- April 26, 2024
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NOTE: The date of the Marathon encore opening has been corrected in the story. It should say 6 p.m. Saturday, June 8.
One night, J.J. Graham swung a hammer and bashed a hole in his painting. It was a two-sided piece that used to hang from the ceiling in Hollingsworth Gallery, of which he is curator, and he decided it wasn’t worth keeping anymore. He hauled the painting out to the balcony in City Marketplace and bashed another hole and then, in the moonlight, he thought he saw something worth saving.
The piece is now hanging on the wall at the gallery, in a much different form. Two squares, about 18 inches tall, have been cut out in the upper left and lower left corners; in the upper right corner, an irregularly shaped hole is evidence of the hammer as an instrument of creation.
On the left side of the painting, the figure of a pilgrim is crafted from strips of black that recall the seams in a stained glass window. The figure is connected to the frame with string, bringing to mind Jacob’s ladder and Native American dream catchers. The pilgrim holds a staff topped with a bright yellow star. He has a peaceful, hopeful expression on his face and he looks up and out of the frame to the right. It’s an airy piece: You can see the wall right through it, as if someone has left the windows open.
On the right side is a darker scene: a blackwashed void, an hourglass nuclear plant, ticking toward destruction.
The piece is called “Looking Beyond,” but art fans in Palm Coast would do well not to look beyond this show. It’s an exclusive show, the first by Graham in 2.5 years, and its encore opening is this 6 p.m. Saturday, June 8, at the gallery. Graham also wrote a play about a Polish physicist and a bottle of murky water sent to us from the future. The play is called “Bottled Water”; tickets for the show are $10 and showtimes are 7:15 p.m. June 6 and June 7, at the gallery.
(Incidentally, the June 8 re-opening is also the party for the release of the second installment of Hollingsworth’s art magazine, Synapses. I have a short story in the magazine, and I’ll also give a reading of that story at the Saturday event.)
“Looking Beyond” was created out of necessity on one hand: His show for another artist fell through. It was also created out of a response to the Palm Coast Observer’s community editor, Shanna Fortier, who said the previous shows by the artists he had chosen were, essentially, starting to feel predictable. And it was created out of a place of inspiration and renewal for the 38-year-old artist.
Graham has suffered from migraines for a dozen years — constant, splitting pain that he used to mask with a drink at past shows.
He has been to doctor after doctor, and finally, he was given what he describes as a miracle prescription drug for a fresh diagnosis of ocular migraines.
“I took it and the room just got brighter,” he said in an interview at his gallery. “I don’t even regret going through the years that I have suffered from this. I learned something about pushing through the pain. I have this appreciation now for not having it.”
And so, with no art to hang on the walls, and a show set to open in 10 days, he set about on a creative marathon that was made possible with his clearer mind and freedom from migraines. “I was in a creative river,” he said.
The show, which originally opened May 11, is primarily dark in tone, inspired by the fear of nuclear fallout and destruction, but it has a sense of humor, and it has a lining of optimism throughout.
“I try to balance any darkness with the element of ascension,” Graham said. Like the pilgrim in “Looking Beyond,” he said, “We all have to ascend, and we all have to figure out how.”
