THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST INLANDER
November 8, 2004

SLIDESHOW POET
by Mike Corrigan and Michael Bowen

When it comes to artistic expression, you've got a myriad of possible forms to explore. You've got your live music and live theater. You've got your visual art and performance art. You've got prose and poetry. And never, ever shall they meet, intersect or in any other way merge in the same performance at the same time, particularly in front of an audience. So sayeth the purist.

To those with a more freewheeling approach to the arts, however, all this artificial segregation of forms seems like a lot of hooey.

Andy Friedman is primarily a visual artist. He works in pencil, paint or with photographic film. Yet the often staid and stilted gallery method of showing off his work left him deeply unsatisfied. What he envisioned was more of a rock 'n' roll approach. Friedman was hungry for the instant gratification that thespians and rock stars are afforded, that tangible connection with the audience that can only be attained through live performance. But how does one animate two-dimensional visual art in such a way to make it both intellectually stimulating and entertaining?

With a slide projector. With stream of consciousness monologues that ring poetic. With a respect for - and a genuine desire to connect with - the guy with the Miller High Life who paid his cover charge. Friedman has no guitar, doesn't claim to be a musician, yet he insists, "A performer needs only a true and heartfelt light to rock a crowd."

The 29-year-old Brooklyn performance artist is coming to rock our little corner of the world next Wednesday night with a show at Eichardt's Pub in Sandpoint. Eichardt's seems a perfect venue for Friedman, who typically shuns high falutin' concert halls and snooty galleries in favor of places with bar stools and smoky back rooms. It's in these environments that he finds the audiences, the people he's attempting to reach. And he wants nothing less than to drastically alter notions of "performance" forever.

"The reason I've been touring the nation's bars and music clubs for almost three years," he says, "is to bring a live, poetic forum to the visual arts."

Friedman's performances are a captivating mix of spoken lyrics set to a slideshow presentation of his drawings and photographs. It's an unholy union of beat poetry and travelogue. It works for him - and for audiences all over the country who have witnessed the unique spectacle. Friedman has received favorable reviews in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe and in weeklies from San Francisco to Nashville. He's also recently been the subject of a BBC radio feature.

And at the end of each performance, patrons may purchase a copy of the artist's album. Only at this rock show, the "albums" are in soft cover. Friedman's second book, Future Blues (self-published on City Salvage Records) is a collection of Polaroid photographs and evocative ramblings about place, people and time. In it, he references traditional country blues and folk songs as he blends his photography and words.

"I'd been listening to a lot of interpreters," he says. "Musicians like Ry Cooder and Dave Van Ronk, who took old songs, turned them around, and presented something new in the composition. ºI did the same, and the result was a book of pictures. It's about a guy who found his road, but is too busy driving on it to look out the window."

Slow it down, then. Look. Listen. And don't be surprised if your preconceptions are short-circuited, if not completely rewired.