THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE PRETTY >>>
If you don't know Alan Gorsuch, co-owner of Sanford and Son Antiques, this blog post sums him up perfectly.
He's nuts.
With arts critic Alec Clayton under the weather, Pappi messing around with our Tournament of Tacos, and Driscoll at SXSW, I had to take the phone call from Gorsuch. Long story short, I couldn't say no. I submit my take on an art installation in his Middle Floor Merchants section at Sanford and Son. He said he understood I wasn't an art critic and didn't care what I wrote.
He's nuts.
Now, I realize that the sacred cow/naked emperor format that somehow has always passed for "art" in the cultural desert of Tacoma has been notoriously bleak, seedy, shallow, confusing, childish, kinky, desperate, wanton and especially, narcissistic. However, this "showing" by an anonymous artist takes the cake.
What on earth is this person's obsession with breasts?
Knockers. Mostly doorknockers. That's what we're supposed to believe the majority of the "pieces" are. As I was able to ascertain from what few of the sober, yet shadowy, figures filling about in the Sanford and Son building, all of the elements and materials used in the comprising of these "works" were once destined for the landfill. "Found objects" all, they were somehow intercepted by our anon person and assembled into what I was forced to visually, as well as manually, masticate.
Gorsuch says everyone is invited to knock the knockers - backdoor knockers, front door knockers, no soliciting knockers, dead doorknockers, knicker knockers, peeping voyeurs knockers and my favorite: the deer knocker, which is a mangy old dead deer head shot 80 years ago by either Jerry Meeker or Jerry Springer, says Gorsuch, and mounted on a 1980s gothic door stolen from the old church in Ruston. Now, that might actually be art, but I'm not sure I know anymore as I've been desensitized.
I have this to say to he/she who slithers around amid the mental chaos and moral turmoil that oozes from every crack and corner down at Sanford and Son perpetrating upon the unsuspecting and innocent eyes of the general populace of greater Tacoma: step forward, admit what you have done and apologize, then finish what you started by taking your "body of whatever-it-is" to where it belongs - the yawning jaws of the Pierce County landfill.
Other than that, I only have two words to say: "Re" and "hab."
Stop by Sanford and Son tonight during Third Thursday Artwalk and check out the knockers. They're actually quite cool with the blacklights on.
[Sanford and Son Antiques, 743 Broadway Tacoma, 253.272.0334]