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Cleo Yahn
====Local Asheville, North Carolina, River Arts District painter, Spencer Herr, is by day a construction worker, and by night, within the serenity of his studio, a transformed artisan, who audiences applaud. Having appeared in the Asheville School gallery, Herr is making his way into the artistic scene; once breaking the boundaries, his art form is gaining legitimacy for himself and other folk artists. Common to folk artists, Herr has no formal training, putting his work under the contemporary self-taught category. Since Herr lacks a connection to any traditional forms of art, his artistic freedom allows for expression of his personal experiences. Herr’s lack of formal education is reflected in his art. His independence, free from precedence or tradition, is shown through his abstract yet identifiable subject matter. Dada artists were deliberate with their new style, expressing their distinct differences through unidentifiable and abstract subject matter. Herr’s art does not thrive on shock value, peculiarity is not what Herr is attempting to evoke though his art; rather, he paints for himself, for his family. Audiences might see similarities between Dada artist, Francis Picabia, and folk artist, Spencer Herr, but despite common techniques, their true difference lies in their motivation, why they paint. ==== ==== As Kelly Gold notes, Herr’s work is constantly evolving from earlier works “laden with words and animal forms” to deliberate human subjects. The Persian philosoper-poet, Rumi, guides Herr’s artistic journey. Instead of illustrating maternal animals in his earlier paintings, which were inspired by his wife, Kara, more recent works express the “fantastical essence” of human figures, influenced by his young daughters. What is most engaging about Herr is his creative process, in which he makes “paintings knowing (he) won’t like them” (Gold). Later on, he keeps re-painting them until he is happy with a final product. The technique of layering new works on top of old ones is seen in Herr’s painting, “No Me, No You, Just Us,” where a human face from a previous layer, shines through in later layers along with a horse figure, making the face half man, half animal. One critic regards this style of layering as “an interesting way of expressing memory- portals to the past and windows into perception.” Francis Picabia, a renowned French Dada artist, has this same layering effect in his painting “Sotileza (Subtlety)” which he painted in 1928. ==== ==== The National Galleries of Scotland explain that the technique for Picabia incorporated more “interpenetrating” but definite layers, and his technique of layering similarly “provide[s] the visual equivalent to memory and the stream of consciousness.” Dada is an extreme artistic movement against the cultural atmosphere that supported the First World War. With an anti-establishment approach, Dada questions art’s status and traditions through collage work verses established techniques. “Dada is a state of mind…Dada is artistic free thinking…Dada gives itself to nothing… ” say’s Andre Breton. Spencer Herr embodies this artistic thinking just as deeply and strongly as Picabia does. His work may not have been during the time of Picabia, Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, or Georges Janco, but he is what I like to believe the beginnings of a new age Dadaism, mixed with influences from Folk Art. No, there probably wont be urinals on display, like in some Dada creations, but the same emotional investment like that of Herr, is defiantly coming into bloom like an autonomous flower along the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. ====