by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
There’s more art in Jacksonville than most people realize, and sometimes in odd places. A colleague with a penchant for hot sauce pointed me in the direction of an art gallery placed inside Pepper Rama, a store that specializes in hot sauces of every kind. They showcase 8 to 12 artists a year in one person shows. No giclees or reproductions are allowed. All the work in the gallery must be originals, though the mediums vary from 3-D sculpture to paintings.
The artist currently on exhibition is Mark Warren, who is presenting a diverse assortment of art called “Influences.” Two walls feature his work. On one there’s his “Praise the Lord and Pass the Snakes,” “A Devil of a Week” and an odd but ultra cool cartouche that forms an arch over the two works. The cartouche is a double banner of blue carved from wood. In the center of both banners are winged eyeballs. It was wacky and interesting enough that I began plotting where I could put it on a wall.
I caught up with Warren via phone to interview him for EU and asked him about his very different pieces. Says Warren, “I jump from medium to medium so I don’t burn out on any one thing.” Besides creating strange and wonderful works of art, he works at the Cummer Gallery, where he has worked off and on for over 20 years. He’s been creating some kind of art for a long time. “I wasted a lot of paper in high school,” he jokes “and I’ve been hand carving wood since I was 5-6 years old.” His wife, Diane Warren, owns and operates Pepper Rama and Mark is one of a few artists whose works have graced the walls of the hot sauce haven.
The piece “Praise the Lord and Pass the Snakes” is apt to get the most attention. At first glance, this tent revival scene, featuring those faithful parishioners that handle poisonous snakes as proof of their belief, seems to be in the style of claymation. On closer inspection, you can see that they are carved from wood. Warren says that he “was moved by seeing a special on PBS…I gotta hand it to somebody with enough faith to pick up a snake and be ok with that.” Each member of the revival, from the pastor to the parishioners has their own distinct personality.
On the other wall are two series works: Warren’s “Bass School” and miniature Mondrians in stark black, yellow and red. The Bass, like the parishioners on the opposite wall, all have a distinctive personality, especially the “punk” bass in the back of the school, with its spiked fins, fishhook piercing and anarchy tattoo. The fish scales on the bass are made from Bass beer bottle tops. The impetus for the piece was a request and a fondness for the beer. “That was really a request on Diane’s part. We were drinking Bass beer so I made bass…I decided to do a punk fish…the size of the piece depended on the chunk of wood…pins were bought and the melted glass beads I bought for the eyes.”
The Mondrians have become a holiday tradition for Warren. “I work at a museum and we do the typical Christmas exchange every season…one year I got the Registrar, whose job it is to uncrate and check to artwork that comes in, so I made her miniatures. Each comes with its own box with padding and labels, tiny titles and artist statements in really small font…it’s kind of like accessories for Barbie the museum curator or Registrar.”
You can find the Pepper Rama Gallery in the Pepper Rama store in the Riverside Village Shopping Center at 4555 Shirley Ave. Their new hours are Tuesday-Friday from noon-8PM and Saturday s from 10AM-6PM. Mark Warren’s exhibition will be there through December 30th.
The Pepper Rama Gallery of Visionary Art is an exhibition space for visionary and contemporary art…The Gallery provides an opportunity for those artists that choose a different path, whose personal artistic vision can not be contained by ordinary means. By placing the Visionary Art Gallery inside Pepper Rama Gourmet & Hot Shoppe, we have a means to bring the community and artist together by creating an environment that fosters positive discourse and places cultural value on the artistic expression and imagination in us all.
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