Keeping Austin Weird Requires no Additional Funding

The 9^th Annual East Austin Studio Tour wrapped up last weekend and a friend and I drove over to check on the state of the visual arts in Austin.

First of all – the name of the event is EAST.  That was a relief. The official moniker being too way too much of a mouthful.  (We kept calling it the Austin Art Crawl – everyone seemed to know what we were talking about.)  The first thing we noticed about EAST, on the drive over, was that the catalog produced for the event (which concerns a couple of hundred artists, many of whom are starving…) looked like it cost a half a million or so to design and produce.  And this is East Austin after all – most of the money is on the other side of 35.

The fine print reveals that this rouge bunch of loft crawlers with their ribs showing through their personally screened T-shirts is funded up by the City, the State and the Feds.  What else, really could you expect – I mean it is the political center of the third most important state in the Union.  Even the weird-arrati here know how to throw a really big show – and get the government to pay for it.  If this is starting to sound like some sort of Fox News rant – it ain’t.

Simple jealousy.

In a town that can produce the following scene in a ‘nothing special just walking down the street’ context:

(he:  Alternative Medicine MD  she: Hair Designer)

… it’s very hard not to feel at home and have a great time.

I was always vaguely bothered by Austin.  Sort of like NYC, the residents seemed just a little too pleased to be living in such a cool fucking place, you know?  Of course, spending a little time in Austin (or NYC) leads to the inevitable conclusion that it is a cool fucking place – I’m just always a little irritated to have to return to Houston.

Houston, of course, has its charms.

Hell, me, for one.  And all my pals.  And the Astrodome.  I could go on.  I won’t.

EAST is best taken in a smallish 3 hour dose.  Otherwise, you might end up getting out your check book and leasing a loft.  You could easily forget you had to be back on Tuesday to work on closing the Sloane account…

Not one to avoid getting in on the action – even though my artistic proclivity and ability is meager -  I doctored Anne Genung’s fabulous piece “The Mexican Scientist” with a little of my own graffiti.  She did leave a perfectly tempting empty cartoon bubble coming out of the cat’s mouth…

Anne’s Original:

'Mexican Scientist' - by Anne Genung

My Desecration:

'Silica Gel' - by Mark Lee, CPA

At this point, it would be appropriate for me to thank Anne for allowing me to use her work and . . . etc. etc.   Except that she hasn’t.  But I emailed 'Silica Gel' to her and she didn’t send back any threatening communication.  So I’m just gonna go with it.  Anne's moving this week anyway – so she’s probably too busy to sue me anyway.

S. Dali

-furiously twirling mustache