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Why are these paintings at all appealing? Each work describes a common, shared emotion. Even if you don't buy into the sentiment expressed, even if the emotion is not yours -- never was, nor will be -- Rockwell makes the emotions sane, believable, even enviable. He suckers us in with his talent for texturally revealing the small remembered detail -- the paint peeling from the window sash -- and ropes us into the false memory of that dog, that fishing pole, the look on that boys face and the feeling behind it.
Come visit Charlotte's smallest gallery and share a phantom sentiment. 100 N. Tryon St.
– Scott Lucas
Christopher Clamp: Christopher Clamp is Charlotte's newest secret revealed. Clamp paints quiet, moving tributes to remembered times and places and people. His vehicle for memory transport is a single object finely rendered in oil paint. Some of these objects hug the edges of my longest memories: fly paper peppered with dead flies, a toy tippy dipping bird from the 1950s, a honey jar with comb inside. Some of the objects could be found today -- milk in a soda shop glass, a Morton's salt box shaker, soap in a fluted dish. Each object sits on table edge and fronts a furtive and lush ground. The object is not the whole painting, but is what you see first.
The whole painting is an invitation into a shared or unshared memory. You can see the sticky flypaper, the color and consistency of motor oil, and remember your grandmothers kitchen, that dive restaurant at Nags Head, or the mechanics grubby office behind his garage.
Or perhaps you remember none of these things.
Like Rockwell, Clamp has the ability to evoke memories which were never there. Unlike Rockwell, Clamp has a talent, simultaneously comforting and disconcerting, for letting us own the memory by letting us construct the memory ourselves. Rockwell spells it out -- each frown and grimace and grin -- and we feel it vicarously; Clamp delivers us our own visited place through object and minimal tableau and open ground. His paintings allow enough room to let us in, to visit our own felt memories, either reconstructed or spun out of whole cloth.
Clamp's paintings are fine enough to convice us to stay a while, hold us there long enough to sell us our own sentiments.
Also unlike Rockwell, Clamp's paintings are actually available, through Jerald Melberg Gallery.
625 S. Sharon Amity Road, 704-365-3000
– Lucas
MUSIC
Rekless Youth: Ah, those flighty high school days. It's the age of endless possibilities. It's the age of awkward romances and trends that change daily. It's when freckle-faced youngsters start bands after getting their hands on electric guitars and drum kits. It's the timeless ritual of boys dreaming of becoming guitar gods, music lessons be damned. All that's needed are amps and plenty of attitude to play quintessential three-chord punk rock. Scads of feisty musical innocence can't hurt, either. The Charlotte-area punk trio Rekless Youth is one such set of blokes. The boys formed the band in September 2006 and won their high school talent show in November 2006. They have since hit the studio and recorded the short and sweet EP EZ Street with the production help of regional music catalyst Eric Lovell. The trio won third place in the Charlotte Battle of the Bands held in March. EZ Street is a recording of eight songs that's lathered with ethos and lyrics of musically enthused youngsters. So what if the lyrics are in the developmental stage and the playing raw and untempered. Isn't that what it's all about in high school? Forget high school, even the geriatric geezers Iggy and the Stooges are still as raw as they ever were. Some boys, thankfully, never grow up.
Rekless Youth consists of Madison on guitar, TJ on drums, and Morgan on the bass and vocals. Among the highlights of their new recording are the tracks "I Hate Heroin" and "Money Makes."
Who knows, maybe they'll persevere and continue to develop and make some funky racket. Or they may break up tomorrow. It goes with the territory. Stay true, young ones. No word on any local dates, but hop on over to this generation's attention deficit disorder gathering place MySpace for details.
www.myspace.com/reklessyouthrocks
– Samir Shukla
Dylan Gilbert: The former lead singer for Charlotte punk band Something Jed (the group disbanded in early 2005), Dylan Gilbert still manages to fold in plenty of that can-do, in-the-moment attitude into his solo stuff. Which is admirable, of course -- it's part of who he is, after all, and at the end of the day, it's his name at the top of the bill (the record, the flyer, the MySpace page).
Speaking of 2.00000
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Letters To The Editor
Nov 28, 2007 -
Zoom-Zoom
Nov 14, 2007 -
Ready to Ramblas
Oct 3, 2007 - More »
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Juneteenth: Queen City Comedy Jam @ Blush CLT
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Juneteenth: Queen City Adult Prom @ Blush CLT
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Queen Charlotte Fair @ Route 29 Pavilion
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Coveted Luxury Watches
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AllMachines
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Family Values
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