By Stephen E. Adams
Noted Lopez artist, Gary South’s refusal to be interviewed is more ironic than annoying. Normally, as a self-referential monologist, South makes the late Spalding Gray appear as reticent and retiring as Emily Dickinson.
However, just ask him to sit for an interview. Nope. No way. Expletives deleted.
South’s many admirers and collectors, however, spare no words when it comes to their opinions about South and his work.
“At his best, there’s not a better artist in the San Juans,” says one local artist who, aware of the contentiousness of such a statement, speaks only after anonymity has been promised.
Contention and contradiction are two elements with which South has been abundantly supplied. They are often the themes of his sometimes jarring, sometimes reassuring work.
Former Lopez artist, James Barron, describes South as having “the mouth of a sailor” combined with a compassion that would have him offering you “the ugly faded red Santa sweat shirt off his back.” Barron notes that he spent years refusing this very shirt.
While adults might be offended by South’s language and opinions, children are drawn to him the way they often seem attracted by any adult who has rejected the world of grown-ups voluntarily in order to inhabit their world.
His paintings of dancing crabs or a horse which seems to be caught in the midst of a snarling laugh make one think of how Maurice Sendak might look if he were to have been re-imagined by Hieronymus Bosch.
Local writer and zine publisher Jaina Bee describes South as “…an artist in the truest sense because he doesn’t distinguish one medium from another, yet he obsessively masters each one he tries.”
His undergraduate studies were in painting, yet he received his graduate degree as a sculpture. However, he considers himself to be principally a painter.
In addition to being a painter, South has been a jazz musician, a line technician for Hewlett-Packard, a motorcycle mechanic, a world-traveler, a prodigious journalist, a photographer, owner of Asylum Gallery, and a teacher.
He is also a deeply loyal friend.
While South might not have had any words of his own to contribute to this article, his friends—and they are legion—speak of him with wonder, affection, love, and admiration. Everyone spoken to considers it a privilege to belong to any tribe which counts Gary South among its members.
Another Lopezian, Niki Becker, recalls how enthusiastically South responded to Becker’s hanging of one of his paintings. She had displayed one of his crows upside down since there was a trail of red paint and she, as a physician, wanted the appearance of the “blood” to be dripping.
When South saw what she’d done, he became excited, saying “Hey, yeah, that is the way it’s supposed to be hung.”
It is this excitement, this passion for new ideas and ways of expression, that draws many of South’s fans.
Local artist Kate Scott calls his work “both beautiful and weird.”
She loves his art as much as she does the artist, a man she describes as having broken the mold, as being “cranky, really really cranky, funny, and tender-hearted. He is exquisitely tender-hearted underneath the rude, cranky crap.”
When it comes to his art and his unflagging drive to create, “the whole world is up for grabs and on his palette,” says Jaina Bee.
She continues: “It’s all art to him, from a brush stroke to an engine to a catcall to a broken doll he digs up at Neil’s Mall.”
South does consider accepting commission work and enjoys discussing ideas for projects with prospective clients.
He may be contacted any weekend afternoon at Isabel’s Espresso. Look for a man with a vocabulary and opinions foul enough to offer offense to anyone. He’ll be carrying a travel mug with a giant fly affixed to its top; when approaching him, do not let him sense fear.
Several of those who responded to requests for anecdotes about South made it clear that they consider him a genius.
No doubt, Gary South would have something to say about this and, no doubt, it would not be printable in a family publication.
