ROADHOUSE BLUES

ROADHOUSE BLUES

A nondescript commercial building houses the Bermuda Project gallery on West Florissant, in Ferguson. Last January, Jacob Mason-Macklin brought a series of 2 dimensional artworks from his new(ish) Brooklyn, New York home to line the walls of the bright white gallery space.

All of the artworks in the exhibit were relatively small. Why? Mason-Macklin had to keep his workspace and storage space at a minimum due to the small living space in his Brooklyn apartment. He found he quite liked doing small works after necessity required them.

A large number of the titles on the exhibition checklist are first listed as self-portrait then followed with an identifier for the actual subject. Mason-Macklin has an unexpected and elaborate answer to the question of why these are “self portraits” when they are not images of himself.

The not-self “self portraits” are an exercise in empathy for Mason Macklin. He sees something of himself in the men he draws and paints. There are points of entry that he explores between them, researching the lives of known individuals and allowing himself to be vulnerable with his concept of who he is and what he is capable of, imagining himself as these men whose stories are not easy or his, yet still resonate within him.

Mason-Macklin describes a phenomenon many can relate to, of shape-shifting in new places when surrounded by new people. He notices how he and others use different personas depending upon their circumstances. His portraits of strangers as self portraits examines that ability to be many people in one. Mason-Macklin describes an experience of self-shifting from the person he was growing up in Columbus, Ohio to a different, equally authentic, self in his current Brooklyn neighborhood.

Interspersed among the self-portraits of others are collages of words and images that convey readable messages and drawings along with finely rendered portraits of dogs. The loose pattern of collage - portrait - dog created a rhythm in the cycle of artworks along the wall in the bright Bermuda gallery.

Mason-Macklin’s collages hold messages that require connecting the dots between complementary and contrasting words and images. One collage makes a bleak juxtaposition between sliced-up notices about a lost dog combined with the printed mug-shots of two black men. The collages look weathered and appear to have existed for a long time, giving their content an aura of lost wisdom.

The exhibition title, Roadhouse Blues, is taken from the Doors song of the same name. Mason-Macklin envisions his artworks as a visual interpretation of Jim Morrison’s song of “traveling along the outskirts of town toward a seedy bar populated by wanderers of all types.” He imagines that “the Bermuda Project gallery space transforms into the Roadhouse, and the works inside become the transients.”

-Marianne Wilson

Jason Mason-Macklin, Protector, (photo credit: Rachel Youn of the Bermuda Project)

Jason Mason-Macklin, Self Portrait #2 (El Viaje Comienza Despues de la Muerte, (photo credit: Rachel Youn of the Bermuda Project)

Jason Mason-Macklin, Lost Dog Flier (Flyer for Dylan and Desmund Smith), (photo credit: Rachel Youn of the Bermuda Project)

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