Spring has sprung, and pollen, hormones and mayhem are in the air. Birds, bees and even beetles are doing their thing as flowers flirtatiously bloom everywhere. All that and more turns up in some lively shows on Julia Street.
Pop art was refreshing when it first appeared in the 1960s, but more recent postmodern pop caused rigor mortis to set in with a vengeance. Enter the emerging Nola artist Wendo, who fuses traditional comic book figuration with the digital ambiguities of modern life. Vvaves, top, features figures with histrionic, Mad Men-era EC comics- style flourishes set in swirls of paint that meld the frenetic electricity of Jackson Pollock with a graffiti - like insouciance. Maybe He'll Find Her features a Marvel comics - style superhero carrying off a modern tattooed maiden, but in You're No Longer the Man I Met Online, left, a retro, nifty late-1950s style couple experiences a desultory moment as the guy morphs into a nattily attired police dog. Not everything works quite so well, but Wendo's best pictures return us to timeless mythic narratives that are hardwired into the human psyche, and “pop” out at us with a disarming candor that makes for an impressive first Julia Street solo.
