"As artists in both audio and visual fields, we can't imagine music without art, or vise-versa. Of course that doesn't stop our silly asses from scrutinizing which medium... is, within us, dominant.”

Presenting for one-night only, artists and musicians Shawn Harris, Scott Allbright and Dave Smallen join for BYPRODUCTS, a visual exhibition with musical performances hosted by Autobody Fine Art Gallery. As solo artists and musical collaborators native to the East Bay area, they have sculpted and shaped Oakland’s independent music scene for years. Now in their first public display of visual work in the Bay Area, they turn the artistic obsessions, grafted impulses and lyrical expressions already familiar to fans into entwined, tangible forms.

Concurrent with the musical success in his former band, The Matches (thematches.com), and his new project, Maniac (maniacmaniac.com), Shawn Harris has established himself as a realized and conceptually vivid artist. In his recent works, a key element is the concept of androgyny as moderation. The balance of the masculine and feminine to create images of subjects which elevate above both. This imagery is projected upon his subjects in a series that seeks to aggrandize the dreamers and demigods of the artist’s life. Often using his own bandmates and friends for muses, their magnetic essence is isolated, de-gendered, and catapulted into manifestations of soon-realized renown. Broken guitar strings strike and shape definition and form through broad, unfocused strokes, producing images that forecast the timelessness of icons upon subjects who are actively defining their own time.

Dave Smallen’s work ethic in music ostensibly shares little in common with the process by which he has handcrafted a series of intricately-carved and exquisitely-expressive woodcuts and hand-inked prints. After a dogged national touring scheduling, writing, recording and performing two albums’ worth of acclaimed songs both solo (davesmallen.com) and with his former band, Street to Nowhere, the tactile, meditative process involved in hand-printing each design seems to come as necessary relief from constant shift of major music promotion. Sometimes political, sometimes abstract, each piece comes off the heals of the events, whimsy or amusement that finds the artist during his process. However, as titles of prints are reflected in the titles of his songs and vice-versa, it is clear that both mediums become inseparable as statements of the same artist.

Scott Allbright of Poor Bailey (myspace.com/poorbailey) brings a powerful, dedicated force to his creations bordering on (if not personifying) obsession. Having recently completed The October Project (poorbailey.bandcamp.com/album/the-october-project), a massive musical undertaking releasing a song every day in the month of October, the exhausting fixation on brutal periods of creative work typifies this artist’s process. On exhibition will be his series of vast, painstakingly detailed hand-drawn mazes, all of which represent hundreds of hours of concentrated illustration. Though comprised of pathways no more than a few millimeters wide, the mazes expand and sprawl over several square feet, taking on a beautiful and uniquely irreproducible texture at large. Moving compulsively through ever-more creative projects, each musical milestone agitates a practical need to marry it with new art.

Join them, their fans and patrons alike for a single night of chaotic bliss and unforgettable musical performances by each artist and special opening band, Ladies and Gentlemen.

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