Press release of the day: The edge of Tomato

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • June 26, 2008 • The longer I'm in this job, the more—and crazier—press releases I get. Among the recent notices finding their way to my inbox were a press release about a North Dakota couple flown to Australia for their honeymoon as a promotional stunt for Tourism Tasmania ("one of the biggest stories this past weekend in Australia and in North Dakota") and a notice that a "sexy Minnesotan" named Shannon Sunderlin had been declared Playboy.com's Cyber Girl of the Month ("the 5’1” blue-eyed stunner grew up in Eagon [sic] and enjoys painting, singing, and drawing"). My favorite press release to arrive today comes from one "Sioux Z" at the Magnum PR firm, and it does actually describe an arts-related event. That's actually probably the best way to describe it: an arts-related event. "Underworld and Tomato, the visual Beautiful Burnout, 2008, handmade silkscreen on art collaborative, is a UK-born genre-defying force consisting of, among others, Karl Hyde, Rick Smith, Simon Taylor (tomato) and John Warwicker (tomato). Their Oblivion Ball ArtJam in Tokyo last November (the all night, multi-band jam that, with the help of 20 assistants and in the spirit of 'happening' godfather Allan Kaprow, saw the design and painting of a 42.5 meter long and 7 meter high wall in just sixteen hours). The exhibition at Jacobson Howard will be the same ongoing process in multi-media form. "'We’ve always been asked "where is the edge of Underworld and where is the edge of Tomato?" as if it needs to be conventionally "boxed." For us, it's just our daily process of making things in whatever medium is at hand. Beautiful Burnout is the dynamic expression of this process.' (John Warwicker, Underworld Creative Director & Tomato Co-Founder)" This important "happening" will be taking place on August 8 at the Jacobson Howard Gallery, located in one of St. Paul's eastern suburbs: Manhattan.

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.