my recent article in san franciscer magazine

bad booth

and beyond

the bergamot of

highway one

All year San Franciscer Magazine will be bringing readers exclusive untold adventures of the world’s most reclusive artists, thinkers, and critics. This month premiers an excerpt from the art journals of Roberta Soltea. Illustration by Peter Max Lawrence.

"bad booth and beyond

the bergamot of hwy 1"

is an excerpt from

Roberta Soltea’s

art journals dated

March, 2007

published in honor

of the bad booth & beyond

art collective’s first

NYC exhibition at

the Fountain Art Fair

March 8 - 10, 2013

In January of 2007 I left New York with the hopes of going to Italy, but I never got there.

Instead, I meandered my way West in a hopelessly yellow, gas-guzzling Chrysler Cordoba. These were the years of intellectual wars and Karen Finley’s inane attempts at being shocking, again, with the inter-webs. (Oh no she didn’t... yawn.) These were the years of patriotic lapel-pin flags made in LA sweatshops and smoldering Chelsea gallery vendettas. These were the years of everyone who had dismissed political art through the Act Up years as ineffectual jumping on the political art wagon. These were the years of 9/11 madness and indie film dialogue demonstrating genuine interaction, with irony. These were the years, in other words, of bad art and badder artists.

There have always been bad artists and, dare I say without risking too much smuggery, that I adore a self-aware bad artist more than a dandified dilettante thief posing as a good artist but actually stealing real good artists’ work, i.e. Warhol, any of the Popes, Tony Labat, and, perhaps, Shakespeare. Still, the influx of artists after the WTC Attack was shockingly well-meaning, ill-placed, and exploitative: nothing more useful than a terrorist attack for the alienated young artist to extract endless meaning from; nothing more pathetic than a documentary film about Jack Smith that fails to mention his Queer sexuality.

Suffice it to say, I’d had enough of New York for a while. I needed out. Bad. So, I bought the Cordoba, a small plastic cooler for food, tossed my suitcase in the gargantuan trunk, and headed west. My shoulder length hair was still auburn then and I wore a gauze-y scarf printed with pink seashells to keep it from blowing in my hazel eyes. I wore vintage sunglasses, frosty lipstick, and Devil May Care fingernails. I wore an ankle-length navy blue department store coat over my green wool circle skirt and black silk blouse. I was beating it out of there in style.

Always having led a bit of the life of Riley, I sped mercilessly, stopped frequently, and made many friends along the road. I even adopted a deliciously soft puppy in St. Louis, who I named Mister Furr.

So, it should come as no surprise that by February, five years ago today, I arrived in Big Sur under a  glorious blue and sunny sky.

A friend had asked me to stay in his house while he finished filming his Passoa bio-pic in Bulgaria. After parking the Cordoba under a tree, I lept from the car, stripped, and plunged into the delicious swimming pool. I felt my body temperature return to its 98.4 degrees and sighed with relief. Mister Furr, who was not yet a swimmer, stood nervously on the edge of the pool and barked.

I suddenly realized Mister Furr and I had an audience, as four young people rather awkwardly emerged from the guest cottage.

Alas, my friend neglected to mention me to the clutch of ragtag young artists who he’d also invited to stay.

They introduced themselves, as I treaded water in the pool, naked, with my delightful puppy barking frantically. Needless to say, although things started awkwardly, after they brought me a terrycloth robe and a gin and ginger, the gears of our social interactions well-oiled, we got along famously.

It was, in a sense, a spontaneous American remake of Francois Ozun’s /Swimming Pool/, only I was the writer, not the murderous young daughter, and the young artists were delightful, refreshing, and dare-devilishly smart. We played; we danced; we conversated.

Perhaps these young artists were not so much brilliant as decidedly not self-righteous New York Artists from the Early 2000s.

They were all quite young, nubile, and excellent swimmers. They wore interesting outfits and invited me over for anything and everything, including raucous rounds of canasta, during which I trounced them heartily, and invited me to be in their silly little films.

It should come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that by remarkable coincidence, one of the artists was Peter Max Lawrence, who I had met years earlier in Kansas City. He had graduated from his gravity paintings and was now deeply engaged with video, film, drawings, and performance work. 

The other three charmers – Jenalee Harmon, Michelle Morby, and Laura Hyunjhee Kim – took no prisoners with their endless witty repartee. 

The five of us spent many days together that balmy February. Sunset swims at the seashore. Glorious morning walks. 

I was deeply inspiring to all of them and it was through my guidance, my gentle questions and advice, my openness to offer any and all of my knowledge of art and the art world, my mentorship in the purist sense, that perhaps has inspired these four remarkable young artists to flourish into the brilliant and slightly less young artist they are today.

AN EMAIL FROM ROBERTA, DATED FEBRUARY 2, 2013:

Dear San Franciscer Readers,

I look forward to seeing these dear old friends again, this time in my New York haunts. I entreat you, if you happen to be in NY at the time, to welcome Bad Booth and Beyond by visiting them at the Fountain Art Fair, March 8 through 10, 2013.

Sincerely,

Roberta

-- san franciscer magazine march 2013