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Show Park City News Thursday, March 3, 198.1 P i, No nudes isn't good news for artist Southey Earl; Bird .Dinner Staial "Vm not on the great freeway of art. Vtn more on the what would you call it? the frontage road. " ' ''I vr Nil ' 1 h i by Rick Brough Trevor Southey is an artist who often deals in the nude human form. And he works in the conservative state of Utah. There have been roadblocks, road-blocks, sure, but Southey said they weren't always detrimental to his art. There have been two times he had to cover a painting for modesty's sake, he said, and both occasions provoked an evolution in his style. Southey, currently exhibiting exhibit-ing at the Old Town Gallery, said that when he created a nude-figure painting for BYU, they asked him to cover it partly. "I said to myself, 'If they don't like it, I'll given 'em drapery,'" he recalled. And that led to a number of paintings where he used drapes in his work. On another occasion at the Y, the university asked him to cover the genital and buttocks area of a nude. He did so, with a squared shape of watercolor. "Later, when I washed the watercolor off, the outer lines were left, and I liked that," he said. I returned him to a style he had used earlier one you can see in many of his nude paintings at the Old Town exhibit. His figures, muscular muscu-lar and free, are set against a matrix of lines that are geometrical or latitudinal. The rawly-physical clashes with the precise. "I make the comparison of a potato on a cutting board," he said. "You've got the round shape in that location. Then if you take a knife and slice it straight in two, you've rendered that shape partially geometrical." Southey became known in Utah outside art circles when conservative Utahns objected to a painting he did for, h Salt Lake International Interna-tional Airport, Critics ' charged that '"flight Aspira-."' tion" a symbolic portrait of two airborne nude figures would stir the illicit passions of some viewers. "The controversy gave me a sort of perverted credibility," credi-bility," said Southey. "The absurdity of the reaction was beyond belief." "I think I use the human body in a pretty sacred way," he continued. "Not that there's anything wrong with erotic art, but my style is minimally erotic." On personal grounds, adjustment ad-justment to the Mormon culture hasn't been easy for him. Southey was raised in South Africa. "My brother and I were militantly anti-racist," anti-racist," he recalled. "We didn't wave signs, but the idea that one race is innately inferior to another that you abused a little black child because of his skin is totally total-ly heinous to me. "When the Mormon missionaries mis-sionaries came, I asked them, 'What is your racial policy?' and the missionary, with great wisdom, said, 'We'll tell you later.'" By the time Southey found out, he was hooked on the Church. It gave him a sense of belonging he did not have in his native country. "In South Africa, your sense of manhood came from drinking drink-ing and telling dirty stories," he said. And being a convert, he received a lot of adulation adula-tion from other church members. The church's racial policy caused him a lot of pain, he said, before he fell away intellectually from the LDS religion in recent years. . He's taken an independent path from the art world also. "I'm not on the great freeway of art," he said. "I'm more on the what would you call it? the frontage road." Of course, the freeway might run over him at any time, he said. He has been coaxed to be '.more in the mainstream, but Spend the summer with Shakespeare If your idea of a great summer is to be an actor, dancer or a backstage worker, I.A.E. would like to hear from you. Summer for I.A.E. is the Park City Shakespeare Festival. Fes-tival. This year, Ed Perez of the Kimball Art Center "Cabaret 83" will be joining the staff as the director of the Green Show. The outdoor stage will be alive with three of Shakespeare's Shake-speare's classic plays... Loves Labour Lost, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, in addition to the Green Show and seminars on the plays. I.A.E. will be holding Park City auditions on Sunday, March 13 at 1 p.m. in the Memorial Building. Actors are asked to bring resumes, pictures if they have any, and to prepare two selections from Shakespeare, one dramatic dra-matic and one comic. Dancers will be asked to specify an interest in performing per-forming in the Green Show. An audition will be arranged at a later date. Technical people will be asked to talk with the theatre technical director. The Festival's '83 Company Com-pany will be chosen from the Park City auditions and others held in Salt Lake City March 19 and in Provo March 16. I.A.E. is looking for people of all ages, from 12 to 83. This will be the second annual Park City Shakespeare Shake-speare Festival. If you have any questions, call the festival festi-val producers: Ron Burnett at 649-6208 or Tony Leger at 485-2063. frdJWM ?I ft" 5:30 P.M. -7:00 P.M. Every evening of the week we ar e often for $6.95, delicious meals such as: Filet Mignonette', Sesame Chicken, veal Birds Yarrow and Scallop Sku.e: SJ (WW V . Holiday inn, Park or- 'Artists are not supposed to be articulate. Painting is supposed to be a visual experience." ex-perience." Trevor Southey Southey said he's stuck with his style. "The single most important ingredient in a person is integrity," he said. From early youth, Southey has felt a delight in the human form. "At one time, it was wracked up with my feelings during puberty," he said. "Then it took a more sophisticated view." He was fascinated by lurid religious imagery Samson surrounded sur-rounded by bloody corpses. His membership in the Mormon Church marked a turning point in his handling of religious themes. "It gave me a directional center. And I gained a legitimacy, by becoming part of an institution," institu-tion," he added. Most of his works at Old Town are oils on canvas. But not all of them are nudes. "A couple of the paintings here some of my favorites are what I call 'Intimate landscapes,'" he said. In the last couple of years, he has turned to sculpture. Like his paintings, there is a .contrast between the natural , and the planned rough, twisted human forms hang- as appendages from clean rectangular arrangements of steel and bronze. But he said he was frustrated by the pedestal shape that sculptures have to rest upon. He pointed to the base of one work, with its textured color, and said, "I would like that to be an extended floor. I'd like to have a sea of that material." For the last three or four years, Southey has been introducing snatches of poetry poet-ry or prose onto the body of his paintings. This, too, goes against the grain of orthodox painting, he said. "Artists are not supposed to be photo by David Hampshire articulate. Painting is supposed sup-posed to be a visual experience." ex-perience." But Southey is a writer. For 15 years he kept a journal, but didn't dare expose the thoughts he set down there, he said. "I could weep now." Southey's style continues to evolve, he said. And his old yearnings for a "sense of belonging" is fulfilled these days. "I belong to humankind. human-kind. And I like what I'm doing." The Southey exhibit runs at Old Town Gallery, 1101 Park Avenue, until March 16. trrf rr v Country Pine Anti'yji.- -Decora ti r -I cce sm-.. v Anluftir Sis Snuth 9th East. 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