| In two simultaneous shows, the St. Petersburg’s Arts Center, which divides its time and space between exhibiting local and member artists and organizing museum-grade shows of contemporary art, dips into the world of westerns. “The Wild Bunch: Cowboys in Contemporary Art” showcases cowboy kitsch in current paintings, sculpture and video by eight artists from around the US, while “Cracker Country: Florida’s Cowboy Culture” takes a documentary look at indigenous horsemen—and one very determined teenage girl—still riding the range today. |  |
The Wild Bunch and Cracker Country – Megan Voeller
In two simultaneous shows, the St. Petersburg’s Arts Center, which divides its time and space between exhibiting local and member artists and organizing museum-grade shows of contemporary art, dips into the world of westerns. “The Wild Bunch: Cowboys in Contemporary Art” showcases cowboy kitsch in current paintings, sculpture and video by eight artists from around the US, while “Cracker Country: Florida’s Cowboy Culture” takes a documentary look at indigenous horsemen—and one very determined teenage girl—still riding the range today.
In “Wild Bunch,” New Yorker Jenny Rogers’ video stands out as the piece to see. During the seven-minute video, which screened previously at P.S. 122 in Manhattan, half a dozen women perform a synchronized, underwater “cowboy ballet” to the strains of a western film score. Beyond the mesmerizing and hilarious physical contortions that suggest the women, submerged in full cowboy dress in a concrete swimming pool while riding invisible bucking broncos or enduring a hail of bullets, it’s their bodies that provide a revelation. Bled of color and moving in slow motion, their feminine fleshiness conjures up a dichotomy with the dry, taut, rough and, here, absent masculinity at the root of the cowboy’s erotic (and homoerotic) appeal.
A sculptural installation piece by Jennifer Zackin takes plastic cowboy toys as tiny symbols of all that is Occidental and arranges them in the elaborate pattern of a mandala. The transformation of Western detritus into a lush expression of Eastern spirituality finds surprisingly rich material in the variations in surface, color and texture of the toys.
Two artists exhibit a pop art influence in their take on the cowboy. James Michaels, the only local artist included in the show, weighs in with mixed media paintings that showcase his photorealistic style of depicting toys—e.g., Disney’s Woody—as well as historic Western personalities and Native American children, intermixed with found objects fastened to the canvas. Bill Schenck relocates the cowboy to the comic book, complete with maudlin dialog about the solitary pain of cowboy life, in images inspired by Lichtenstein, but imbued with soft peaches and browns rather than primary colors.
In the adjoining show, “Cracker Country,” three Florida photographers document the state’s homegrown version of the archetypal figure. Carlton Ward Jr., a conservation photographer, developed an interest in the native cattle ranchers after learning that they served in an environmentalist capacity, staving off development and maintaining land in its natural form. The light and detail in his rich photographs—smoky blues and browns printed on rag paper—read as a visual love letters to the ranchers, who are caught riding through mist on several occasions. But even when an image is a photographic cliché, like a rodeo shot, Ward still manages to make it look fresh and original.
Photographer Beth Reynolds spent time with 13-year-old Laci Whaley of Kenansville, Florida, who holds the title of junior national barrel racing champion. (Think NASCAR for the My Little Pony set.) Reynolds managed some great shots of the blond teenager digging in and holding on tight atop jumping horses, but it’s awfully hard to shine in Ward’s shadow.
