Page 23 - The NOISE December 2015

rogue vortex formS in jerome
David Rentz and Christian Eleven bring a new art space to Mingus Mountain, the Jerome Art Vortex.
Story by traviS iurato
anew studio has organized in the Old Jerome High School in the last two months, and it hopes to usher in a phase of collaboration and education that the community
of artists on the hill has not seen in years. Artists Christian Eleven and Dave Rentz have partnered in a single space they are calling the Jerome Art Vortex. Upon entering visitors will be struck by the vast amount of artwork on display, the tidy way in which it is all hung, and the friendliness of its occupants. When I enter the studio, Mr. Rentz ends a phone call and comes out from behind his dignified desk in the corner to greet me barefoot. While I introduce myself to Mr. Rentz, Mr. Eleven glides in from the back in tube socks and pounds my fist. His explodes when we make contact.
The studio is divided into a large and open main space, where visitors enter, and a smaller room in the rear, filled with desks, tables and a small cot, where Mr. Rentz naps in between work sessions. Mr. Eleven keeps a work desk in the back that is dominated by an immense monitor, on which he sometimes loops experimental video and photography. He and Mr. Rentz aim to share their art and ideas through the Jerome Art Vortex, as well as invite other artists to participate in its daily activities.
“It’s an alternative art space,” Mr. Eleven says. “It’s part gallery, part co-op, part art center and part Warhol’s Factory. It’s a bit challenging to define.” The art on display will continually change depending on who is occupying the space or who has worked out an agreement for exhibiting there.
Mr. Eleven promises the Vortex will be a venue for cutting- edge exhibits, film screenings, lectures, workshops and performances. “It’s a neutral space,” he explains, maintaining that he is open to any suggestions and proposals for events, short-term shows or one-night happenings. He offers three reasons why he has chosen to embrace Jerome’s artist community: “We don’t have a venue to talk about art, we want to challenge each other, and I want to hear feedback on my work.” He is correct in pointing out that finding a place to talk to other artists about art is difficult. It helps, when one has the resources, to help create spaces to nurture art communities. “I want to push the envelope,” he adds, emphasizing his desire to make an avant-garde community emerge in the quaint Verde Valley. By hosting artist-run events, he hopes that the Vortex will attract like-minded individuals from the area, and even to turn on some wayward tourists.
In this month’s show, each of their bodies of work occupies one half of the room, and the pieces intermingle in the center on the walls and the floor where they meet. Mr. Rentz works in one humble medium: acrylic puff paint, which he applies in myriad dots all over the surfaces of found objects. The artist has a magnetic attraction to certain kinds of things: metal things, fun things and provocative things. The Vortex is crammed with the rusted scraps of automobiles, old boards, mannequin parts, little toys, rocks, masks, wood and musical
instruments, all skinned with dots. Some objects are totally covered in fields of dots, giving one the impression that they are made of Mr. Rentz’s imagination. Other pieces serve as supports for dot images, usually mandalas.
“My art is improvised,” Mr. Rentz says. “I start with one dot. People ask me, ‘Do you sketch this out ahead of time?’ No. I just go, and I want to see how it unfolds.” From one or two dots roughly in the center of the piece the design moves outwards, changing color in sequence, forming remarkably precise geometric shapes. Other pieces feature constellations of forms, totemic figures and mask-like visages. The overall effect of his installation is dazzling and engrossing. Many of his pieces demand from the viewer as much time to scrutinize their surfaces as he took to decorate them.
I have the feeling that Mr. Rentz has some definite and serious insights into the hidden nature of the world, but he insists, “(I’m) a big kid at heart. I’m a happy camper and I try to inspire other people.” While his “aw shucks” attitude is endearing, his pictures do point in mystical directions. Perhaps each dot correlates to the individual molecules of one’s body, or entities crawling over the Earth connected tightly by metaphysical forces. In any case, he certainly has a magical air around him; so much time spent in the woods has a marvelous effect on anyone. Being surrounded by his work gives one a hallucinatory sensation. In the Vortex I felt as though I was in the esoteric and strange temple of an aboriginal group of junk-pickers.
The work of Mr. Eleven is, like that of Mr. Rentz, primarily collage and painting found objects, but his choice of materials and use of photography set him altogether apart from the rustic, folky qualities of his colleague’s. Mr. Eleven prefers glitter, glass, shiny metals like foil and multicolored smears of paint. He applies the paint to any surface he can find, such as an old photograph, a piece of wood or a chunk of plastic. Large panels with densely brushed surfaces of bright colors lean on the wall around the room. At the foot of each panel sits a small pool of metallic paper, weighed down with iridescent stones, reflecting the painting back to itself, like Narcissus on LSD. A row of Mr. Eleven›s painting/ collages perch along the top of each panel, like a hall of psychedelic family photos. When asked what the purpose of art is for himself, he answers, “Creating beauty in yourself and in others.” It is this idea of self-creation that Mr. Eleven considers the core of his philosophy. He feels that by creating art, he can forge new realities for himself and others. New art creates new realities, and coming to the Vortex, one can experience genuine attempts at this level of creation.
On the evening of my visit, Mr. Rentz is scheduled to perform. As the engagement begins and a few of us gather in the room he turns down the lights and sits cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a miniature orchestra of flutes,
noise makers, djembes, a ukulele, a mandolin and a dulcimer. Several microphones stand close to his face and lap, and the wires run through effects pedals and into small amplifiers.
At the start, he picks up a flute and improvises on it for a few minutes. He puts the flute down and grabs a noisemaker and makes noises into the microphone. He tells some more jokes and starts tapping on a strange electric drum pad. His toe slyly taps a pedal and the drum line begins to loop, he picks up another flute, records a short phrase, and it too starts to loop. Within minutes he builds up a multi-layered composition over which he plays the mandolin and sings. Abruptly, with the push of a button, the music ceases, and he smoothly begins another composition.
For 90 minutes, he sings, has a flute duet with friend and fellow musician Robert Jackson, improvises, and ends with a long solo on a newly skinned hand drum. It is charming and engaging, and he does it every Tuesday night at 7PM, alone or with as many people as the Vortex will allow. “If you’ve seen me at the [Red] Rooster [in Cottonwood], you haven’t seen me here. I have no distractions. I go to a whole new level,” Mr. Rentz says later on. He wants other musicians to discover his weekly set and join in, eventually to form a band around the project he’s calling, “A Ton of Feathers.”
Mr. Eleven landed his craft (a multi-colored Jaguar coupe) in Jerome last spring. He came from Oakland, California seeking the right community for his art and a good setting for an extended artist retreat. He chose Jerome and the high school for the tight-knit community of artists he found there on his first visit. The people, he felt, were pushing their art in a direction he was interested in going, and decided to move in. He rented two spaces in Building A on the second floor for an exhibition space and studio. The exhibition space was built out to his specifications in order to have a clean, white-walled space to showcase work. Not too long after, other artists in the high school began to approach him with exhibition proposals. He helped exhibit the work of several other artists in the following months, including fellow high school residents Larry Meagher, Mr. Jackson, and Beth Courtwright- Detweiler. Collaborating and providing the space to work clearly energizes him so much that he wants the Vortex to be a center of constant artistic activity. Messrs. Eleven and Rentz share a contagious enthusiasm that will surely attract others to join in on navigating the future of art in our region.
Connect with the Jerome Art Vortex on Facebook and Instagram to stay updated with their calendar of programming and events. The Old Jerome High School is located at 879 Hampshire Ave., Jerome, and the Vortex is located in Building A on the first floor.
| Travis Iurato is pretty sure he’s been in a vortex or two. travisiurato@gmail.com
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