Rage Against the Machine pumps out of a boom box. Flames shoot into the air. An awed crowd underneath the banana trees lining Jackson Square stands back as the man in the middle, sporting a cheetah-print vest, his face obscured by an industrial-gauge face mask, finishes up his performance with a fiery flourish. The crowd goes nuts. Hard to believe the rock'n'roll madness is all over...for a painting.If you crossed Van Gogh with Van Halen, you might come up with Hugo Montero. Sitting on a red stool along Decatur Street with a mask to protect himself from paint fumes, Montero takes spray painting to a whole new world -- figuratively and literally -- with the amazing cosmic images he creates out of 86 cans of Krylon latex spray paint in boxes at his side, plus scratched 45 records, paper plates, torn-out pages of magazines, ketchup bottle caps...and whatever else will let Montero express his own "child of Seventies album cover art" vision. "I've been doing this for 20 years," says Montero, 38, who's lived in New Orleans for nine years. "I loved the old Seventies Virgin records album covers...back when Virgin was indie. The sense here is to create art from nothing. You can buy Krylon at Wal-Mart. You use plates, records. I don't use layers, I don't consider it 'high art,' but people just love it." | Montero learned his craft in Mexico from an artist friend named Sadot. "His art was more surreal," says Montero. "He didn't do the cosmic thing." Montero went on to earn a master's of fine art at Tulane. Now Montero is the master:While he talks, his protegé; Ricardo Ponce, a student at the New Orleans Fine Arts Academy who is sporting a Virgin Records sweatshirt, spray paints a black-and-white cosmic vision. Someone wanders up to Montero to ask how much. "It's sold already," he says. It's not just painting, it's performance, and Montero loves that aspect. As he works, he dries the paint by flicking a lighter in front of a blast of spray paint and creating a street artist's version of a blow torch. "I have to say, the fire has this mythological aspect. People love fire." Montero doesn't just paint, he performs, energetically, intensely. "When Rage was playing, I was crazy," he says later. "I can't do that too much. I'd be dead. It's like sex: You can't perform too much." Now there's a Dead Can Dance tune off the soundtrack from The Insider setting a trance-like mood in the background. "I have heavy metal, I have jazz. The music gives the energy that you need to perform," says Montero, who can do 50 paintings a day -- it takes him about 15 minutes to create each one -- and who worked with Ponce from noon to 4 a.m. Saturday. It's hard work, but the music gets the artist by. "When I'm getting tired, I put on something very heavy." |
Two books of painting sit on a tarp that keeps paint off the sidewalk, and Montero invites people to choose a painting out of the book. Then he or Ponce will execute the chosen image. "It's like McDonald's combo one, combo two," says Montero with a laugh. "People pick, we paint it. If no one asks, I just play, I just perform and do whatever comes to mind. Those are original, one-of-a-kind paintings."Montero usually has a dozen paintings laid out in front of him as he works, but during Mardi Gras, they're bought up as quickly as he can paint them. He sells the larger ones (about 18x24 inches) for around $50, although the onetime images go for more: The most he ever charged was $100. It's no-frills street art, and the crowds have responded. "People like us. This is a fine crowd. Nobody has been rude. Five years ago, people used to puke on my paintings!" Now, people can't snap them up quickly enough. Montero loves that.
"People
create an island around us," he says. "That's what we want...a little
island in all this madness."
If you want to learn more about Hugo Montero and his art, you can visit his website at CANGOGH.NET or email him at cangogh@hotmail.com
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