Gauvin Exhibit
& Art Talk Recap
by Iriany Sánchez
Bell Arts Factory was thrilled to put together Gauvin: A Retrospective, an art exhibit from the collections of Phil Taggart, Steve Aguilar, Denise Grant Sindelar, Maribel Hernández, Mb Hanrahan, Patti Channer and Moses Mora at the Tool Room Gallery. The exhibit ran all the month of August 7th to September 4th, 2020 and highlighted the work of gauvin, a Black artist, poet, and an advocate for those with mental illness.
gauvin arrived in Ventura in the early 90s and made himself known with his visual, musical, and poetical work presence. He performed and created on the street, in the galleries, and the coffee shops all over town. gauvin’s presence in Ventura had lasting impact, challenging the status quo of Two Tree paintings and beach art.
The conversation, hosted on Zoom started with an introduction of the panelists given by Moses Mora:
Denise Grant Sindelar was a patron to many art projects and she was a patron saint to gauvin. Phil Taggart had great interest in documenting grass root efforts around Ventura. Aside from filming and documenting many or most of the art projects around town, he was actually boosting, supporting and preserving many worthy and deserving projects. Much of the same could be said about Steve Aguilar who is an accomplished performer, singer and guitarist. Steve has also written, directed and performed in his own films. The reason there is so much footage of gauvin performances is because of the efforts of Phil Taggart and Steve Aguilar.
“I am so grateful that in my life I have been blessed to cross paths with Denise, Phil and Steve, and of course gauvin.” Says Moses.
You can view the whole art talk below (we had to edit out few minutes of sound at the end to make the copywrite gods happy):
Chris Jensen is a big fan and also a collector of gauvin’s work and despite him being shy he welcomed the invitation to join in the conversation, showing a three deminsional piece he owned.
Denise shared one of her most vivid memories, the time she first met Gauvin around 1993 – 1994. She was working in the Ventura Bookstore then. “A young man walked in smoking a cigarette and I was the very harsh bookstore clerk who had to usher him out and told him he could not smoke in the bookstore.” Later on in the conversation Chris Jensen also recalls gauvin’s response to Denise “I’m not smoking!” A very particular gauvin response.
For those of use being introduced to gauvin’s work for the first time, the feeling was palpable among gauvin’s friends and collectors share when speaking about his work. That feeling was expressed throughout their conversation and could best be described by Steve Aguilar’s words:
“Mr. gauvin is one of the most powerful artists that we’ve had in Ventura. Everybody is good, but Mr. gauvin was in a category all by himself. He was exceptional”.
It is also incredible to see how his work is as relevant to today as to when it was created, 20 to 25 years ago. An example of that is one of Denise’s collections (shown above), “Piece that documents the shooting of a young black boy in a restaurant’s parking lot by an off duty police officer.”
Phil Taggart, a former Ventura County Poet Laureate and freind of gauvin, shared a recording of gauvin’s poetry (at about 15 minutes into the video). Phil also shared some thoughts on gauvin’s spoken word performance style and recalling how gauving would toss his written poems up in the air after reading them (sometimes retrieving them after the event was over). It made us all wonder about the possibility of a collection of gauvin’s works?
The video above was shown in the Zoom/Facebook LIVE and is a must watch! It highlights much of gauvin’s work collected in Ventura and shows what a great inspiration gauvin is to the arts community.
To find out all kinds of odd anecdotes about Gauvin and his work please watch the recording of the Zoom/Facebook Live.
Bell Arts Factory is very thankful to all who joined their efforts into putting together this great conversation and art exhibit. We look forward to using these as a stepping stone to bringing Gauvin’s work to the world.
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Wonderful Art Talk in honor of Gauvin. It was really nice to see the Art Community gather and share anecdotes and Art.
Thank you for having this event to introduce gauvin to all of us who didn’t yet know of him and his work. The stories of the panelists who knew him personally give a much deeper understanding of his art, and help me understand the historical significance of this artist. It is so important that his life and work are documented and shared–-especially during this challenging time in American history. Thanks again.
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