Life In The Arts Part 2/ Elizabeth Thebazilly Review

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In the many decades that I’ve been a artist/performer, I’ve often asked friends, girlfriends and relatives to attend a performance of mine, be it an open mic, a local gig with my band or even the occasional art show. Most of the time, the response falls on deaf ears. And when the moment is ripe, I’ve heard excuses like, “Oh, I have to wash the cat this weekend” or “My favorite TV show is on tonight, so I simply can’t.” And then there are those, by way of social media the moment they see the posting, “I’m so sorry I missed it!” or “Why didn’t you tell me!” or “Please remind me when it happens again, will ya?” or “Call me on the day you’re on.”

I do agree in some certain sense that there’s only so many shows you can attend, so there is that, but the majority of friends and acquaintances that I have, have never seen a show of mine and most likely never will, unless it’s on video, which a majority of them are, in print, which some are and/or if you’re performing with me, you get to experience live/firsthand.

In a previous entry I wrote that art can be very subjective, very subjective and that is correct. Our own concepts of art can run the gamut from a simple watercolor of a circus clown holding a dog to a more complex piece of art like a Jackson Pollock, Picasso or Vincent Van Gogh. People are either going to get it or not get it and that’s perfectly fine.

And then there are the artists themselves, who don’t often support other artists unless they’re in the same show together. Because there are only so many hours in the day and well, like friends and acquaintances, they too have legitimate as well as illegitimate reasons not to attend. In grad school, we were encouraged to go to other cohorts’ shows, whether academic or non-academic. 

Social media is nice for keeping in touch, but unless you go out and experience the art show or performance for yourself, meaning the live experience of how it makes you feel at the time, as opposed to watching it on video later, than you never will know.

I have this belief in supporting as many in my cohort as possible if I know of a show that they are having in advance. I know that there are conflicts with what I just posted above, but it is true. Video should be used to record for posterity, which is what I’ve been doing solidly in one form or another since the late 1980s. I’ve been audio recording since 1980 and have a lot of archival material as a result. People shouldn’t rely on a posterity video to experience a performance or an art show. You need to be there.

Having said all of that as a preface, let’s dive straight into a review of the solo show of Kankakee, Illinois-based artist, Elizabeth Thebazilly, a painter in her own right. I saw her show, Dripping In Earth, the afternoon of Thursday, February 20, 2020, at the Yellow Elephant Gallery, 150 North Schulyer Avenue, in downtown Kankakee, Illinois, just 90 minutes south of Chicago.

It was a bitter cold morning, when I arrived via Amtrak-but I had a good look around the downtown area, had a bite to eat and hung out at the beautiful Kankakee public library for a good chunk of the day and wrote freely.

In the mid-afternoon, I left the warmth of the public library, went outside, crossed the main intersection and I headed over to the gallery and stepped inside the smallish space. It was indeed tight inside, half of the walls dedicated to art, while the floor space, dedicated to overpriced art trinkets and supplies. It was a bright, clean space. An elderly woman got up from her seat and asked me if I needed help. I told her no, that I had come to view the exhibit in the gallery, as she sat down behind the wall from where she had been and went back to her magazine.  

As I viewed what hung before me, I noticed what strikes me the most about the 20 pieces of artwork in Thebazilly’s work is just that; her artwork is striking, colorful and so very fluid.

(Pink Walls, Elizabeth Thebazilly)

In Pink Walls, there’s a futuristic colorful appeal in the painting itself. Sprinkled throughout the painting are a number of human and animal heads, torsos and faces. I don’t know specifically if those are intentional or not or perhaps my pareidolia (Pareidolia is defined as the ability to see faces inside inanimate objects; it’s often associated with religious phenomena) is just kicking in. In this particular painting, I do know that Thebazilly has the gift of drawing the soul in rapidly with wonderment and awe.

Golden Bonzai is an eye-opening beauty, with its curious use of colors, and again humanlike faces are dotted within the work, including particularly this time, bananas and vegetable line likenesses.

(Golden, Elizabeth Thebazilly)

It’s her work, Golden that really takes the prize. Elongated unstructured lines with an almost asymmetry warm sunny playfulness to the piece. It’s very sensual within every brushstroke of the painting inviting and alluring, to the naked eye.

Another standout includes The Caves, which is blanketed with a pleasing array of color, faces and bits of fabric thrown in, giving the piece an almost collage mix feel to it.

Her show ended on February 22^. I do hope that Thebazilly shows her work at perhaps a bigger gallery with an extended stay in the near future. Her ability to craft a painting is astonishing! Her style is futuristically moderate with an eye for the abstract. She is an artist well worth the investment.

 As I left the gallery and walked over to the bulletin board covered in screaming for attention business cards, the few pipe-dream real estate flyers with promises of money, I noticed the elderly woman closing up shop, never saying a word, as she walked quickly passed me by in the hallway.

I bundled up, stepped outside, walked around a bit more, got some sandwiches for the train ride home, stepped inside a thrift store and briefly perused it and walked back to the library, where I was parked on the 3^rd floor for the next few hours, freely writing and reading until the appointed hour came to walk over to the train station.

It was cold that night, as I waited outside on the train platform. A woman I didn’t know, who sat in a rickety older SUV waved toward me and invited me to wait inside her running vehicle. We talked about a lot trivial things that I don’t even recall, as she dragged on six cigarettes in between. The kindness of her offer left me with a warm feeling overall. I thanked her and hopped out of her truck, just as the train approached. With the wind against my backpack, and the air frozen as I spoke to another passenger waiting for the train, I knew my time in Kankakee was well spent.

I will be back sooner than later, Kankakee.

Promise.

Life In the Arts-An Overview: 2009-2011

2009 was a difficult year for me. In late March I had just been fired from a job I disdained and held onto for seven and a half years, because my parents told me I had to keep it despite the mental toll it had taken on me and a job counselor told me I needed to survive with a job, but above all, I apparently needed it to pay bills and my other livelihood in the name of art. When I was fired from my job, I was greatly relieved. I cried for five minutes and then it was over. I had to call my parents and tell them. My mom cried, while my dad hoped they would go out of business. Sadly, those motherfuckers are still in business, ripping people off on a daily basis. 

The day I was fired, my narcissistic author brother Louie had emailed me and proudly announced his non-fiction book had spiked number one that day on Amazon. I responded back, “Hey great. Good for you. I got fired today. Guess why?” My brother Louie during the last 18 months of my job, called me constantly at work while I was on deadline many many times, as I worked at a publishing house, all because I was to appear in an article and subsequently a radio show, that he claimed to have established a great relationship with the host and didn’t want to louse it up by appearing alongside me. It was indeed the radio host who had initially suggested that we appear together, as in two brothers with two very different types of creativity going on in their lives. But Louie didn’t want any part of it.

He would say to me, in a follow-up email, “This isn’t amateur night. We aren’t Abbott and Costello” and boldly and brazenly asked me to tell the radio show host that I wouldn’t appear on his show. I wrote back and told Louie, calmly, “No.”

When email didn’t work, he would phone me up on my cell and proceed to scream at me the same words. I remember at the time being on deadline and telling him so. And that I would hang-up on him if he continued to yell at me. Eventually, I did hang-up on him for being an ass.

When I returned to my cubicle, I received a call within 15 minutes on the toll-free hotline and it was The Arizona Babe, asking me not to go on the show. Good old Louie, I thought, he enlisted The Arizona Babe to do his dirty work, to undo what he wasn’t able to. I told her the same thing, that I was planning to go on his show and then I told her, “If I don’t stand up for myself now, when am I going to do it?” Louie was a constant pain in the neck back then, but that should be no surprise.

For the first time in nearly nine years, I was out of my element, stuck without any income and wondering what would happen next. I had a tour of the south coming up in a few days, not to mention rent due and wondered how I would pay for all of it. I wasn’t sure.

I let it pass by the next few days, as I had a handful of activities working for me-a gig at the 100^th birthday celebration of local writer Nelson Algren (The Man With The Golden Arm, A Walk On The Wild Side) in Chicago with my then poetry band, $2 Cockroach and a southern tour. Craigslist was always a great place to apply for art and performance jobs and a few months later I did just that, as I applied to an ad that was looking for a co-host for an art show web series entitled Art or Shit.

I had a meeting with the co-host and lo and behold, I became a part of the show, co-hosting as an art critic! The show, Art Or Shit, lasted a total of nine episodes spread out over two years (2009-2011), five of which I appeared in with co-host and creator of the show, Zomatic1, two of those episodes in which I appeared in, by the way, received the highest ratings achieved for his web series. 

Prior to doing

Art Or Shit, Zomatic1 himself was a cartoonist and budding animator. He was also a shipping packer at a package and mail shop, prior in his career, who, in his job, came across a ton of art. The audition process was quite simple at the time. All I did was email him from an ad I saw on Craigslist, arranged a meeting between him and I in late May and by mid-June, we were well on our way to filming our first episode in his apartment.

2010 was the eye-opener though, the calm before the blizzard and I was just getting started. At the end of January, I appeared after much aggression and ballyhooing from Louie, on the radio while joining me on the phone from Aarhus, Denmark, my good Internet buddy (at the time, shortly before we met) Pedro DaPalma. While the interview focused mostly on me, with Pedro, we talked about the project at hand, which was recording a live album (Safari Freakshow Adventure) over Skype between me at the now defunct Swing State in Lake Villa, Illinois and Pedro’s band, Clean Boys at their rehearsal studio in Aarhus and having it mixed, produced and released in Denmark, for which I was to fly over and tour with them.

In February we recorded. Between February and up to early April, we formalized plans and worked on the album together. $2 Cockroach was done. It was hijacked from me and was no longer mine. It also marked the first time in as many years, I hadn’t seen my old friend Oscar, as we split for a year and drifted off to other projects and happy life problems. I was also doing regular performance art shows, poetry shows and featuring at open mics. I had come full circle. I had also begun performance art work with Flabby Hoffman Trio, a band that while I first loved the work, eventually grew tired of and left several years later. In November, I auditioned for a spot on America’s Got Talent in Chicago at McCormick Place. Did my act and didn’t hear from them until January 2011.

2011 was a very fruitful year for me. I appeared on Chic-A-Go-Go, throat singing Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer to the tune of Jumpin’ On The Camel, a cover instrumental by Clean Boys, their tribute to local Aarhus performer, Don Saund, who was the author of the song. I would later go on to record it, as a cover tune, during the last days of my first tour of Denmark (See earlier entries on this blog about the tour). It appeared on my four solo album entitled Freewheelin’ Looney, which I released in summer 2011, in the midst of all the America’s Got Talent hoopla.

I saw the rise of my performance career peak with a tryout celebrity audition on America’s Got Talent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a documentary based on what would become my lifestyle for the next several years, entitled Sid Yiddish.  Art Or Shit was over. I kept performing, including the night I was shown on America’s Got Talent.

Overnight, I quickly became a quasi-celebrity in demand and a target for scams, scum, haters, unusually aggressive-types, stalkers, harassers, star-fuckers, hangers-on, wannabes and uncategorized whackos.

Although I haven't written yet about my trials and tribulations about the actual America’s Got Talent audition in Chicago and the celebrity audition in Minneapolis Much media coverage followed shortly thereafter, including interviews given in and published Jewish and Bulgarian newspapers (I will write about it at some point). I also developed my acting career a bit more, by role-playing as creepy characters in a suburban haunted house and later in the year, Santa Claus at Macy's. 

Art was never far away from me though, the need to learn, the thirst and the quest to expand my knowledge on a topical subject, I barely knew. Art Or Shit actually prepared me more than I thought it would.

I can honestly say that I didn’t know much about art and to this day, even after receiving a Master of Arts in interdisciplinary Arts, I still don’t know all that much about arts, because it is as much pulverizing as it is splintered in between all the experts, authorities, scholars, professors, instructors, students and the artists themselves.

I feel awkward in that, knowing that I’m not as skilled in articulateness as I should or appear to be, still. I move forward and of course, as many of us know and realize, that art is subjective.

Very subjective.