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Home > Around Town > Art collective e4 “back from the dead” with a strong show at Charlie Cummings Gallery
Art collective e4 “back from the dead” with a strong show at Charlie Cummings Gallery
“Remember Black Shoes” opens March 4th
By Jack Cantey
Fort Wayne Reader
2006-03-06
e4 is Seth Harris, Tracy Row, Jason Stopa, and Eric Tarr. This talented quartet of Fort Wayne artists has worked under the e4 moniker since soon after they met in 2002. They have exhibited their solo and collaborative mixed media work at numerous local galleries and underground venues, including 1911 Gallery, Art Attack 2, and Avant-Garde Gallery. An exhibition of their latest work, Remember Black Shoes, opens at Charlie Cummings Gallery on March 05.
I recently sat down with the guys where it all began: table “e4” at the Mad Anthony Brewing Company on Broadway. Over the course of a Monday night, I got a taste of the humor, intellect, and brotherhood that is unmistakably e4.
Beginnings
FWR: What do you remember about your initial encounters here?
Jason Stopa: That first night we met, we started talking about Basquiat and I thought, ‘This is pretty cool. I don't know these guys but this is a nice discussion.’
Eric Tarr: Monday nights here used to be the thing to do. You could just come down here and hop around from table to table.
Seth Harris: We just hung out and drank.
Tracy Row: I think we just enjoyed each others' company more than anybody's at any of the other tables.
ET: We basically talked about everything, but mainly all things art. We weren’t exclusive at first. We invited everyone to come to “e4”, but we were the only people who stuck around.
SH: And we chose this table because it was the furthest away from everyone, I think.
ET: It's in the corner so you get a good view, but it’s still secluded.
JS: We started making up our own terms for things. Silly inside jokes or inside ideas that bled over into our art. Like, “remember black shoes.”
ET: They all made sense to us, but no one else really got it.
Collaboration
FWR: The first e4 shows contained only solo work. How did you begin to work collaboratively?
TR: John Commorato asked us to do a collaborative piece for the Art Attack show in ‘03. We thought it sounded awesome and we knocked it out in a day and a half.
ET: That was a fevered process.
SH: And very jumbled. We sat it on a table, each started at a corner, and worked on it.
JS: The way it operates now is much more loose. One person holds stage, then steps back, and somebody else naturally picks up where that person left off.
ET: We don’t look at it as “four corners” anymore, so much as one complete piece. We have a little saying: “Something to paint over.” Something to get us going.
SH: It's not like we sit down and say, “We're going to work with purple and green and let’s have farm animals in it.” We don't have any preconceived notions.
ET: But it usually comes down to purple and green and farm animals. (laughter)
TR: Some pieces we'll bitch and moan over. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We'll just paint over it and start on something fresh.
JS: It’s like a conversation and when it's not working, it's more like an argument. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it just doesn't come together.
ET: If you do something and it fails, it becomes something that isn't a failure, but is a step toward the completion of the piece.
SH: It's like an instant critique.
ET: It’s tough when you do something you love and [the other three] don't like it. They paint over it and say, “This isn't working, let's get rid of it.” Initially, it kind of punches you in the face.
TR: You just get over it. Fast.
Remember Black Shoes
FWR: Your new show’s title is peculiar. Why are you demanding us to remember black shoes?
ET: The same reason we demand everything from everybody—
SH: We're entitled to it. (laughter)
TR: It really means nothing. People can do with it what they want.
JS: I think it's a nice title because it sounds like a memorial, almost as if to somebody who died.
ET: Like e4. We died for a couple of years. (laughter)
FWR: And now you’re back from the dead?
SH: We just needed a little hiatus.
ET: It went a little long, but I would rather have the space between our shows be too long than too short.
JS: That, and the venues we could do something in were no longer around. And even if we could get into some galleries, I don't know if we'd want to.
TR: We wouldn't fit in.
SH: We don't seek out the establishment art crowd. We want the dirty kids in t-shirts and flip flops to show up. You don't want to buy something? That's okay. Come and hang out.
FWR: Why is Charlie’s gallery a good fit?
TR: We require a bit of freedom to do what we need to do. Otherwise, our art won't make sense to us. And if it doesn't make sense to us, it won't make sense to an audience. We need something a little more loose and Charlie's allowing us to do that.
Family
FWR: How has belonging to e4 personally impacted you?
JS: e4 has been a second family for me. The dynamic of knowing that someone has my back and I've got theirs.
SH: I do like that camaraderie of it. I remember last year, Jason had his bike stolen one night and we all drove around looking for it. We were ready to beat the hell out of someone with our tire iron to get Jason's bike back.
TR: For a long time, e4 was my family. These were the people I depended on, and who depended upon me.
ET: e4 is just a number of a table we got from a bar, but e4 transcends the individual. It is the collaborative and it will always be the collaborative.
JS: It's a reason to have pride, even if it's just a pride amongst ourselves.
Remember Black Shoes, an exhibition of collaborative and solo paintings by e4
Charlie Cummings Clay Studio & Gallery
March 4 – 25, 2006
Opening Reception: March 4, 7pm-12am
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