Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Visitors tour the 'Harum-Scarum' exhibit by Mark Dean Veca currently on display at the Gallery at Villa Montalvo.
Montalvo gallery becomes artist's canvas
By Shari Kaplan
Unlike all its past exhibitions in which artwork is hung or attached to the Gallery surfaces, the Gallery at Villa Montalvo is the exhibit for Mark Dean Veca's large-scale mural installation titled Harum-Scarum.
Now through Aug. 20, visitors become one with Harum-Scarum. Veca has used the gallery's own walls as his canvas, painting them with brilliantly colored acrylics and sharply outlined images that resemble a surreal cartoon landscape. He has added some other creative touches by his use of mediums as diverse as stickers, chalk, transparency film, paint rags, balloons and balls. The latter two are curiously hidden beneath splotchy rags, which are pulled across a wall in a seemingly helter-skelter fashion.
Veca is also painting a site-specific mural in the Grand Lobby at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. It is scheduled for completion on Aug. 5 and will remain on view for six months. His attraction for such grandiose artwork lies in its shock value--but in a positive way.
"I mainly got into it because of the scale. I wanted to make something overwhelming that you can walk into and experience," he explains. "I think it's also the idea of making a spectacle."
Creating site-specific artwork, usually with creative titles, is something for which Veca is becoming known, including his solo exhibitions El Gloominator and Gummi Grotto in Buffalo and New York, N.Y., respectively and Funky Jungle in Houston, Texas. The New York resident says he named the Montalvo piece Harum-Scarum because the term describes the way he created it.
"Titling your work is always hard--either something comes to you right away, or you have to rack your brain for it," Veca says. "This work is different from my others in that it was completely unplanned and spontaneous. Kind of harum-scarum."
Veca, who stayed at Villa Montalvo during the summer of 1997 as an artist-in-residence, says he has been telling people: "Saturday morning cartoons were my catechism" for years. He feels this quote is applicable to his newest exhibit, as well.
As a boy, Veca says, he got to watch TV on Saturday while his older brother went to catechism classes. "Cartoons and popular culture were my main influence," the 30-something artist recalls. Among his favorites were Popeye, Disney cartoons, and Bugs Bunny and his loony cronies.
Veca also enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss books, Mad Magazine and underground comics such as Zippy the Pinhead and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Through these, he grew to appreciate cartooning as well as developing a sense of humor and irreverence.
After obtaining a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, Veca took these various influences and turned them into a career.
Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. The Gallery is at 15400 Montalvo Road. For more information, call 408.961.5813, or visit www.villamontalvo.org on the Internet.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
