‘Crazy Eights’

Last year, the Hot Shops Art Center hosted one of the most original and well-received group art shows in the area. The show, “77 Deadly Sins,” opened on July 7, 2007 and tied together dozens and dozens of mostly local artists working in various mediums along common “sinful” themes.

This year, the same people who organized “77 Deadly Sins” aimed to expand their efforts to include even more artists of local, national and international caliber. Seeing as how it’s now 2008, this year’s exhibition is called “Crazy Eights and the 88 Lesser Themes.” And keeping to tradition, the show officially opened on Aug. 8, 2008 (8/8/08) at Hot Shops.

Michael Sheef, an Omaha-based artist who helped curate both last year’s and this year’s show, said via e-mail that, “after the ‘7/7’ show, we definitely wanted to include even more artists, exposing some new work to the area. We purposely looked outside of Omaha.”

More than 100 artists from all over the U.S. and as far away as Norway and Australia have submitted pieces that either followed the eight major themes of the exhibit (Infinity, Malady, Autobiography, Armament, Narrative, Peanut People, List and Lick) or worked on their own theme within the parameters of an eight-inch circle.

Sheef said the eight major themes were, for the most part, randomly selected. “We knew we wanted eight diverse themes – we labored over this for weeks before we came up with our final list,” he said. “We basically wanted to see how different artists dealt with these themes.”

And there’s a plethora of interpretations for each theme (if you count eight as a “plethora”).

Standout pieces include Ken Guthrie’s “Infinite Maze,” which is a shallow, wooden box-shaped formation that’s covered with raised, meandering maze-like patterns that inch towards a center focal point where carved wood formations continually change their shadows as rainbow-colored lights shift from tone to tone. “Infinite Maze” (obviously) falls under the Infinity theme.

One of Sheef’s own works is also noteworthy. Thematically a “Narrative,” his “4 True-Life Wrestling Stories” playfully comes to life as four separate pieces tell stories relating to professional wrestling. Each one uses the written word to a certain degree, from simple phrases to more drawn-out stories, but the real magic comes to life where a handful of Doritos chips lie inside a glass frame highlighted by a hand-drawn wig on paper lofting above the words “Jezebel.” I’m not sure exactly what this has to do with wrestling (perhaps a reference to the junk food-eating masses that cheer on the many female and/or effeminate wrestlers), but it nicely compliments the other pieces that tell similar, although completely different tales.

Overall, the themes with the most muscle behind them appeared to be “Autobiography” and “Lick.” Chicago-based artist Miranda Swanson’s “These Fragments I have Shored Against My Rains” tells her life story through multiple mediums. Mixing quilting techniques with pen and ink and watercolor, several child-like symbols are collaged together as “ducks in a row” float idly below city skylines, aliens poke and prod on one end while fire, water, flora and fauna dot the rest of her sewn-together canvas. On the other end of the gallery an untitled painting by Derek Shockey shows a woman on hands and knees provocatively getting ready to lick the floor. Likewise with tongue blazing, Joel Holm Por’s “Delicious” shows a woman in ecstasy with eyes tightly shut about to lick up something, but this time it’s tasty rather than sexy.

The “88 Lesser Themes” pieces wrap around the gallery space. At one point Sharon Shald’s “Race” reaches out to shake hands with passerbys. At another point Rezo’s “Tentacle” oozes across his eight-inch circle as people move towards the door.

The shear amount of work on view by so many different artists in such a small space is “Crazy Eights’” biggest strength. And Sheef said he hopes to expand the show even further next year.

“Crazy Eights” will be at Hot Shops through the end of August. The exhibit will then move to the Jewish Community Center as “Selections for the Crazy Eights” from Sept. 7-13. Most pieces are for sale.