Art Review: Postal creations track artist's whims

Joel Hilgenberg's decorated envelopes go on display this weekend at Beauty Shop Restaurant.

There exists an art of intricacy and obsession that is awesome just through the process of being itself. When that art is also infinitely skillful, inventive and mad, then it conjures in the viewer a sort of giddy excitement and delight that are difficult to explain.

Those are the sensations that should be raised Saturday at Beauty Shop Restaurant in Cooper-Young, when Joel Hilgenberg exhibits 100 small envelopes on which he has drawn, stamped and written a veritable history of his dark cultural consciousness in what could be called a collaboration with the U.S. Postal Service. Yes, each envelope, which contains a packing tag with "something ridiculous written on it and the time and date," said Hilgenberg, was sent through the mail and its stamp canceled. "The mailbox," the artist continued, "is like a little, miniature gallery."

Joel Hilgenberg

The reception for Hilgenberg's exhibition, "The Die Is Cast," occurs from 6 to 9 p.m. at the restaurant at 966 S. Cooper. The work will hang -- literally, on lines and affixed with tiny clothespins -- for a few days.

To a group of Memphians and the tattooed throughout the country, Hilgenberg, 40, is one of the best-known or simply the best tattoo artist around. "At least," he said at Beauty Shop earlier this week, "that's how I'm making money right now."

Hilgenberg is, unusual among tattoo masters, a trained artist, having earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from Memphis College of Art in 1995; he is presently working on a master of arts in teaching at the college, hoping for a job with Memphis City Schools.

In November 2004, Hilgenberg participated in a two-person show at the old Second Floor Contemporary; in my review I said, "The guy can draw!" and he certainly can. The 100 envelopes in "The Die Is Cast" could serve as an instruction book in brush and ink techniques of line and outline, shading, light and shadow, composition enforced by a tight space and, the medium aside, the immense powers of the imagination.

Each small envelope contains, on the front, a scene, a portrait, a still life; a spider-web-delicate quotation at the bottom; the time at which the piece was begun (many between 5 and 6 a.m.); the artist's signature in a logo and in a Japanese stamp; on the back is another quotation and a drop of coffee set off inside a fragile ink-drawn square with the words, "This is the color of my coffee."

"That started just as a thing because sometimes I would spill a little coffee on a page of one of my notebooks," said Hilgenberg, "and then it became a habit, a sort of device or signature."

Many of the portraits are of criminals -- "lots of criminals" -- as well as poets, painters and politicians. "These are people who just are who they are," Hilgenberg said. "People for whom often the die is cast and that's that."

The envelopes, by the way, did not come in bulk from an office supply store.

"This is good material," said the artist, "acid-free Fabriano paper." (The town of Fabriano in east-central Italy has been producing fine papers since the 13th century.)

Hilgenberg started making "correspondence art" about 16 years ago and has created, he said, "tens of thousands" of pieces, most of which he mailed to strangers whose addresses he obtained from business cards he picked up around the country.

"No one ever wrote back," he said, "except for one guy who said 'thank you,' another guy who challenged me to a duel, and a third guy that called the tattoo shop where I was working and told me never to write to him again."

The pieces in "The Die Is Cast" were created over a two-month period specifically for this show. They're priced at $100, "not too much, but not nothing," said Hilgenberg.

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'The Die Is Cast'

"Correspondence art" by Joel Hilgenberg, at Beauty Shop, 966 S. Cooper. A reception is 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday. Call (901) 272-7111.

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