Tom Everhart - Waves And Bubble Baths

If you were in Beverly Hills last Saturday night, you may have thought you were in Venice. So many Venice friends made the trip east of the 405 for Tom Everhart's art opening at the Mouche Gallery that I heard someone say "I feel like I'm at Abbot's Habit." It really was pretty funny, as everywhere you looked there was either a Venice person or a friend of a Venice person. It was awesome.

Waves and Bubble Baths (showing at the Mouche until December 11th) is new works from Everhart, over 150 pieces all based on a drawing of a wave done by Charles Schulz in 1991 for his comic strip. The Snoopy character shows up in each piece, to show scale, and all pay direct tribute to that Shulz wave, but also to the various inspirations that have been important to Everhart in his long career. The bubble baths refer to the various bubbles Everhart dwells in as he works, like his Venice studio, his relationship with Schulz, his studio in Tahiti ... and the bubble we live in here in Venice (Thank God).

There are tips of the hat to such diverse luminaries as Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Jean Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Missy Elliot, Biggie Smalls, Frank Stella, and Venice, California - of course.

The champagne flowed as friends caught up and congratulated Everhart and his muse/wife, Jennifer. Venice cleaned up nicely, as the ladies were hot and the gents were dapper. It would have been great to have turned it into an all night lock-in, to give everyone the chance to chat, as there were so many old friends present that it was hard to even just greet them all, never mind hear all of their latest. We need a sequel/closing party!

The new work was gorgeous, with the bright colors of Everhart's palette providing excellent selfie backgrounds for those that take those. I noticed some new color schemes in there too, as in the blacks and golds of Snoop Dogg's Sound Wave, and the pinks, purples, and golds of the beautifully abstract Andy's Tsunami. All of Everhart's work is fun to observe, and it gets even better when you know the meanings behind it. Do read the artist's written piece about the show here. It provides wonderful insight into the making of this art that had us all in Beverly Hills celebrating with our friend.

Cheers to Tom and Jenny! Thank you for the art, thank you for the fun!



Tom Everhart - Waves and Bubble Baths
Mouche Gallery
340 North Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
info@mouchegallery.com

John Salley and Tom Everhart - Game On!

John Salley, best known as a former Los Angeles Laker, now has a talk show on the Reelz network called Game On! He stopped by the studio of Venice artist (and main homie), Tom Everhart, last week to check out the new art works and have a good sit down chat. I stopped by to check it all out, and though I've known and listened to Tom speak about his work for years and years, I still heard new things, and was as fascinated as Mr. Salley hearing it for the first time.


The t.v. people set up all their equipment, and we basically all just laughed and learned all afternoon. To begin with, Salley said, "This is my favorite space in all of Venice {me too} ... All white, beautiful women ... some of them white ... I'm getting the love in Venice! Thank you for letting me in!" He's hilarious, and started the interview portion of the deal by saying, "So I call you Snoopy Dude ...", which Tom explained that he often hears, sometimes as derogatory, and sometimes as a compliment. His art does feature Peanuts characters, yes, but after hearing him explain the whole story about how he met Charles Schulz, how he came to see the world through those eyes, and how a good artist sees something no one else sees ... it all becomes clear just what Everhart is up to with his vast canvases of bright color and wonder.


I want to leave some of it for you to watch on Game On! but to sit and listen (and try not to laugh out loud so the mics could hear - hard) to these two talk was very insightful and inspiring, for sure. Everhart explained that he was never into comics(though did add that "South Park is some of the best contemporary art today", but loved coloring books, but always wanted to create new things within the lines. His prior work was very realist skeleton pieces, but when he met Mr. Schulz, he did as encourage, which was to "Always see things in a new way". (That's very Venice). Tom almost died of colon cancer 23 years ago, and that experience gave him a whole new awareness of life, and those skeletons gave way to the happiness and color now seen in his work about the same time.


When Everhart met Schulz, they spent an entire day just drawing lines, the love of which bonded them together for the remainder of Schulz's life. Schulz's lines became Everhart's new art language. Schulz passed down his knowledge like a Father to a Son, and allowed him the use of his characters for the term of Tom's own life. While Tom was explaining this to Salley, he was nodding and smiling, and then said, "Yeah, at first I was like, 'What's up with the dirty water and the dots?" At the time, Tom replied that it was him seeing the birds at the beach. Salley now lit up, got it and said, "Now I started seeing things YOUR way!" Just as now when I see an Everhart Snoopy doing a back flip off a Tahitian cliff, I know that that's really Tom's wife, Jennifer expressing her love for life through Tom's eyes. That's how he sees it.


Tom doesn't really talk about the who's who collectors of his art, but Salley said, "Well, I know one very sexy guy named John Salley who has one of your pieces ..." which he sure enough does.


We all had a (basket)ball talking and celebrating art, and when Salley said, "See, when I played basketball, I had to share my championships, but now I get to interview champions!" I couldn't agree more.


Check your local listings for Game On! With John Salley - The Tom Everhart Interview. Coming soon!




*Photos by Jennifer Everhart, Alan Shaffer, and Me.

Tom Everhart's "Crashing The Party" Opening - Venice Goes To NYC!

A whole bunch of Venetians (20+!) took the show on the road and made the trip way, waaaaay past Lincoln last weekend, for the opening of our dear friend, artist Tom Everhart's opening of new works at the Animazing Gallery in Soho, NYC. All of us took that city by storm, and it was made even better by the fact that we were all together, a merry band of beach bohemians in the big city. It was awesome.

Crashing The Party - The Arty-Fact Paintings was the reason and centerpiece of the trip, and it was the best (and at 95 works, the biggest ever) Everhart show I've ever attended, and I've been to a lot. I'm sure a lot had to do with the splendid company, but it also had a lot to do with seeing the overwhelming appreciation for an artist whose work I have the delight and pleasure of seeing on an almost daily basis here in Venice, in a packed house of super-fans of his work (so much so that I believe it might be sold out).


I also have the distinct privilege of insightful conversation about art with Tom, all the time. I'm a much smarter and more appreciative connoisseur of art due to the years of rapping about it, arguing about it, and loving it with Tom and his darling wife, Jennifer (one of my main BFF's).


People (journalists, art critics, the general population) often mistake Tom's art for being "Inspired by Charles Schulz's Peanuts" gang of characters, when in reality, and I'll quote Tom here, after a conversation we had post-show, "It's more accurate to say that my work is a visual language I learned from Schulz that allowed me to produce work in a new way of seeing events, moments, experiences, inspired by my own life." Meaning, through his deep and enduring friendship with Mr. Schulz (who he calls "Sparky") until his death in 2000, Tom came to see life through that lens, and just happened to be able to exactly replicate the lines in Schulz's work, which no one else had been able to do, and why Schulz respected Tom's work enough to allow him exclusive license to utilize his characters in Tom's fine art pieces.


So you might be seeing Snoopy jumping off a cliff, but Tom saw it as Jenny launching herself into the waters of their beloved part-time home of Tahiti. Or our old friend Sponto as Pig Pen. Or me as a lei-wearing beach Snoopy. Or Charlie Brown as a big-headed kid in the neighborhood (just kidding). Or even a mass grouping of Snoopys, with a dose of social commentary about over-population in there for good measure.

From the Press Release for the show:

"Everhart attempts to create a dialog among the paintings that addresses his concern about over-population and the strain it has put on world resources while juxtaposing this against the isolated, open, tropical areas that seem to live in harmony with nature. On a more personal level, Crashing the Party is Everhart's way of expressing how he feels about the artistic path he has chosen. Putting aside a classical education, Everhart brazenly carved out a successful career in the fine art world with his paintbrush and sheer audacity. His choice to focus an entire career on the subject matter of a single cartoon is considered scandalous within various circles of his own art community, but inevitably, this superficial viewpoint disintegrates when the sophistication of the work exposes itself."

You get it now. And most likely love it, as the masses squishing into the Animazing Gallery certainly did. I've never seen anyone with a more constant and inspiring work ethic than Tom, and it was such a joy to see it celebrated like it was in New York last weekend.


Venice was represented by the Everharts, of course, but by local shop owners (Bunny & Sandor with Leaf), restaurant owners (Mercedes), Men about town (Alan Shaffer - missing the Venice Art Walk for the first time in all its years! - Destin, Taylor, Chris, Kwaku), dear friends (Mara & Henri, Darcy, Marischa & Ricardo, Paulyn, Me), Catherine and Tom from local biz, Don Francis Framing (who did all the lovely frames for Tom's pieces), Former Venetian/Now New Yorker (Sarah), (I'm forgetting some, I know it) and the show was even installed (awesomely) by Dave and Paul, of our own local Art Gallery Services, who drove the art across country straight from Abbot Kinney. Plus all the friends from all over the world, new and old.


Jessica Simpson and her fiance, Eric Johnson, good friends of the Everharts, had the paparazzi and Access Hollywood in the house too, so the whole country got to see how our Venice art world rolls.


And how we roll is FUN. Gang dinners on the town. The Met to see the do not miss Alexander McQueen show Savage Beauty. Pre/Post Parties at The Crosby Hotel. Running all over, as there was a lot to fit in a fast weekend. All that fun and there was only one police incident, but as our local perp said, "Yeah, but it was a mellow cuffing" - perhaps the quote of the weekend.


It's a great thing when people will travel far and wide to see art. It's even better when it's about friendship. How very Venice ... Art. Crime. Friendship!


If you're in New York, Crashing the Party - The Arty-Fact Paintings is open to the public at The Animazing Gallery until June 26th, 2011. If you're in Venice, look for the tall, blond guy in paint splattered shorts riding his bike around, and shake his hand for a job greatly done. And a fun, friend-filled life being lived, in true Venice style.

The Animazing Gallery
54 Greene Street
New York, NY 10013
www.animazing.com



*Photos by Kwaku Alston, Alan Shaffer and Me.