I previously saw BORN at Beep Beep Gallery when he showed a series of graffit-inspired prints with Hense and Sever.  His latest show, which opened Saturday night, is quite different.  Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a particularly knowledgeable about art – I did more than fine in my Art History classes, but frankly I just wrote a lot of B.S. that the profs seemed to like.  If I see a piece that I like, I find myself justifying the “why” with a lot of big words to make myself feel smarter.  At the end of the day, I think “good art” is mostly just a matter of what pleases a particular person’s aesthetic sensibility.

BORN’s latest work pleases my aesthetic sensibility.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect – when I know the artist, I’m always afraid I’m not going to like their stuff.  Then I end up doing the awkward compliment thing where I feel like a skeezy liar and also a coward because I can’t just say, “hey, it’s not really my thing.”  I have seen more than a few friends TANK on stage at Dad’s Garage over the years, and there is very little in this world more painful than that moment after the show when they ask, “So, what’d you think?!”  It is even worse when they aren’t aware that they tanked.  But I digress….

The show at Beep Beep is a collection of a paintings and constructed sculptures that focus on aged or otherwise distressed materials that BORN collects.  Lots of peeling paint, broken wooden slats, and rusted metal wires.  I personally liked the highly structured aspect of the works coupled with the rundown feeling.

There is a Southern folk feeling to the work that reminded me of my grandpa’s shed out in Stone Mountain, with all the rusted tools and the roof falling apart.  Enough of the original object is left to hint at a past life of usefulness, but that was so long ago that now there is just a sad loneliness of a different era.  Which becomes beautiful in it’s own right.

I think that is what makes art “good” – when it connects with something in your history, and you can make it your own.