The Best & Worst of Frank Gaard

*UPDATE*

Moderated by art and news veteran Robyne Robinson, Gaard will talk about his career and share personal stories behind the work in his current exhibition, The Best & Worst of Frank Gaard. This is a free event and will take place beginning at 7pm on Wednesday, May 25 at CO Exhibitions, 1101 Stinson Blvd.

I BETTER BUST OUT with Coco Goes Out for this week because next week's is going to be a doozy. The parties start on Wednesday and there are no signs of stopping through the weekend.

THIS PAST WEEK I had a chance to meet and talk with local artist Frank Gaard and his wife Pam at a right good opening party for their art show, The Best & Worst of Frank Gaard. "You know how I can tell you're a writer?" Frank asked me. "You speak in complete sentences."

"That's funny," I replied. "I thought you could tell I'm a writer because I have a cocktail in my hand."

Large canvasses covered in florescent colors, busy images, and color combinations that cause eye palpitations surrounded us, along with painted CDs and LPs. Gaard clearly has an interest in Yves Klein, too. Some of the CDs were painted with a base of white and, hand-printed in bright paint, was the French artist's name (Gaard was sure not to miss the Walker's recent Klein exhibition). Because of the title of his show, I wasn't sure if these particular CDs were an homage or a sign of irreverence to Yves Klein. So I asked.

"I love Yves Klein," Gaard said. He spoke then, briefly, about Klein's distinctive colors. "Not just the blue," he said, referring to the famous International Klein Blue. "But the pink, the orange..." Perhaps this partly explains Gaard's own wildly bright palette.

Gaard spoke of his own paintings as well. "People like ponies and swans," he said. And surely, there are a few images of crude pony faces and swans -- however one of the giant florescent paintings is of a severed swan head hanging limp over a branch. Most of his paintings are portraits, though. Additionally, many of his paintings and illustrations are highly -- stratospherically -- sexual. "Everybody is interested in sex," he said. "It's exciting."

Many of his canvasses share gallery space with those his wife Pam painted. This is because, for some projects, Pam and Frank work together, painting portraits of the same person at the exact same time. Their canvasses mirror each other, but only in subject matter; their styles are quite different.

The title of the show is indicative of when Gaard puts brush to canvas. "I paint between those pulses of ups and downs," he said, illustrating his point by making a roller-coaster motion with his arm.

I may have to go back to the show with the mission of trying to figure out which paintings were created during the ups and which were painted during the downs in Gaard's life. The cheery nature of the bright colors he uses can be deceptive, but a severed swan head, well, that's a pretty clear indication of what mood he may have been in.

There was a delicious selection of hors d'oeuvres and cocktails at this party, too. Bunny and I ran into Breck, who was mixing savory cocktails, and happens to be our regular bartender at the Bradstreet Crafthouse. Let me tell you, once I got a looksee into what it might be like having my favorite bartender on hand wherever I may be, it's hard to snap out of it.

 Find out more about Frank Gaard.

See the exhibition at Co Exhibitions through May 28, 2011

BUNNY AND I HEADED TO St. Anthony Main for a movie after the art show, but before we arrived at the movie, we stopped at Surdyk's to purchase some whiskey. I threw a fit when Breck didn't show up to mix me a cocktail when the movie's opening credits started.

Good thing Bunny is real quick-like on opening whiskey bottles -- that snapping sound of the cap twisting open always calms me down. Barring that, a shaker of ice, gin, vermouth, and bitters works, too.  Speaking of which...