Louis St.Lewis's Publications

• June, 2009 Louis St.Lewis – Charleston Post and Courier front page feature posted on 04/22/2009 Louis St.Lewis – Charleston Post and Courier feature Bones, brushes, find places in art The Charleston Post and Currier by Jeff Nichols Believe it or not, it was sort of like Jerry Seinfeld meets heavy metal bad boys Marilyn Manson Fridaynight at the College of Charleston’s Halsey Gallery. An Estimated crowd of 400 – including an international art buyer from Ripley’s Believe it or Not and The Lady Chablis from The Garden of Good and Evil stopped by the gallery for the concurrent opening of flamboyant artist Louis St.Lewis “Doppleganger” ( which means the ghostly double of a living person) and Caryl Burtner’s ” Special Collection” which included among other trivial oddities, a wall full of discarded toothbrushes. Downstairs , St.Lewis collection included a coffin with a wax replica of his own body and his “Ancestal Chandelier” a chandelier composed entirely of human skulls and bones. ” Either he’s got a great sense of humor, or you’d have to say he’s pretty twisted”, said College of Charleston theater arts professor David Goss. ” We all have our personal limits of what we will and won’t accept, and mine are pretty broad, I don’t find anything offensive about it.” St.Lewis, dressed in a 19th century fox hunting outfit, makes no bones – pun intended- about turning human bones, blood and other byproducts into art. Like Manson, the controversial act fond of ripping pages from the bible during concerts, the Chapel Hill, N.C.- based artist, said those who criticize the shock value of his art are hypocrites. “I’m trying to rip down the hypocrisy of church and society,” St.Lewis said. The people who complain about my art are the same ones that support the death penalty, but they get all squeamish at seeing the results of their votes.” Though it’s art with a message, St.Lewis is quick to point out that he doesn’t take it too seriously. Neither should we, he said. “All I’m trying to say is have fun with life while you can,” he said. Listen to what he said about the skull chandelier . ” It’s a lot like Charleston. Lots of good bones and some skeletons in the closet. And I never have to eat alone.” Dozens of Charlestonians in the past week including the Bishop of Charleston have called Halsey Gallery curator Mark Sloan to say that St.Lewis’ art is not funny at all. It’s sacrilege, they told him. Over 100 other callers congratulated Sloan for bringing St.Lewis’ brand of pop art to Charleston, Sloan said. ” It’s a great responsibility and a burden to be really the only outlet in the city for this type of unconventional art. This is something we haven’t ever seen around here before. It’s stretching the boundaries of what we think of when we think of art.” If it stretches those boundaries too far for stately old Charleston, no one here seemed willing to admit that Friday night. “Absolutely not,” said one man peering into St.Lewis’s coffin. “Anybody with an open mind who appreciates art won’t find this offensive at all.” What did the Ripley’s guy think of all this? He came specifically to check out St.Lewis’ spooky chandelier. “I’t’s classic Ripley’s Believe It or Not” said Ripley’s vice president Edward Meyer. Why would someone do this? I’m interested, and I think our patrons would be.” The exhibitions will be displayed until Feb. 25. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 11.am, to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

• , May, 2009 ARTPAPERS review of Louis St.Lewis Louis St.Lewis :Fin de Siecle Anne Heller ARTPAPERS Louis St.Lewis’ ” Fin de Siecle” is an exhibition of three-dimensional plaster assemblages and xerographic collages that borrow heavily from classical Greek and Roman mythology. The quote in the window display sums up his artistic vision, philosophy and purpose : ” I have seen the future and don’t want to go there. Let me be the angel of history, Stay, Awaken the dead, make whole what has been smashed.” The principal images in this exhibit are either mythological characters such as Mars, Aphrodite, Leda, Cassandra and Cupid, or religious personages such as the Madonna and Saint George. The subject matter is clearly derivative of classical and Renaissance art. In the xerographic collages, the figures are printed in black onto clear acetate, sometimes elongated, sometimes widened, occasionally blurred to soften the image. Colored images ( sometimes repeating, sometimes very faint and hardly recognizable) or a strategically placed splash of color are painstakingly arranged underneath the transparency. These works, which one might dismiss as simple copies , are much more complex than those unfamiliar with the world of xerography might imagine. It takes a certain skill to slowly drag an image across a machine to achieve the beautiful and haunting distortion St.Lewis seeks. There is purpose to these collages, emotion and ideas are subtly conveyed using the products of modern technology. In The Angel of History, St.Lewis xerographically widens and blurs an outline of an angel. Underneath this acetate angel, one can faintly see gondolas floating down the waterways of Venice. The subtlety of the scene beneath the angel – the calm, slow passage of the gondola- suggests the slow, subtle passage of time. In Madonna of the Night Wing, the acetate image is a standard Renaissance Madonna and Child. Underneath the Madonna’s face and hair is a detail of the white, tan and gray feathers of an owl’s wing. The feathers intensify a feeling of tenderness and wisdom. The Kiss is a beautiful piece in which the frame and mounting of the work adds to its validity. The acetate collage itself is rather simple and small. A close-up of Cupid kissing Psyche, with simple yet vibrant colors underneath, fills a small oval frame. The frame is mounted in the center of a much larger rectangle covered in plush red suede. The brash, large border contrasts strongly with the tender image within the oval frame. St.Lewis’ three dimensional assemblages are masterful fusions of classical images, plaster casts of body parts and various synthetic items. The greenish-gold tint to the “skin” heightens the sense of timelessness and classical beauty, and the tensions created by the strong design reveals much about St.Lewis and his perceptions. In I Should Have Listened to Cocteau, plaster hands and arms shield a plaster face, crowned with plastic flowers, from flames cut from styrofoam in the background. The background is a slab of slate-gray styrofoam. The piece is based on an incident in which a Russsian ballet designer supposedly asked Cocteau and Picasso at a party ” If your house were on fire and you could only take one thing with you, what would you take?” Picasso answered ” The nearest thing to the door”, Cocteau answered “The Fire”. Mars on the Tigres-Euphrates is St.Lewis’ commentary on U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The background, an American flag, is painted in muted tones. In a narrow doorway cut from the center, the figure of a man from the waist up hovers. Wooden straws poke through his cheeks and temple. Teeth are bared, glue dripping from the dentures like the heavy thick saliva of a rabid dog. The man, leaning over a young boy, looks like s subdued monster temporarily pressed into service as a guard; the boy lies on his back, kicking. Graffitti chalked on the flag – including the words ” Yankee go Home,” a partial map of Babylon, and a seraphim-makes tangible the hatred inhabitants of the Middle East feel for this symbol of American imperialism. The Art Critic expresses the aggravation caused St.Lewis by his adversaries. In this assemblage, a minotaur butts its horned head into a gold frame. The plaster figure within the frame breaks into pieces, its body parts jumbled. A finger catches a tear. A dislocated arm covers the head. A brown eye stares from a nipple. The background of the painting is ablaze in orange and yellow. While St.Lewis’s materials and sources are familiar- found objects, xerography, assemblage, mythology- his work is unique because of the witty and macabre, yet beautiful ways in which these elements are combined. Louis St.Lewis.jpg

• , May, 2009 Louis St.Lewis feature, The Raleigh Extra Louis St.Lewis : Making a Place of His Own Spotlight the Arts- The Raleigh Extra by Ivan R. Waldorf Louis St.Lewis means to turn heads- and he succeeds. There is more to art than pen to paper, brush to canvas, or bow to string. Art is as much entertainment as anything else, and it helps to bring that overlooked element to bear when seeking a wider audience for your work. That, in a nutshell is part of the magic that is Louis St.Lewis, the expressive young artist who was commissioned this year to create the signature poster for Artsplosure. And what a collection of emotions and images it is. Much like it’s creator. ” I learned early on that I needed to market myself effectively,” St.Lewis says, ” and I believe I have been successful in doing so.” Indeed. He lives as most other artists and would-be artist can only dream of. He is an artist, full time. His works sell for thousands of dollars and are sought after, And he is free to be whoever he discovers himself to be. Not bad for something considered a hand-to-mouth business. ” I’ve tried to market myself in the manner of the late 19ths and early 20th centuries, when artists were valued as something important,” he says. “Art is entertainment, just like the movies, shows or any kind of show business. People want to be entertained, so I use costumes, a limo, an entourage, because it livens things up when I arrive.” But what about all that stuff about artistic purity? It’s all in the eye of the beholder, apparently, because this artist, having been booted out of every college and art school he attended- not for failure to perform, but failure to conform- has left his purer classmates in the dust. “None of the people who graduated from the schools I went to are still in the arts.” Louis says. And as one looks at the Artsplosure poster, it’s easy to see the influence of Louis’ favoritesm like Warhol and Dali. But there’s a lot of Louis St.Lewis there too. After all, how many people could stand at the top of the Eiffel Tower and see it – the Tower- as a jazz horn in the hands of Sir Walter Raleigh, surrounded by classic images of The Louvre, while understanding Paris as a town ” just like Raleigh, except not quite.” After all, that’s what art is all about-seeing the ordinary in an extraordinary way. That’s what makes Louis St.Lewis the artist he is- something no classroom or workshop knows to teach. It must be discovered within.

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