Art Beat: Gallery X's 'Public Xhibition' features more than 200 artworks, 61 artists

Editor's Note: Opinions expressed in the Art Beat column are those of columnist Don Wilkinson.

As it has done every August since 1990, New Bedford’s longest running gallery has mounted a large-scale, open art show in which artists of all levels of experience are welcome to exhibit any work, in any medium, without regard to a particular theme or motif.

This year, there are 225 works of art on display by 61 artists in both the main space within Gallery X and in the street-level Frederick Douglass Gallery. Of course, the show is the traditional crowd-favorite known as the Public Xhibition … wait ... what? ... The Public what?

What happened to the Public Hanging?

A little local art history lesson ensues. In 1990, the X was formed by roughly two dozen artists, primarily graduates of the Swain School of Design and some like-minded associates. Early members included the backbone (and heart-and-soul) of the gallery Chuck Hauck, the ever-stalwart Johnny Nieman, a slew of well-known South Coast painters and sculptors and more, including the then-punk poet, now Unitarian Church minister Karen LeBlanc. And me.

We were young, perhaps even naive. That world seems vastly distant now. Thinking back on it, the edges are fuzzy, the colors bleed. The first show was called “the Public Hanging” for a simple reason: everyone in the amorphous “public” was invited to hang their artwork. We liked the name. It was simple word play.

Artist Sue-Ellen Stroum illustrated the first postcard and it got some laughs, as it displayed a Mad magazine level of gallows humor. A half-dozen artsy types in black, with spiky hair, big hoop earrings and at least one handlebar mustache, stare up at a woman in a short dress, standing on a chair. The picture crops off at her waist. It’s unclear whether she is hanging a painting or slipping her head through a noose.

And therein lies the humor. None of us thought much about it. It was silly. It was word play.

Most of the original members have long since left Gallery X, moving off to far flung cities or transitioning into lives in which careers, marriages, parenthood, even grandparenthood leave little time or space to commit to the gallery. A few have died. Over the years, hundreds of people have drifted through as members.

Of the original crew, only Hauck and Nieman have always stayed the course, always loyal to the cause, the twin cornerstones of Gallery X. Let’s jump to the relatively recent past.

At a regular monthly meeting, a relatively new member (who shall remain unnamed) suggested that, given current events, including the police killings of unarmed Black men around the country and the Black Lives Matter movement that arose as a result of that violence, that perhaps the name “Public Hanging,” even if not meant to be hurtful, was at very best, insensitive.

There was some disagreement. The name was connected to the history of the gallery. It was tradition. It was harmless. It was word play.

The new member quit the gallery that night.

Nieman was distraught and he sought the advice of LeBlanc, the previously mentioned punk poet-cum-Unitarian minister, who had been a member back early on, who had no problem with the “Public Hanging” name back in the day. But she had evolved. And when Nieman reminded her that it was just word play, that it was just a reference to the “public hanging” of their work in the gallery, she had the perfect impromptu rebuttal.

“John … if you had a show of pictures by Massachusetts photographers, would you call it 'Mass Shooting?'”

He was stunned. And he knew she was right.

The use of the noose to terrify Black people is as disturbingly American as apple pie. As recently as 2019, Deondrey Montreal Hopkins was hanged from a tree in Columbus, Mississippi. Last week, in Billings, Montana, a noose was found hanging from a light pole near the tour bus of Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. Lovett’s band is multiracial.

Certain politicians like to say they are the victims of a witch hunt. Ninety miles north of New Bedford, 19 people were hanged between 1692-1693.

On a day that will truly live in infamy, violent insurrectionists shouted to “hang Mike Pence!”

Across the globe, political dissidents are regularly hanged.  And in the United States, hanging is an often-taken method of suicide, second only to the use of a firearm.

Goodbye, Public Hanging. It was a bit of clever word play. But times change. Long live the Public Xhibition.

And now onto our regular programming:

Given the real estate I have left, I’m going to briefly point out what I consider to be the highlights of the Xhibition.

“I Kissed a Girl,” an oil painting by Madeline Peach, features two young women lip locked in a sensual embrace, their heavily tattooed arms and legs becoming almost indistinguishable from one another. The warm orange and golden hues crank up the heat even further.

Peach also displays a companion piece of sorts, called “Comfort Zone.” A woman, with her chin in one hand, hovers between the thighs of another, nonchalantly looking at a cellphone. Without the obviousness of nudity or a sense of urgency, it still resonates with palpable eroticism.

Eva Pimental’s painting “Eisoptrophobia" depicts a frazzled woman, with a healthy — or perhaps, unhealthy — nod to Munch’s “The Scream” in a public restroom. Wormy squiggles of blue and red run from the faucets and a hairy crimson-eyed beast looks back out from the mirror.

“Farmer John’s Dream” by Sue Hauck is a small reddish wooden box with an image of a tractor-riding farmer on it. Superimposed over that is one of Hauck’s “Mad Men"-era, cocktail-dress-wearing sexpots. But it is the addition of a tiny toy rooster bending over to look at her that reveals her keen sense of humor.

“Pheromones,” an  acrylic painting by the artist only identified as Blue, is equal parts Salavador Dali and Peter Max, if they collaborated on a coloring book for grown-ups. It features floating eyes, lips, fish, a peach and a carrot.

Marianne deVaux’s “Breakfast at Leunig’s” is a cheery riff on the still life, with salt and pepper shakers, a coffee cup and a creamer, rendered in a soft palette of lavender, yellow and orange. I am a former resident of Burlington, Vermont and I suspect that it is an homage to a classic French bistro on the Church Street Marketplace.

Other favorites: Tom Brejcha’s vibrant “Jazz Players;” Alison Paige Borges’s remarkably painted “Visio Ineritus, Vision of Destruction,” so ripe with mystery and possibility; Peter Turk’s delicate, detailed “Copper Still,” and the untitled Halloweenesque series of digital illustrations by Bianca Laslo.

“Public Xhibition” is on display at Gallery X, 169 William St., New Bedford, until Aug. 27.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Art Beat visits 2023 'Public Xhibition' at Gallery X New Bedford