May 3, 2012: Paul Wilson au Go-Go

            I took Whitney, one of my gallery assistants, with me today to visit the home and studio of Paul Wilson, an artist and longtime friend whose work I’ll be featuring in Willo North Gallery in June and July. I wanted to peek in on the new pieces Paul is creating for the show, which is all about his obsession with Lee Harvey Oswald.

            I did my best to prepare Whitney for Paul’s house. “Now, you’ll see a lot of pretty things there,” I assured her, “but you may see a lot of things that you’ll find unsettling.”

            “Like what?” Whitney wanted to know.

            “Oh, I don’t know. A grove of plastic lemon trees in the living room. A full-scale recreation of the dining salon from the S.S. Poseidon. And a lot of confetti—everywhere. On every surface. Paul likes confetti.”

            “That sounds nice,” Whitney says. “What about the unsettling things?”

            “How about a pink nylon sofa covered with vintage plastic vomit?” I asked. “Or a kitchen that’s been overtaken by a dozen three-foot-long cockroaches? Or the fact that you will be greeted in every room by a life-size Lee Harvey Oswald doll, often with his shirt open to the waist.”

            “You forget that I have teenagers,” Whitney replied. “I’ve seen worse.”

Three of Paul Wilson’s Lee Harvey Oswalds.

            She did fine. She and Paul swapped notes on vintage clothing, and had a lengthy discussion about the different sizes of food chunks in the fake puke. It turns out that Whitney is a big fan of The Poseidon Adventure, a movie that is essentially Paul’s religion. While the two of them compared notes on Pamela Sue Martin’s costume in Poseidon’s capsize sequence, I wandered around, taking photographs of the work Paul’s completed for the exhibit.

            It’s going to be amazing.

Thing I Hate Today: Tardiness