In The Gallery

Brent F. Widen – March in the Gallery

March 4, 2010 – 2:41 pm

WONG SALVAGE
PAINTING BY BRENT F. WIDEN

MARCH 4th – 29th, 2010.

Brent Widen was born and raised in Chicago, where he froze his ass off waiting for the “L” train for over a quarter century. He emerged Magna Cum Laude in Fine Arts from The University of Chicago with barely some remnant of common sense and the ability to enjoy the study of American Civics & History still intact. In 1988, having ventured on an impromptu sleepless road trip to San Antonio with an Alamo Heights expatriate waitressing in a Lincoln Avenue Hofbrau House, Brent caught a glimpse of the Southtown Riverwalk at the end of Beauregard Street and summarily decided to stay.

In 1995, he persuaded Ben Wong to sell the Historic Wong Grocery Company Building (ca. 1901) with 56 years of Chinese – American fixtures, product, junk, text, ceramic shards, paper-clips, used & stored dental-floss, dried food and terrifying meat-cutting saws and knives packed like refugee baggage inside. The painted doors and windows in this exhibition are salvage from that holy place. These objects were appropriated into Brent’s continuous endeavor of art-overwork with the implicit permission of Grandma Wong, whose ever-mumbling ghost inhabits the premises to this day.

This is Brent’s 3rd exhibition at Jump-Start Art Gallery, a fact that attests to their commitment to tolerance and cultural diversity and for which he is sincerely grateful. The first: Moses, Mezuzahs and Other Judaica from the Infinito Botanica (Festival de Libre Enganche, 1995) and the second: Six Days – A Temporary Mural (2003) were monster hits among his friends and then quickly forgotten.

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Jason Rudd – February in the Gallery

January 25, 2010 – 1:42 pm

A Day of Infamy
A collection of dark surrealism
by Jason Rudd

Opening reception: February 4, 2010
6 – 8 p.m.

Jason Rudd started to enjoy art by the time he was in middle school. His 7th grade teacher Mrs. Kathy Garner taught him how to draw cats. He is indeed an animal lover and enjoys drawing them. He draws Elephants, frogs, dogs, numerous cats, mostly Siamese, and humanistic forms as well. He bases his Siamese cat drawings on his favorite cat growing up named Whiskey. His unique style is linear, with an organic feel to it. He had his first showing in 2002 at a gallery, owned by premier artist from San Antonio, Betty Ward, in which his drawing, “Cats on the Fence” was to be auctioned a week later. That drawing never went to auction, but was sold 3 times the amount it was worth.

He has entered many art festivals: The Starving Artist show, The River Art Show, Old Pecan Festival (Austin, Texas), Salado Art Show (Salado, Texas), and the most recent show called ARTFEST (Dallas, Texas). He has donated several pieces to charitable events for great causes. The Starving Artist show received a percentage of sales for the Little Church of La Villita, KLRN received a couple of auction pieces for donation, the YMCA received a couple of auction pieces, and ARTFEST received a very nice donation amount in auction pieces for a charitable event. He hopes to one day donate toward animal rights causes.
His recent selection of works, are more cathartic than his older pieces, which were by nature, more comical in visualization and title. The darker pieces represent the hardships of his life: failures and the loss of love, emotionally drawn by means of sadness and anger in which any individual who has gone through any sort of traumatic event in their life, whether it’s a break up, a divorce, or even a death, can easily relate to his cathartic drawings. He calls this unique style, “Dark Surrealism”.

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