’s ongoing Take One series. Zack Willis has been tinkering with the lineup (impressive collection actually with Andrew Bromhal from Silent Old Mts. and Austin Braswell – yes his brother Evan was in Middle Kid previously) -this latest new-ish song “Competitive” looks ready to fly. I told Zach the “wah wah” sound from the whammy bar was totally proper – man I’m just a sucker for that sound when done right. He texted back: “Ha I love it too, I usually can’t nail it.”
Check out the full interview here.
I also missed this when it debuted on Playlist in mid August: Mr Husband released a new single – an elegant tune that is also an utter deviation from the sunny reverb drenched sound established on Plaid on Plaid and Silvertone which came out earlier in 2018. Ocean Pines will eventually be the opening track of a yet to be released album on October 26th. He (Kenny Thompkins) relays this sweetly spun story in his conceptual character/frontman of Mr Husband – recounting the story of how it was written one night on the porch after recalling a perfect summer day at the beach. Read those words here
then return to hear Ocean Pines.
About out of time – keep eyes peeled for Subversive Zine #7 – lucky 7 will be out very very very soon. It’s subversive af, but you already know that. One hint of things to come: with Frederick being gentrified over gradually, there’s a short retrospective on the subversive artform that is grafitti. Who were the people in the game back in the day? What did it look like? Also there’s Bernard Rollins. His work is blowing up in the hip hop world, Action Bronson and Doom has repped him, and even hired him to do album covers and tour art promos. But he’s hardly known in his very own city. We hope to change that paradigm; there’s a companion piece where we’ll display some of his work on the zine- followed by an interview on Subversive’s website that reveals an interesting problem he’s had involving art theft of his work – from none other than Quavos of the Atlanta trap band, Migos. To find out more – stay tuned…
