Jisu Sheen photo
Gendron with "Crazy Love II".
Sometime in the ’90s, a woman in cracked, green crocodile skin, gold booty shorts, and a hat of crocodile heads and rolls and rolls of red tickets posed as the camera snapped. Decades later, New Haven artist Edwin Gendron would pick up the black-and-white photo he took, hand-paint the colors in, and make it into something new.
The piece was among several, all transformations of some kind, that Gendron had on display at a pop-up event Saturday afternoon at Fussy Coffee in Science Park.
Sitting proudly behind a bright yellow banner spelling out, “Visual Oddities: For the enjoyment of the young and old,” Gendron filled the back left corner of the café with a quiet potential for chaos and mischief. His works exuded an energy that could speak to the heart of a kid just as well as a grown arts reporter.
"Driving That Day"
In one piece, a watercolor truck bounded by simple pen lines arched its back under a red sun. A loaf of bread with some hair sat in front of a lime green background in a piece titled, “Embarrassed Bread.” When asked about the title, Gendron pointed to the bread loaf’s face, blushing in the corner. “He’s embarrassed,” Gendron said, no further explanation needed.
"Embarrassed Bread"
Gendron used an 80-year-old Russian medium-format camera for the carnival and sideshow works. “I would put it up to my eye and it’d just go ‘clunk,’” Gendron reminisced. Sometimes he used a vintage lens that was simply “tons of glass.” Then the photos sat for a while before their magnificent rebirth. “Sometime during the pandy, I thought: Why don’t I scan these and paint over top of them?” The effect was rich movie-like scenes with brighter colors than would normally appear. Then again, what’s normal?
"Carousel I"
Hand-painting was not the only remix Gendron applied to his old photographs. He collaged them as well, adding in elements from other photos and even 3D animation to create surreal compositions. He used animation software to adjust the lighting on digital 3D objects, matching them to the right environments before dropping them in the scene.
Gendron had a hand in the making of some of the scenes themselves. For example, he created the hat the Crocodile Woman is wearing in his picture. The woman herself is someone he used to date in Blacksburg, Virginia. Though the era has passed, Gendron still uses the art he made in those times. “Don’t have the girlfriend, still have the hat,” he said.
"Crocodile Woman's Back"
Gendron chose to wear a different hat Saturday afternoon: a simple black baseball cap with white lettering saying “Make Art Not Content.” Gendron said he often wore it to events like these. “I like the idea of long-form things,” he explained. “Art is difficult not only to make but to appreciate.”
Gendron got his photography chops while working at a photo store in Blacksburg in the ’90s, buying and selling used cameras. If he was just interested in producing content, banging out piece after piece, he might be sitting on a nice, neat portfolio of thousands of similar works by now. Instead, the twists and turns Gendron’s art makes are ones no one could have predicted, not even him. He worked toward the right moments, the clunky equipment that would open up wider ranges of possibilities, and the slow yet solid development that came with a thoughtful art practice. His hat was a “call for quality and the things that are more important.”
"RRGH Tattoo"
Some of Gendron’s artworks at his pop-up booth were smaller versions of framed pieces on Fussy Coffee’s walls. Gendron was not only the artist of the afternoon but the current featured artist in Fussy’s rotation of painters, photographers, and collagers who get to see their work above the heads of patrons sipping coffee and typing away on their laptops.
"Twin Engine Plane"
"This is Me"
When Gendron took his photographs in the ’90s, he wasn’t thinking of their final form. It would be over 20 years before they would go through the collage and painting transformations that make them truly one of a kind.
So does he look back at those originals, compare them to what they’ve blossomed into?
No, Gendron said in his easy breezy way. “It’s just way the way time marches on.”
Gendron’s art can be found at his online shop. His show at Fussy Coffee remains on display.