Marcia Smith
Dallas Times Herald
July 21, 1985
| Theater Gallery Where art moves to a nouveau beat A lean peroxide blonde in white leggings and a black-clad equally peroxided pal rest against the brick facade of Theater Gallery and draw from thin white cigarettes. Their pale, flawless faces are lit by a neon "TG" hanging above the gallery entrance; their bland expressions and languid limbs communicate a world-weariness unearned in their 16 years. The teenagers become animated only when some crickets hidden in the hot sidewalk cracks jump out at them, looking for a less populated spot on Commerce Street. The crickets have no trouble finding a quieter home. At 11 on a Wednesday night, in the heart of Deep Ellum (Dallas' Soho, as hopefully observers of the city's art scene refer to it), there is virtually no traffic. In the 2800 block, the paint and body shop and the butcher supply store closed hours ago; the east end of downtown, with its deserted one-story store fronts, is as quiet as the suburbs at noon. Except at Theater Gallery, where cars parked in the middle of the block signal some activity. If you roll down your car window as you drive by 2808 Commerce, you can hear music, throbbing from within, the only pulse on the otherwise dead street. Perched on the parked cars or sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk are those drawn to the music--the city's few punks, the punk poseurs (for whom being punk is merely fashion) and the devotees of the original music being written and performed in Dallas' so-called "underground" clubs. The Theater Gallery crowd is mostly in its teens or early 20s, gathers on the sidewalk to catch the hot breeze outside the unairconditioned brick building, which stores heat all day and cools off a little at night. Inside the stifling space, Dallas' young musicians, artist, and actors have found a home-- a p lace where they can perform original music, hang their paintings and hone their dramatic skills. Theater Gallery is Dallas' three-ring circus for the arts. Those who go there expecting frozen margaritas and a lighted dance floor will be disappointed: It's a no-frills BYOB club with setups, theatrical seating and a concrete floor. Though there's an audience for the plays and the art exhibits, the local bands are the real draw and on these summer nights, the audience spends as much time outside as inside the Theatre Gallery. Listening to music from the sidewalk is like turning down the volume on the stereo: You can still hear it, but you can talk too, breathe fresher air and practice a little graffiti art with chalk. Typically, when a piece of chalk shows up, a young artist will outline a friends supine figure the way police detectives outline the bodies of murder victims, leaving the eerie ghost people lying along Commerce Street. When they're not making their own art, Gallery-goers check out the paintings visible through the front windows, paintings in hot Day-Glo oils that seem to add heat to the sultry evening air. The art is crude, jarring, the kind of work that SHOULD be hanging in the anteroom of a rough concert hall where local bands with names like Spazbot, Howling Dervishes and The End play loud "new" music as the genre has been tagged. There is nothing slick about the art, the music, or the space where it all comes together; the only people who would come here are those hungry for new imagery, new sounds and a vitality that has nothing to do with cool air or clean restrooms. The black and white blondes drive from their parents' homes in Carrollton a couple of times a week to Theatre Gallery which, they say, is a place to go to hear music you don't hear everywhere else . They bring with them a 19 year old friend with the improbable name of Peter Chance, who has spiky, dull black hair and a single crucifix earring and plays guitar in a band called Three on a Hill. The Three are TG regulars, as is Patrick Sugg, a 17 year old Arts Magnet High school student who is as clean cut as a well-mannered boy you'd expect Highland Park to produce... Lauri Watson stands in a circle of rainbows created by a shaft of light cutting through a talisman on prisms that hangs from a skylight in the empty concert hall at Theatre Gallery. She is wearing Victorian underwear damp with her sweat and is juggling three clubs, which, she says, helps her to develop a higher consciousness. Lauri, 29, lives and works in an upstairs studio at The Gallery, a room that's even hotter than the downstairs art gallery and concert hall. "My parents think I'm crazy because I live in a rundown place like this, but I like to buy beads," she says. Sitting on a stool at her work table, Lauri strings beads for hours every day, making the earrings, necklaces, and belts she sells thru Avant, a lower Greenville boutique. The repetitious action of sticking a string into a small hole in a bead is like meditating Lauri says and that has increased her psychic abilities. Working in her upstairs studio alone most of the day, and much of the night, also has left Lauri open to other experiences: She says the TG has a ghost, a woman ghost, who has visited her three times... Russ Hobbs, 27, created TG but he will not admit to owning it. "The world owns it, artists own it. I'm an artist and my own art form is now a three dimensional space called the Theatre Gallery. You can't own art because it's a subconscious vibration; its all our souls and spirits combined. Russ was feeling astral that day so he defined TG. On a less astral day, he admitted the TG concept came to him while he was looking for a showroom for his design/construction business and studio where he could live and make art. Tracy Lee Smith, a California actor, carpenter, and limo driver, helped Russ find the space he wanted. The two met when Russ' Cadillac broke down on Central Expressway. Tracy picked him up and went to work for him, helping to remodel a North Dallas boutique. That job is finished, the two cruised Dallas' east end looking for a place where they could live and work. The owner of a coffee distributorship at 2808 was moving out; Russ moved in and immediately reconsidered his plan for the space. He decided to rent studios to artists and call the place The Factory, like Andy Warhol's infamous underground film studio. In August 1984, Russ, Tracy, and a group of artists from North Texas State University who had approached Russ about gallery space went to work remodeling the front of the room at 2808. In September, TG's first art exhibit opened and Russ' ambitions soon exceeded his initial plan to house and exhibit the works of artists. "I started thinking about all we could do in the back," Russ said. I was inspired by what I'd seen in New York, places in the middle of nowhere in Soho with a jukebox blaring and 25 people inside. I wanted to provide freedom for artists to get together and break down barriers, a place where a guitarist could paint and a painter could act." Russ and Tracy built a stage and threw a Halloween party. A band called Zeitgeist performed; the lead singer for The End was there and he asked Russ to book his band. With that, the TG became a concert hall and an art gallery; live music was offered three or four times a week. Some bands drew a crowd, others didn't. When there was no audience, the musicians jammed with one another and true to Russ' dream the artist and actors joined in. Since the stage was bare until 10 most nights, Russ decided to open TG to local actors and playwrights. Tracy read the scripts that came in and in November, a local troupe produced "Charles Herrellson Shoots His Corvette Somewhere Near Van Horn". With that, TG evolved further--playhouse, concert hall, art gallery and with Lauri upstairs, artists' studio. Legal scuffles, money worries and physical discomfort (Russ, Tracy and TG employee, Trey Hall, live in stifling little rooms similar to Lauri's studio above the shop)--that's what it takes to keep a three ring circus afloat. They are (as Russ says artists must do) sacrificing for art. Eventually he wants more for the place, but without giving up the most important thing TG offers--freedom for artists to express themselves. "A year from now, what I want besides air conditioning and nice restrooms, is Lauri upstairs making her love whips (belts) and somebody with a nice blue tie on sitting in the office and selling art. As a business tool, TG is a loss, I'm not making any money. What I'm getting" says Russ, "is psychic income." back to |
