Crybaby's or a Sad State of Affairs

Crybabys, is a metaphor for the fact that life is hard. It explores the act of regressing to an infantile state, a place where a baby expresses unhappiness by bursting into tears. In becoming an adult, these fits are no longer acceptable in public. Crybabys takes the stance that there is a lot to cry about these days: war, the environment, and the decline of American popularity, to name a few. Jim and Kerry explore the cathartic nature of crying in public for both viewer and participant and create an installation that is both hard to watch and comical as the viewer is placed face to face with varying ages of crying adults. The work proposes an emotionalized release at a time when our society needs to vent. Whether the crying is real or crocodile tears is unimportant.

Jim Neidhardt is a former Los Angeles filmmaker turned fine artist in Portland. He works with paint, digital image, and video, all drafted from an observational perspective. Neidhardt has been a member of the Blackfish cooperative artist group since 2004. He has shown also at 55 Mercer in Manhattan and Gallery 110 in Seattle. His artwork is held privately in Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco and the Northwest. He is interested in attitude and concepts where the medium utilized follows the thought expressed. He is not a traditionalist and is not inclined to justify his work critically or artistically.

Kerry Davis is a photography-based artist that uses cultural, political and religious imagery to make mixed media works. He is a native Portlander and has exhibited with Stein Design and in the Portland Review. This is his second collaboration with Jim Neidhardt. What inspires him is the challenge of pulling in disparate elements to produce a coherent but materially varied piece that leaves a rational trail to follow.