issue #58 | summer 2010

available 6.11.2010

featuring …
“THE ART OF NOISE”:
the poster art that’s represented
live, creative music
HENRY GRIMES
SCARCITY OF TANKS
plus
ALESSANDRO BOSETTI
SIGHTINGS
ROSEMARY KRUST
and
Bergamo Jazz Festival in Bergamo, Italy
John Butcher & Joe McPhee in Cornudas, Texas
Pauline Oliveros in New York City
Art Ensemble of Chicago in Philadelphia
and
reviews of over 150 of the season’s key releases and reissues in CD / DVD / LP / download format

http://www.signaltonoisemagazine.org/

We here at Ilumindo are pleased to announce the launch of http://www.markdancey.com/. This website will serve as a showcase for the oil paintings of our fearless leader, Mr. Mark Dancey.

Mr. Dancey is well known for his contributions to underground rock culture. A co-founder and lead illustrator of the satirical Moto…rbooty Magazine, Dancey has produced all manner of graphics during his career, including comics, illustrations, posters, album cover art and book covers. While continuing to deliver the heavy-duty graphic work that the kids have come to expect from him, Dancey has also been developing as an oil painter. After much work and study he has concocted a style that blends classic disciplines and themes with his own influences and narratives.

Although Iluminado has always featured Mr. Dancey’s paintings, we thought that it was high time to present you, the public with a site devoted exclusively to them. markdancey.com will show the progression of Dancey’s work from the year 2000 to the present, with images from the back catalog, news, advice, bald-faced propaganda, and previews of the very newest pieces he is working on. Be sure to check back for weekly updates.

Sincerely,

Team Iluminado

The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow is a film concept distilled from years of my collected writings and euphoric delusions on the topic of bliss. In 2006, after the death of four close family members in rapid succession, I came to the dark realization that the true nature of our universe is to get in the way. Beauty has become subversion. This theme has found a home in my: drawing, painting, collage, writing, music, photography, and most recently, film work.

STEVEN CERIO, THE RESIDENTS and TOY TOKYO and are proud to present the release of “The Residents.”

I’d like to introduce you to “The Classic Eyeball” and “Mr. Skull.”

If you are a fan of THE RESIDENTS you are already familiar with the sinister antics of front man “Mr. Skull” and the blinkless stare of the “Classic Eyeball”…if you aren’t familiar with the group the cryptic box description reads as follows:

“Despite the apparent handicap of life in oblivion, The Residents have  flourished for 35 years, releasing almost 60 albums while embarking  on six major world tours. Credited with the invention of music video  and performance art, they have also been honored with a prestigious  career retrospective by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In a culture saturated with publicity seeking ciphers, the group has  proudly maintained complete anonymity throughout its career,  providing a faint beacon of hope for every crazy kid bewitched by the  bogeyman of fame. They love and hate everything.”

SPECS:

FULL EDITION SIZE: 1350 (this number includes all 4 variations of both gigures)

FIGURE SIZE: Both figures are 7 ½ “ tall with a 4” diameter base.

BOX SIZE: 8 7/8 “tall, 5 1/8 “ wide and 5 1/8”

ARTICULATION/ ACCRESSORIES : Both figures have rotating heads and the “Classic Eyeball” has a separate cane accessory.

COLORS: There are 3 color variations and one unpainted Glow in the Dark (G.I.D.) of each of the two figures (in a much smaller edition number).

Signed and Numbered
Edition of 10

Sold only as a pair.

(please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping)

Prints are permanently mounted to 1/16″ aluminum using a pressure sensitive film adhesive. The front of the print is then protected by a UV-blocking, optically clear, vinyl-based laminate that is permanently adhered (for a matte finish). A recessed back frame made from Poplar wood is 1 1/2″ deep and 2 1/2″ recessed from the edge of the print giving it the appearance of floating from the wall.

Please note that the gallery photograph is of a different and larger print and is only meant as an example of how these prints are mounted.

Prints are shipped flat, carefully packed in a custom, wood crate (example pictured) to ensure their safe arrival. Unfortunately, this (and the fact that it is a 2 print set) adds to the price of shipping but it is well worth it. (Please contact us in advance of purchase for international orders).

Detroit’s Mexicantown during the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration weekend is a sea of colorful flags, cars in gridlock, and festive music. It’s an atmosphere rich with culture and urban grit and as residents reveled in the cultural celebrations in Clark Park, I made my way through police tape and detectives to Mark Dancey’s house and studio to discuss his latest works for the show Volandismo. “This feels like a scene from The Wire,” I thought to myself while walking up to his porch. And while witnessing this scene from his perch in his second floor studio of his home, Dancey tells me he had been thinking the same. And so began my discussion with Dancey about how classic oil painting and pop culture meet in the form of his latest paintings.

In chatting with Dancey about his influences and how he developed his technique it’s immediately clear that his curiosity and enthusiasm for learning are abundant. His references range from Russian constructivism and Mayan art (which largely influenced his graphic design style) to El Greco, from visits to the Prado Museum in Madrid to one memorable night in Mexico City. He absorbs all of these things, and like any perceptive artist, draws on all of these experiences and influences in creating his work.

Widely known for his graphic design work and as a publisher of the subversive popular culture magazine Motorbooty. Dancey cut his teeth in graphic design while a psychology student at the University of Michigan, designing flyers to promote his punk band. Though he has no formal training in the fine arts, his graphic design career has included rock album cover art, concert posters and flyers and contributions to mass market consumer magazines like Details, Spin and GQ. Oil painting, however, is something he pursued later in his career, at a time when he felt he could devote the necessary amount of patience and discipline to study the technique and craft of oil painting.

Tipped off by an artist friend, Dancey studied the minute details of works by the masters of oil, including Jan Van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer. In their work, he identified a “blueprint to oil”—sketching before layering paint onto the board or canvas—and thereby bridged a technical and conceptual gap between his graphic design practice, in which he focused meticulously on perfecting lines in 2 colors, and the complexities of capturing light, perspective and layered colors in oil painting.

“I’ve tried to learn from just studying those guys and learn from their graphic drawings. I don’t do the drawing on the board like they did, the carefully shaded things, but I do a pretty tight drawing ahead of time on paper and then transfer it onto the [material]. I try to go from hard lines…and put transparent layers on top of that,” Dancey explains.

In spite of his wide ranging references, Dancey feels there’s no need to reinvent what the classical artists did, to reopen their exploration of reflective light, the human form and transparent layers of oils. He uses the history of the medium to lay a foundation for his own painting. While his technique follows that of classical oil painting masters, his work is undeniably infused with his own influences, creating a unique language that is homage to both classicism and modern popular cultural influences like punk rock and TV.

Dancey says on his fresh take on classical style: “That’s the best I can do. It’s me, Mr. 20th Century punk rock, TV…all that stuff, pop culture. …It’s me trying to learn later to use the technique and materials discovered and mastered by Van Eyck and Durer.”

The series of paintings in Volandismo, a term that references the study of flightology or the artistic expression of angels, saints and flying things, presents fresh approaches to mythological stories, using round paintings, forced perspective and the female nude to invoke the angelic “flight” of classical subjects. Dancey’s choice of mythological themes is, in part, a reaction to his years of publishing and conceptualizing Motorbooty, each issue of which lampooned the most popular cultural references of the time, thereby giving it a short lifespan as a cultural critique.

“To be critical of pop culture you have to know about it, you have to follow it and you may as well be a fan of it… You can never keep up with it, it’s like fashion. Even to appoint yourself as a satirical critic of [popular culture], you can’t keep up with it. It’s just not worth it.

This whole thing is a complete reaction against that. There’s no fashionable thing or even contemporary thing [in Volandismo], it’s just like “what stories are the oldest stories there are?”. No one is going to criticize me if I’m doing some old mythological themes because artists have always done that.”

With the faint sounds of Detroit’s Cinco de Mayo festivities filtering in through the open windows of his Mexicantown home, Dancey affirms, “ [My background] is naturally going to come through…the Michigan and Detroit thing. It’s not [me] self consciously trying to make a Detroit thing. It’s trying to make something that is less ephemeral. If I’m going to spend all this time working on something, I’ll work on something that is not going to [become] dated. If you’re going to spend all this time, you don’t want it to be this fleeting thing.”

Volandismo, New Paintings by Mark Dancey opens at Re:View Contemporary on June 13 with a reception from 7-11pm.

ATLANTIC DRONE  “A Vivified Sugar Cube Explains The Universe”

“Far from creating a nostalgic tribute to a previous age, Atlantic Drone contributes to a re-definition of the sonic trip a sound that is both exhilarating and ‘Zenful’; serving up an atom to the melting molecular soup of Post Psychedelic Hypno Mantras that point more to the future than the past. Lush, tumbling & potently acidic space trips featuring Steven Cerio with members and contributors from: Railroad Jerk, Dee Dee Ramone’s Sproket, Bongwater, Yo La Tengo, Devendra Banhart, Dust Devils, Drunktank, Wicked King Wicker, Arthur Lee, King Missile, Electric Frankenstein, His Name is Alive, Uncle Wiggily, Bunny Brains, Dragibus and Toothfairy. This first release by Circadia Records is an edition of 500 on 180 gram vinyl. Each record also includes a signed and numbered, 11″ x 11″, 3 color screen print and comes in a heavy weight, clear vinyl outer sleeve.”



I recently came across these gems while doing some research for a upcoming project.

2. Morrissey – ” Years Of Refusal”

3. Big Business – “Mind the Drift”

4. Maximum Penalty – “Life & Times”

5. Cattle Decapitation – ” The Harvest Floor”

6. Skarhead – “Drugs, Music and Sex”

7. Hatebreed -”Hatrebreed”

8. Brutal Truth – “Evolution Through Revolution”

9. Gorgoroth – “Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem Trahunt”

10. Mastodon – “Crack The Skye”

HOTWIRE 3

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

The Harvey and Eisner nominated anthology of action, thrills, chills and trangression is back with a third volume! Anything goes in Hotwire, eschewing literary high-mindedness for a pure, gut-wrenching viscerality that you can tune in and rest your brain on after a long day.

Hotwire the third leaps off the page from the get-go with David Sandlin’s “Infernal Combustion,” about boozing it up in a broke-down caddy, and Tim Lane’s bit of freight-hopping grit, “Spike.” Underground comics legend Mary Fleener returns with “The Judge,” a true tale about her own life fending off thugs… with a .38! Meanwhile, Hotwire Captain Glenn Head spins the biography of German surrealist Hans Bellmer as a down and out Vaudevillian in decadent Weimar Berlin. R. Sikoryak turns in a brand new batch of “Masterpiece Comics”, as Dennis the Menace stars as Prince Hamlet! Other creepy delights: Rick Altergott delivers a fable of a child-molesting clown pleasuring himself in the suburbs, while Matti Hagelberg’s “Passion of Atte” is a modern-day Dante’s Inferno of comics.

There’s also more knockout work and crazy visuals by Mark Dean Veca, Johnny (Angry Youth Comix) Ryan, Mats?!, Max Andersson, Sam Henderson, Steve Cerio, Stephane Blanquet, Doug Allen, Michael (Tales Designed to Thrizzle) Kupperman, Danny Hellman, Mack White, David Paleo, Chadwick Whitehead, Onsmith, Karl Wills and Jayr Pulga. Looking for laffs? A psychic jolt? A partner for your next trip? Look no further than… Hotwire!

Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt with a sampling of pages from throughout the book (16.5 MB).

Praise for past volumes:

“Now we’ve seen it, and can confirm: the new Hotwire is in fact good enough to eat…” – Mairead Case

“Hotwire Comics Vol. 2… continues the title’s standard for packing as many harshly drawn tales of scumminess, dread, and revenge into one volume as possible. Pieces by Danny Hellman, Ivan Brunetti, Chadwick Whitehead, Johnny Ryan, and a masterwork by Glenn Head make the pages pulse. I’m pretty crazy about the stuff this publisher does…” – Harry Allen

“This book is the very definition of a solid anthology… Its over-sized presentation puts to good use its line-up of talented visual-driven cartoonists.”" – The Comics Reporter