SUBURBAN AVANT-GARDE

. . .MY VISIT TO ARTIST E.K.HUCKABY'S COUNTRY DOMAIN IN SUBURBAN ATLANTA. . .

artists certainly can create the illusion of time-travel. there's a certain brand of artist that picks the pockets from the past and recreates a living alternative world, immune for as long as the artist lives, from the realities of the mainstream. and I dare say such artists are very precious librarians. . . that present a carefully designed past.

there's something of 1910 in huckaby's place, as well as something deeper from a 19th century southern countryside. there are overarching tones of asia, and also the brutality of body in this magical fiction e.k. huckaby lives inside. on Huckaby Rd, he shares the country-ish block with mcmansions, and subdivisions named "the chimneys," yet e.k. roams 30 acres of land, planting groves of bamboo. here, he stubbornly holds back time. . .thank god there are people like him.



. . .and he's open for visits. we had coffee in his kitchen as music boxes were somehow amplified throughout the house. the windows were open, blowing off the dust from a lot of encrusted objects, including photographs and paintings.

I was surprised to find out he actually grew up in the suburbs. I now better understandand why, perhaps he was attracted to expound into, artistically, this other bygone southern lifetyle. I, too, am a product of those historyless, identityless suburbs, and tend to fictionalize pasts as a result.

lots of good books around, stately shelves are made from cut up doors and installed in the dark central hallway. . he has a clever code: vertical books, he's read, horizontal ones are yet unread. his bedroom is painted the most wonderful dusty purple, with black trim. . .his bed sits in the center of the room surrounded on the walls by a collection of funerary photographs, most of them turn of the century. ( amazing! )



as we walked through the woods looking for sprouting bamboo, I said something about the layers of memory this place must have for him. . .he retorted that not all of them are so romantic. . . he remembered hogs being hung from that tree there, being disemboweled.



his manner is gentle and patient, but his objects present sharper edges, a morose love of age . . .I relate. I also see a sense of humor there. . .and, of course a refreshing fearlessness of mortality. I think he enjoys sneaking up on you in this subtle way. he's confident. he has all the time in the world.



here is a quick list of objects that left an impact: bones, a real placenta under glass, stuffed birds, a fox with glasses, decaying paper lanterns, a geometric glass box, a slice of brain wedged beween glass, saws, teeth, a lot of white rocks in piles, a stack of black books about myth and the devil, a girl with a candle inside a large glass lantern, a real maxfield parrish print, busts and clocks, a wax telephone on red velvet in side a plexiglass box, a resin-thick painting of a thousand lamps, boxing gloves, seeds.

I asked him if he was a theosophist or spiritualist. he said, he has his own version of theosophy. . . (note to self: ask him about that on the next trip to wonderland.)

here's a really great interview robert cheatham did with e.k.