Skin this Mofo

Jan. 6, 2005 - 7:30 p.m. Gale Hart is waiting at the glass door of her midtown studio, right on schedule, ready to open the door to her world.
It's a generous gesture. You're ushered into a sparse front room where only one of her semi-famous big head paintings hangs on the wall. Then, like the wizard drawing back the curtain, she cracks the door to her mammouth warehouse space and you're in Oz. In probably 2,000 or so square feet, she has space to weld, concoct steel sculpture, cast resin, create plaster molds, construct light boxes to illuminate photographs and anything else that comes to her road runner mind.
She uses the term road runner herself. I'm like that cartoon, she says. My mind is the road runner and I'm like the wiley coyote always trying to keep up. At the back of the studio she lifts one of those roll up doors that any midtowner worth her salt would die for. Outside the killer door, she has built a wall nearly the size of a movie screen. Here, she paints monumental paintings -- her trademark. She refers to a 6'x5' canvas as small. Currently she has moved on from these paintings; not an easy thing to do since was pretty much kicking ass with them -- selling them, showing them beyond Sacramento, branding them in people's memories. More discussion on the big paintings in another episode.
Back in the studio, her new body of work is developing. Based on the idea "why not eat your pet," the work links beloved pets to the animals from which we detach ourselves in order to eat, test on, wear and use for entertainment. That line is pretty much straight from Gale's artist statement. This idea is manifesting itself in her studio in myriad forms: a series of found-object sculptures resembling circus animals, plastic rabbits created from plaster molds, intricate drawings. One of most memorable: an imposing steel rabbit sculpture titled Skin this Motherfucker.
Check back for more adventures with Gale.