The walls of the gift shop at Quaid are covered in a glowing coat of Behr’s English Daisy. Above the entrance to the gallery space is the word Rapscallion, ornately laid out in a soothing, Brilliant Blue Vinyl. Shirts and warm-up jackets are suspended from hangers, and in the corner of the gift shop is a short, revolving rack that’s home to earrings crafted from packets of Taco Bell’s Mild, Hot and Diablo sauce, complete with quirky sayings and everything.
Rapscallion curator Emiliano Settecasi said that the earrings — made by Macy Higgins, aka Macy Eats Paint — are selling better than anything else at the Seminole Heights art space which has played host to works by 13 artists for the last two weeks. There are thought-provoking pieces by Junkyrd, fruit tattooed by Catalina Cheng, an enthrallingly-distorted painting by Michael Andruzzi, and more. A few, less dangly versions of Higgins’ Taco Bell art sit on a shelf inside of the gallery, too; if you lean in to look at the sauce entombed inside glittery epoxy resin and then turn around, your gaze will be met by a video of clean, white flesh and the sight of a piercing sliding through one pink nipple. The boob belongs to Higgins, but the video is the work of Evan Cooper, a young man fueled by “depression, hunger and marijuana.”
Cooper is one of two Rapscallion artists who will pull double duty on Friday when the show — which opened with about 300 attendees on May 18 and then a hosted sketch night and comedy gig in the weeks after — closes with a concert featuring Slyme, Broom Closet and Cooper’s new band, Discount Baby.
In a scene where seemingly insular circles are further cloistered by cliques and by happenstance, Rapscallion is kind of an anomaly. Home to works by artists who hold MFAs and BFAs, the show also welcomes others who’ve never been given the white-wall treatment and some whose art degrees would be null and void if they came with expiration dates.
Slyme is the project of Ricardo Ponce, whose sister and future art scene star Libbi Ponce has work on the walls at QUAID. Cooper — along with Rachel Coderre, who plays drums in Broom Closet — represents a blending of the Bay area visual art and music scenes.
“Music and art have always gone hand in hand for me. It’s like I’m using a similar part of my brain,” Coderre told CL. Her work deals with loss and what you do with it. Like the music her band makes, Coderre’s paintings search for a punchline or quip to help add levity or humor to situations quite often punctuated by hurt. Coderre added that she’s grateful to Settecasi for including her work in two disciplines; to her, spaces like QUAID and a show like Rapscallion provide a creative space that speaks to the diverse interests of the Bay area creative community.
Cooper, who radiates happiness when he flashes his impossibly joyous gap tooth smile, says that being at Rapscallion feels like one big party. Discount Baby is a natural evolution of his last band, Bendy Straw, which saw singer Kat Mata leave amicably.
“We’re still best friends, [but] the rest of us weren’t ready to stop playing yet,” Cooper said about his new endeavor. Bendy Straw couldn’t quite grasp its sound, so a name change was a chance for a nice clean start; a new demo bears some of the same ukulele-driven, rowdy folk flavor of Bendy Straw while managing to add the refined structure of of a moshable pop-punk song.
Ponce said that his Slyme project is the product of the Bart and Lisa Simpson-esque relationship with his sister, which was soundtracked by music made by his grandfather, who conducted an orchestra, and the indie-rock he and Libbi would listen to on car rides (slacker-rock it-boy Mac Demarco, upbeat Canadian outfit Rabbit). Libbi eventually quit music and shifted her focus from music to visual art, and her dedication to the craft has inspired Ponce to work at his.
“I probably wouldn’t be such a music nerd if it wasn’t for Libbi,” he said.
Nerding out over art, in all of its forms, is what brought Settecasi to create Rapscallion, which has incorporated and embraced a handful of art forms. By the time he tears the show down, Settecasi — who sees another side of the Bay area art scene thanks to his position as a full-time gallery assistant at HCC Dale Mabry — will have collaborated with close to 30 visual artists, comedians and musicians. His concern is for the long term sustainability of art in the city, and he wants attention for the artists whose talent deserve the right kind of exposure, no matter what discipline they operate in. Rapscallion is his attempt at pulling together as many spheres of the scene as possible.
As it closes, Settecasi hopes that a show which is high-and-lowbrow in the same breath has not just spoken to the absurdity of a generation that “observes a civilization on the cusp of total collapse and replies, ‘yikes, lol... mood,’” but to the more specific idea that the health of a scene depends on its ability to mix the best parts of the whole together under one roof. If a bunch of rapscallions can manage that kind of mischief, then the rest of us can at least give it a try, right?
Rapscallion closing w/Broom Closet/Discount Baby/Slyme. Fri. June 7, 7 p.m.-10 p.m. $5. QUAID, 5128 N. Florida Ave., Tampa. quaidgallery.com.
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